LUVTruck.com

Hey guys,

Ok I still don't have much for brakes. They go all mushy, and you have to put your foot right to the floor to get any source of braking. If you pump them up you can get some braking action, but then it fades away. I had the front brake apart, and i don't know if it went back together the right way. But, i want to try and bleed them out a bit and see if theres some air or something in the lines. What the correct procedure to do this?? Thanks.

LOL...i just learned the joys of brakes on my toyota corolla recently. The procedure for bleeding your brakes is farthest from the master cylinder to the closest. Gotta have 2 people! One person inside pumps up the break pedal and tells the guy under the car to loosen the fitting and let out fluid until the pedal hits the floor. Then U tighten up the fitting before the person in the car lets their foot off the pedal. This is important or you will suck air back into the lines. Do this several times per wheel or until all air bubbles are out. I usually fit a clear line over the fitting and watch the fluid come out into a can. Start with the rear right then rear left the front right then front left. After your done you get to start the vehicle and see that your breaks might still not work! (-: This is what happened in my toyota and I ended up spending an extra 300 dollars to learn that my master cyclinder wasnt working propperly. Apparently there are cups on the master cylinder that can reverse from all the pressure of bleeding and replacing brakes and they rip. This lets fluid leak by the cups and your pressure goes away pretty fast. It allows you to pump up your breaks but its impossible to keep them from going to the floor. If your breaks worked before you started but not anymore, more than likely your master cylinder needs replacing. Its an easy job...good luck.

Press down hard on the brake pedal and hold it. If the pedal slowly descends to the floor board as you press, then it's probably the seal on the piston in the master cylinder letting fluid bypass to the other end of the cylinder. Check for fluid on the fire wall.

pull off the vacuum hose for the brake booster. every master cylender that i've had go bad leaks fluid into the brake booster and the engine sucks it down the vacuum line. see if the hose looks wet and see if it smells like brake fluid.

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1980 chevy luv 4x4 1.8 liter
1979 luv long bed parts truck
1984 2wd isuzu pup parts truck

"A man who says it can't be done shouldn't interrupt a man doing it."

to make the job of bleeding brakes a lot easier, get a one way valve eg outa a bike pump hose, attach it to a clear pipe into a bottle, stick the other end of the pipe onto the bleeder valve and pump away on the pedel. the valve stops the air going back in and it saves tighteding and loosening the nut all the time

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I said no to drugs....But they just wouldn't listen!

No matter how good she looks, some other guy is sick and tired of putting up with her crap!

I stuff a block of wood or something under the pedal when bleeding the brakes. You generally don't want the pedal to bottom out during bleeding or you can create probs with the master cylinder. The piston and cups have a range they tend to stay in along the cylinder. If you let the pedal bottom out on the floor during bleeding then you're pushing the piston out of that normal range and potentially into buildup or gunk on the inside of the cylinder. Since I started doing this, I have not had a bad master cylinder. Two of the three LUV master cyls I've replaced went within a month or so of bleeding the brakes to the floorboard.

800xl! Thanx for the tip on block under the pedal! I'll do that next time...that makes sense and i wish i'd have known that when i bled the brakes in my car...could have saved about 300 bucks...thats a cool idea..

i have got working on brakes down perty good. my auto shop teacher always has me do the brakes on rigs because all of the other people in shop cant figure out how to put drum brakes back together once they have them apart. my friend knows this, so when him and his dad kept blowing the cylinders on the rear drums, he called me up. i went down to his house, and as soon as i seen that the rear tires were off, and he had the drums sitting on the ground, i asked, "did you have the drums on?" and they were like, "ohh, i never thought about that" i was LMAO.

I never got around to doing it this weekend, hopefully next weekend. Thanks for the advice guys!

thanks for the tip on the block of wood 800xl.
I have been working on cars for a long time and I wasn't aware of this.

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03Cobra

hey that block of wood trick will probably help my luv too. i have the problem of locking upwhen i touck the brakes. It's probably because of the same thing.

My dad came up with that trick somewhere. It just makes sense to me, even though I've never heard it from anyone else. If you're running with a lot of air in the lines, the natural stroke of the master cylinder is already probably near the floor, so its not too big a deal. However, it still makes sense to keep from pushing it to the extreme so a small block can't be too bad an idea. I know I've seen a lot less trouble with master cylinders since I started doing this.

Some of the first "wrenching" I can remember actually helping with was helping him bleed the brakes on some of the old (40s-50s) farm trucks he bought. Back then it was a two footed job for me to pump the pedal.