Replacing rubber lines with steel braided.

Questions:
1) Speed bleeders - yes or no?
2) If speed bleeders, can I open all at once or do I still have to do one at a time.
3) Pressure bleed or pump brakes?
4) Best kind of brake fluid (for street use).

Thanks for your thoughts, recommendations and suggestions.

 

Unless you are going to bleed the brakes on a fairly frequent basis (track days, autocross, etc.) you may find that Speed Bleeders may not be worth the time to install. If you are going to be bleeding the brakes every couple of months, then yes, they are a good addition.

IMHO, it's easiest to bleed one caliper at a time. I have them on my '87 and '02 and I can do a complete bleed process in about 30 minutes including wheel removal and re-install. With either car up on my hoist and the wheels are off, it takes maybe 10 minutes (less than 1 beer ) Speed-Bleeder has a neat bleeding kit that includes a plastic bag and 3' of tubing. The tubing end goes over the bleeder and you simply pump fluid into the bag. Clean and efficient.

Speed Bleeders are designed to work with pumping the pedal. You can use a pressure bleeder but you have to keep a very close eye on the fluid in the master reservoir so that you don't empty it and wind up having to bench-bleed the master. When I bleed the brakes, I only use 5-6 pumps of the pedal; that passes about 3 ounces of fluid and that is enough to completely flush a caliper.

For a good street fluid, any good quality DOT3 will work fine. One good fluid is the Ford HD MotorSports fluid. Another is Castrol LMA, or Valvoline SynPower. All have decent wet boiling points.

 

When bleeding I like to do it by pulling a vacuum at each wheel. Mity-Vac makes an inexpensive setup with a catch container which is perfect. Mine has worked flawlessly for over 25 years.

 

For several years I used a Motive Products pressure brake bleeder tank to flush/ bleed the brakes. Took me about an hour to put the car on jackstands and flush all four corners using a litre of fluid. I have a "U" shaped copper tube with hose ends for the front calipers and a right angle copper tube with hose ends for the rear. These help to keep the bleedhose on the bleed screw so the hose does not come of the bleed screw.

Last year I switched to speed bleeders on all four corners. With these in place, the Motive Products tank does not make enough pressure (at pressures I am willing to put on the master cylinder) to overcome the speed bleeder check valve spring, so it is necessary to pump the brake pedal to bleeed or flush the brakes with speed bleeders.

My conclusion is that bleeding is faster with the speed bleeders, bleeding one corner at a time, but if you are interested in flushing the brakes and running a full litre of fluid through the system, it takes longer to do that by pumping the brake pedal than it did with the Motive Products tank and no speed bleeders.

I have a hand vacuum pump, but did not like it for bleeding brakes. It seemed to me that the threads on the stock bleeder screws leaked enough vacuum when the screw was open to make bleeding with a hand vacuum pump more work.

I bleed or flush without removing wheels.

The DOT 3 fluids are fine for the street, but you may wish to look at some of the DOT 4 fluids which are compatible but have more corrosion protection.

 

Thanks for your advice, insight and suggestions. You bring up a couple of things to consider. I have a pressure bleeder we have used on our '81 but gonna take a look at the ones you guys mention. Both our Vettes are strictly pleasure driving and stored for the winter so bleeding is not a real frequent deal. Doing small upgrades here and there and want to be sure I'm going in right direction. Never hurts to ask, right?

 

One word of caution, when you disconnect your factory brake line to install the aftermarket stainless steel lines. Do not let a lot of the fluid leak out of the brake line going to the car master cylinder / antilock brake servo. If you do, you may get air into the Antilock Brake Servo which will be a PITA to get the air out.
Have fun with your project.
Ray

 

Thanks for that Ray. PITA's are not good - get enough of that elsewhere.

 

I've also used the mighty vac for many years and for most the most part it works great, except there have been a few times that it did not clear all the air out and I had to finish by pumping the pedal. I could never figure out why it did not work in these instances.I'm thinking of getting a motive bleeder to try it out.