MyE28.com

I have a 1988 eta and am replacing the disks, pads, e-brake pads, and bleeding the brakes. I started with the rear brakes; replaced the pads and disks, also the e-brake pads, no problem.

I bought a Motive Bleeder with which to bleed the brakes; followed the instructions with the Bentley, starting with the passenger side rear. I put a liter of brake fluid in the Motive, attached it to the fluid reservoir, pumped the bleeder up to 12 PSI, attached a catch-bottle on the right rear brake nipple, then cracked it open. Not much happened.

About 2 inches of the clear tubing leading to the catch-bottle filled with fluid, then stopped. The pressure reading stayed steady at 12 psi on the bleeder. I then tried applying pressure with the brake pedal and got some results. I was cautious, several pumps at a time and kept checking the the catch-bottle and the brake bleeder, no change on the psi, but the brake fluid appeared to be siphoned by the action of the pedal, which made sense. It took me what seemed to be lot of pumping, say 50 with the pedal to get somewhere near the 500 ccs that the Bentley calls for. The color of the fluid changed slightly at about halfway, no bubbles. I closed off the nipple and started on the driver side rear.

This one was even more peculiar, no love at all from the Motive; nothing came out this time until I started pumping the brake. There was sound like the opening of a soda can, a whoosh of air (small) then out came fluid. This time I pumped about 100 times on the brake pedal and was still getting air and had only put about 200 ccs through it. I gave up at this point an buttoned things up as I had other obligations.

My assumption is that I have a bad master cylinder but would like some opinions as I am a "Paint by Numbers" wrench-turner, not a mechanic. There is no huge rush as I have another vehicle to drive in the meantime. I did research the archives and read many posts about brake bleeding before and after doing this, by the way. Thanks to all who posted and thanks in advance for any advice you may have.

Is the Motive actually working? If you use the old school bleeding method without the Motive, does anything come out? My old school bleeding equipment consists of a jar, a hole in its cap, a little bit of brake fluid at the bottom of the jar, and some vacuum hose.

The only thing the Motive appears to be doing is supplying the brake fluid by siphon, as near as I can tell; the pressure in it stays constant. Plenty comes out with the old fashioned method, but it takes what seems to be too much pumping to make it happen.

Don't take this the wrong way, but if this is your first time bleeding brakes, I would suggest having a helper familiar with how it works. From your description, I can't tell if you are using the Motive properly or even manually bleeding properly.

The only thing I would add to this how-to is to tell your helper not to let up on the brake pedal (follow it to the floor when the bleeder is opened) until you say, "up", after you close the bleeder. It's pretty easy, but it's also one of those things that you want confirmation that it's done correctly the first couple times you do it.

You should be able to easily reach the bleeders with the car on the ground, wheels on.

http://www.wikihow.com/Bleed-Car-Brakes

Edit: Just had another thought re-reading your post. Make sure you are bleeding all 4 corners. I would bleed the clutch slave the same way too, if you have drained the brake reservoir.

After viewing the video I can tell you that I was not bleeding the system manually in the correct fashion, no doubt. What I was doing was a Frankenstein of the two methods, Pressure Bleeder and Manual. Let me start over, I re-read my original post and it is confusing. I like lists so I'll go with that.

1. Purchased a Brake Kit from Pelican parts:
•New front and rear rotors
•New front and rear caliper rebuild kits
•New front and rear brake pads
•New front and rear brake wear sensors
•New E-Brake shoes
•New brake disc retaining bolts
•Three liters of Ate brake fluid
•Two cans of Wurth brake cleaner
•Brake caliper rebuild grease
•Lubro-Moly anti-seize compound

2. I chose not to rebuild the calipers as this was done at the last brake service shown in the records from the PO.

3. I replaced the rear rotors and pads, ebrake shoes, and brake wear sensor.

4. I attempted to flush the right rear (as called out in the Bentley) using the Motive Bleeder. I followed the instructions on the Bleeder to the letter and it did not appear to push any brake fluid through the lines. I then began pumping on the brake to see if anything would move that way, and it did. I was able to flush about 500 ccs of fluid out the right rear by pumping the brake with the bleeder left open. I did not add any fluid directly to the reservoir; the fluid appeared to be siphoned out of the Motive, and the pressure in the Motive remained steady.

5. I moved to the left rear and did pretty much the same thing, but it took a lot more pumping.

6. I was originally going to replace the pads and discs on the front and bleed them in their turn, but ran out of time.

It was my assumption that there was something else wrong given the Motive did not appear to work from the get-go. I followed the instructions found on the bottle:
http://www.motiveproducts.com/frame-instruct.htm
I did what the guy in this video did, except that I did not get the result one sees at about 3:50 into it (and I was a little less careless with the brake fluid cleanup).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miv3jjN95ok

I will give the method in your video another go. I was hoping that the flushing could be done with the Pressure Bleeder. The assumption that the master cylinder being bad had to do with my ignorance in general and not knowing how to bleed brakes in the traditional manner.

Thanks for your time; if anything in this ramble jogs any thoughts I would be grateful to hear them.

I don't have faith in the Motive*. Old style manual bleeding has worked just fine for years on my car.

*Tried it, nothing happened.

Finished the brake job today; the Motive bleeder worked fine, all that was missing was patience. It worked, slowly, but it worked. My usual help was out of town and I wanted to try to finish the brake job.

The new disks took care of the violent shuddering when braking through about 45 miles an hour and the car brakes really well, as it should.

Thanks for the help and sympathetic ear.

Don.

I know you have the problem solved. I just wanted to put in a bump for using Speed Bleeders on the brakes, They replace the existing bleeders and make one man brake bleeding a snap. I love 'em. Speed Bleeders are always one of the very first upgrades I make to a new, to me, car, They would have made your entire problem an non-issue.


Yeah, yeah, I sound like an advertisement or a paid endorser.

http://www.speedbleeder.com/

I like the sound of them and have tucked the url away for next time I do brakes.

Thanks.

Coldswede wrote:I know you have the problem solved. I just wanted to put in a bump for using Speed Bleeders on the brakes, They replace the existing bleeders and make one man brake bleeding a snap. I love 'em. Speed Bleeders are always one of the very first upgrades I make to a new, to me, car, They would have made your entire problem an non-issue.


Yeah, yeah, I sound like an advertisement or a paid endorser.

http://www.speedbleeder.com/

I must say that looks amazing! What is the quality like? Every had one seize up on you after a while? A piece of tubing on the end into a bucket and it would truly be a one man, no mess operation.

Edit: Looking through their site I see they come in stainless steel! $15 a piece but that would be so worth it.

Those look pretty neat!

jodystevens wrote:

Coldswede wrote:I know you have the problem solved. I just wanted to put in a bump for using Speed Bleeders on the brakes, They replace the existing bleeders and make one man brake bleeding a snap. I love 'em. Speed Bleeders are always one of the very first upgrades I make to a new, to me, car, They would have made your entire problem an non-issue.


Yeah, yeah, I sound like an advertisement or a paid endorser.

http://www.speedbleeder.com/

I must say that looks amazing! What is the quality like? Every had one seize up on you after a while? A piece of tubing on the end into a bucket and it would truly be a one man, no mess operation.

Edit: Looking through their site I see they come in stainless steel! $15 a piece but that would be so worth it.

That's pretty cool but for E12s with 3 bleeders on the front calipers it adds up!

Neat. The last section of this page makes me a bit nervous though.

http://www.speedbleeder.com/News.htm

cek wrote:Neat. The last section of this page makes me a bit nervous though.

http://www.speedbleeder.com/News.htm

BMW Calipers aren't that hard (or expensive) to replace if the absolute worst should occur.
Unless you're running some kind of one-off setup. Very few are on the outer fringes of brake setups.

wkohler wrote:

jodystevens wrote:

Coldswede wrote:I know you have the problem solved. I just wanted to put in a bump for using Speed Bleeders on the brakes, They replace the existing bleeders and make one man brake bleeding a snap. I love 'em. Speed Bleeders are always one of the very first upgrades I make to a new, to me, car, They would have made your entire problem an non-issue.


Yeah, yeah, I sound like an advertisement or a paid endorser.

http://www.speedbleeder.com/

I must say that looks amazing! What is the quality like? Every had one seize up on you after a while? A piece of tubing on the end into a bucket and it would truly be a one man, no mess operation.

Edit: Looking through their site I see they come in stainless steel! $15 a piece but that would be so worth it.

That's pretty cool but for E12s with 3 bleeders on the front calipers it adds up!

You are correct, that would be about $100 for the SS ones.