One man Brake bleeder opinions

I have Speed Bleeders on my FC. The stock bleed screws are prone to snapping off so they're a durability upgrade as well as allowing me to bleed brakes myself. They work pretty well.

Some parts stores carry them, in their Help! section.

I've been leery of trying the speedbleeders, but if you guys are onboard... I guess they can't be all that bad. Next car I get will receive them...

The crap civic isn't worth the effort.

Here's directions on how to make a pressure bleeder. Brake Pressure Bleeder

Haven't tried it myself, HF speed bleeders worked on my Opel GT so I didn't have to get too fancy. But do wish they made speed bleeders that uses a bigger recepticle.

ignorant wrote: I've been leery of trying the speedbleeders, but if you guys are onboard... I guess they can't be all that bad. Next car I get will receive them... The crap civic isn't worth the effort.

I'll grant you that I was leery of them too, but after having to remove two of the stock bleed screws with a Vise-Grip after they snapped off at the head, anything was an improvement. It makes life easier for me since they are cheap ($7/pair) and I don't have anyone to help me bleed brakes.

1. Add brake fluid to the Motive Power Brake Bleeder tank.

2. Firmly connect the supplied adapter to brake master cylinder and pump the Motive Power Brake Bleeder to pressurize.

3. Starting with the furthest away brake bleeder valve (typically on the rear of the vehicle), open brake bleeder valve and purge the air and old brake fluid from your brake system.

For more info visit: http://www.buybrakes.com/motive

Motive also makes a Miata adapter that works great. No more messing with the universal adapter.

Can the Motive adapters be used on the homemade bleeders?

ignorant wrote: I've been leery of trying the speedbleeders, but if you guys are onboard... I guess they can't be all that bad. Next car I get will receive them... The crap civic isn't worth the effort.

I have a Motive bleeder and I'm not a big fan of it. After using Speedbleeders on my Spit 6, I want them on all of my cars. So fast and easy it was like an epiphany... ...especially compared to all the time I spent effing around with the Motive on some cars... The sort-of down-side is the cost if you have to buy a lot of them... more so if you have an old Volvo with 8 bleeder screws.

I use a motive at work and love it, the only problem I've encountered is inability to bleed non-euro cars which have a different brake master cylinder cap. Motive does sell other ( strap down ) cap attachments but in my experience they suck.

bmw, vw, volvo, mini all use the same threads on the master cylinder cap and the motive cap works perfectly.

I bought a hand pump at Harbor Freight (with the GRM coupon).

I've had a Mity-Vac forever and it's fine for pulling fluid through a newly plumbed motorcycle brake system, but not much else. Actually, pushing the fluid up from the bottom with a big syringe is better...

When I started doing track days w/ the M3 though, regular bleeding became a thing. I bought a Motive and it's the greatest thing ever invented. The day before an event I put the car on stands, pull the street wheels off, and swap all the street brake pads for the track pads. Then I dump a can of ATE Super Blue in the power bleeder, hook it up, pressurize to 20 psi, and start at the R rear. Put the catch bottle on, open the bleeder, stop at 1-1/2" of fluid in the bottle. Follow with the L rear, R front and L front. Disconnect the power bleeder, pump the pedal back to hard, use the Mity Vac to suck off the excess fluid in the reservoir, put the track wheels on.

Whole deal takes well under an hour, an hour if there's an oil change.