WhiteOnRice

(92 Civic)

So I put skunk2 springs on my Civic and must have hit the hard brake line into the rear drums and woke up the next morning to a pool of brake fluid. It all leaked out of the right rear and of course the reservoir was empty. This happened a couple weeks ago, I didn't have time to replace the line.

A couple days ago I got around to fixing it, I had to replace the line and the drum caliper. My wife and I bled that line for a good 15 minutes before we got fluid. The pedal was stiff but when I went to drive it, the brakes were essentially useless. We checked that line again and after 30+ minutes of bleeding, we couldn't get fluid.

The master cylinder seems to be working fine because I can hear fluid getting sloshed around adjacent to it and she never pressed the pedal to the floor while the system was open. I'm thinking since the car sat for over a week, I need to bleed all four corners but I'm confused why I can't get fluid out of the RR now. Any ideas?

Davidss

1. Put the car on jack stands.
2. Bench bleed the master cylinder.
3. Hook the master cylinder back up.
4. Open up all 4 bleed valves at the same time
5. Close each valve after fluid starts coming out.
6. Finally bleed all 4 corners normally.

98civdx

Did you bleed all 4 in the correct order?

WhiteOnRice

I did RR, LR, RF, LF. How do I open bleed all at the same time? Have my wife hold, open all 4, have her push, close all and she can finally let off? She's gonna hate me lol.

TunerN00b

Put hose with a one way valve on each bleeder, open all 4, pump brakes until all 4 lines have fluid exiting.

WhiteOnRice

I imagine I can find this at any hardware store? Could you post a picture of the type you recommend? I checked lowes.com, couldn't find one and google images shows hundreds of types. Would be nice to have.

94EG8

You have the wrong order. It's RR, LF, LR, RF. You'll never get them to bleed in the order you were doing it in, you'll just move the fluid around.

Davidss

If you use the method that I posted when you get to step 4 you don't pump. Just open all 4 valves and let gravity do the work. It will pull the fluid through the lines without any pumping. This is referred to as gravity bleeding.

When you had a leak and found the reservoir empty air got into everything in one half of the system. To get the air out of the master cylinder you will have to bench bleed it. Once you put it back on it's better to gravity bleed initially. There may still be air in the proportioning valve and pumping the pedal could suck it back up into the master cylinder.

Hope that makes sense. Use the method I posted and you should be fine. Watch a few videos on bench bleeding and do it right. Don't cut any corners.

oversteer_ms

I have a mityvac here at my shop and I still use this method from time to time. Its fool proof.

WhiteOnRice

Why is this? I thought the RR and LF were independent of the LR and RF, so both of our methods are similar (on 1 half then the other, repeat).

Yes this makes sense, thanks a lot.

94EG8

Because Honda set their brakes up so that if you busted a brake line you would still have brakes on a front and back wheel diagonally opposite each other rather than having either front brakes or rear brakes.

They are and that's why you need to bleed them in the order I put in my first post.