Bleeding the Brake System

There are a lot of differing opinions on how to go about bleeding your brake system. No matter what, your brake system needs to be free of air in order to operate properly. If you’ve replaced a master cylinder, you can often just bleed the lines going into the master cylinder and be done.

However, sometimes you need to bleed all four wheels, and this is where the difference of opinion comes in. Some people like to bleed the brakes starting with the wheel that’s farthest from the master cylinder; in fact, this is how most people do it. After reading a Honda manual one day, I discovered that Honda actually wants you to start with the wheel that’s closest to the master cylinder. This might seem strange, but I tried it and it works pretty good.

Most brake systems are designed on what is called a split diagonal. This means that one front wheel and one back wheel are on the same master cylinder circuit. For example, the left front wheel is tied to the right rear wheel, and the right front wheel is tied to the left rear wheel. Manufacturers do this so you don’t lose just your front or rear brakes. If you did lose the front brakes, you would have a heck of a time stopping your vehicle. This is because the rear brakes only do about 20% of the braking on your vehicle.

To combat this issue, manufacturers came up with the split diagonal setup. This way, you should always have at least one front wheel and one rear wheel working. This is important when bleeding brakes, because you always bleed one front wheel, then go to the opposite side rear wheel and bleed there.

Conventional bleeding goes like this: right rear to left front, left rear to right front. I personally prefer left front to right rear and right front to left rear. But honestly, do what you feel is best. The main point is that you get all the air out of the system, how you do that is up to you.

Video Title: Bleeding the Brake System – Solving Brake Problems – EricTheCarGuy Video Description: In this Article, we show how to Bleed the Brake System. Thumbnail: http://www.ericthecarguy.com/images/faq_buttons/Large_FAQ_Images/Brakes-icon-1200.jpg