bleeding a new brake system

[SS Shaun]

Ok so i have a brand new brake system. everything is brand new on my brake system. So i did the bench bleed on the master cylinder and that went great. I went to bleed one caliper just to check for leaks and i found one leak at the proportion valve. Fixed that. went to the rear passenger side with my mini vac plugged it all in and cracked open the valve and i must of sat there for about 10 mins and nothing was coming out. i tried the reverse bleed and got in about 45cc of fluid and locked it but then i noticed that no fluid filled up in my master cylinder. what am i doing wrong? i am going to have my wife pump the brakes for me today to see if that helps but figured the mini vac for the brake system would work just fine.


for those who don't know what reverse bleeding or back feeding is here is a link for it fast forward to 2:45 and he shows you what i mean
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBk00597EyE

[RBeckman]

Shaun, I have never used the power bleeder but I agree it should work, I'm interested in what happens with you manual bleed.

[SS Shaun]

yeah i am going to go out there in about an hour to see what happens

[BillsCamino]

Raise the front end of the car and gravity bleed the complete system. Open all 4 bleeders and keep on eye out for fluid to appear. Close that bleeder when it does.
Works for me every time.

[SS Shaun]

i guess what bill says is next on my list. I had my wife help me bleed the brakes and the fronts came out perfect the rear nothing came out. I opened up the line from the rear brakes to the distribution block and had my wife pump and i saw little air pockets coming out of it. is it normal or should a stream of fluid come out?

[Hank70SS]

A stream of fluid should come out given there is no, or shouldn't be any resistance to the flow of brake fluid.

[SS Shaun]

i think i figured out my issue. I think i need to adjust my rod on the pedal. because i dont think its pushing all the way to the front of the master cylinder which is its not pumping to the rear. I do have a question. on the brake pedal i noticed it had two wholes. which whole should it be in? the top or the bottom?

[shadowgray396]

1) There are 2 holes on the brake pedal where you can put the pushrod: The upper one is for manual brake, the lower one is for power brake. If you use the lower hole with manual brake, your pedal will require more effort

2) You may also need to adjust the length of the master cylinder push rod to get sufficient depth like you mentioned.

[SS Shaun]

ok that might be my problem right there. i have it on the top one where my manual brake setup was. I will move it to the lower one and see what happens thanks a lot!!

[BillsCamino]

With the pedal at rest, you want no pressure being applied to the MC. Any pressure will not allow the MC piston to fully retract and it will be unable to recharge the rear brake port with fluid.