my buddy brought his car to my house because he said his brakes were not working so he needed them bled

the car is a 90 crx with a b18b1 motor, the brakes are stock
previously the brake went out on him because he broke a brake line which he replaced. but he bled the brakes with the car off.

At this point the brakes worked but the pedal moved down to the floor.
remember before the brake line busted the brakes were good.

when he came to my house the brakes worked fine but the pedal was very low and almost seemed like the brakes only worked on one side of the car.
I told him to start the car and whatnot and i tried to take the rear bleeders out but both broke(in process of fixing this)
i said well **** it lets just bleed the fronts which may help a bit.

we started to bleed the brakes(not my first time lol) and the pedal feel was very unpredictable. it got worse and then a mite later it got better
and then worse. It never got good though it stayed bad or no brake pedal feel at all.
to where we are not after bleeding the brakes for an hour or so it has no brakes whatsoever.

when bleeding all that was coming out was a spray of fluid and mostly air.
but i bled the thing about 30 times and still only air. why is only air coming out. the brake fluid he said was not getting less so no leaks.

could the master cylinder be bad

 

were you topping off the brake fluid resevoir while bleeding?? if after hour of bleeding you still see air being spit out there must be a leak within the brake system somewhere (everytime you press / depress the pedal you are introducing more air into your brake system through this leak)

 

i vote master cylinder. most of the time these old cars they are junk

 

i was just going to say the same thing chansta said. youre best bet is to follow the brake lines throughout the car, also check the fittings mated to the brake master cylinder.

 

Friend and I spent like 30 min bleeding.... finally we knew we had a problem, went around and checked fittings, found leaks. Air is coming from somewhere...

We also put a new master in too, not worth having a leaky one...

 

yeah kept it topped, never went below the full mark
how am i going to find the leak wont it lose fluid though
ok is there a way i can check it though if its bad or do i just have to take my chance and replace it
dammit lol
yeah
we were bleeding it and it was literally spraying air out and never got a steady stream of fluid



also could no fluid or air mess up the master cylinder

 

Yeah you got a hole somewhere in the system. It feels like sh*t because only one side has pressure I bet. Find the leak and you solved the problem. btw bad master cylinder is usually not low pedal but the pedal sinks after you hold it down. You would feel it when its hot outside too.

 

my guess would be when you broke the rear bleeders you opened them some, so the system isn't closed.

 

thanks for the help
turns out it was a bad master cylinder after all

changed the rear break cylinders
didnt even bleed the brakes and they work great

 

werd... on the mc. A lot of times an old mc that has a bunch of junk in it will tear itself up during bleeding. The piston doesn't usually travel the entire stroke so when it does the debris in the bore scores the wall n piston when you crack the bleeder...