Hey guys,

I'm trying to bleed the brakes in my Integra and I'm having a hell of a time. I know a lot of you are pretty mechanically inclined, so I thought I'd run it past you.

Here's the story, my brakes boiled over at the track a month or so ago, so I decided to upgrade them and flush the fluid. My first mistake was that I pumped all of the fluid. In retrospect, I see why this was a bad idea...but that aside, it's done. I put new, bigger calipers on each corner as well. When I topped up the fluid and started to bleed them with a buddy, I was getting a solid stream of fluid, no bubbles, etc. Things seemed good, but the pedal went to the floor.

Ok, so I'm thinking I killed the master cylinder by pumping it too far and damaged the seals. No problem, there's now a new, freshly bench bled MC on there. Same problem.

I've tried opening up each line and just letting it run for a minute or two just to make sure it's all getting out of there.

So now I'm at a loss for what to do. I've wasted a lot of fluid and time on this. Do you guys know of any more effective ways to get the air out of the lines? I've heard of a vacum pump on the MC, but I would think it would require a modified cap to work properly.

Any suggestions are welcome.

Even with a little air in there, you should have SOME pedal. How much fluid have you bled thru them? When installing my R calipers, I pumped a full litre thru, and I could have used a bit more. I used Ian's fancy-shmancy Rona Brake Bleeder Kit (TM) and the pedal is as firm as I could want it.

Maybe you could build something up similar, just for your car? Rona weed sprayer -> surgical tubing -> all-metal screwed valve stem with core removed -> Honda MC reservoir cap

Instead of the pressure bleeder, I used to use a simple device I built that lets me bleed brake lines by myself. It's a length of vacuum tubing that fits over the bleed nipple, and the other end goes into a jar. The jar lid has a hole punched in it for the tube to pass thru, and the jar is filled 1/4 full of fluid. The jar is then hung ABOVE THE CALIPER by a piece of wire around it's neck. Stick on the hose, open the nipple, pump the pedal a dozen times, close the nipple, pull off the hose, move along.

As always, start with the passenger rear (furthest from the MC), and work your way clockwise. Lather, rinse, repeat, until you've used at least a litre of fluid.

Stupid question, perhaps, considering you've been bleeding them for a while it seems, but you're sure your pads are hitting your rotors, and you're not stroking the pedal just trying to get them to touch, right?

Design modification ... do not use surgical tubing!!!! Brake fluid has some effect on natural rubber, while bleeding my Wilwoods I checked the pressure bottle and it was almost empty (put a full liter in it and had not bled anywhere near that amount). Looked at the surgical tubing and it was swollen to about 3" in diameter over a 2' length (panic as I imagined the tubing blowing up spraying brake fluid all over the engine)

Needless to say the tube did hold out long enough for me to finish bleeding but it will be replaced with vinyl tubing before it gets used again

It took Matt and I forever to bleed the Wilwoods on the 122. With the single inlet and the 4 pistons as well as the crossover tube, there is a fair amount of fluid in there. We ended up finding a big swaybar endlink bushing that plugged the filler cap opening and ran a few PSI through the system with the air hose. That got the fluid moving and eventually to all 4 corners. That's certainly not a one man job though...

I have to agree with Matt...even with some air in the system you should have at least some pedal pressure. Something's not right...

And Ian...surgical tubing isn't that great for a temporoay gas line fix either. The fuel line on my '73 145 cracked and the only thing in the garage at the time was a length of surgical tubing. I cut a length, put it in and forgot about it. A month later I had a nice car-be-que when the latex let go and dumped gas all over the starter as I was crankiing it...