Crazed-Sol

I'm working on a build in which i pulled the brake booster and master cylinder off the car, and then reinstalled them. all the lines were pulled too. however i have a line that was stuck ont he master cylinder, so my question is. do i HAVE to bench bleed the master cylinder? i bled the brakes yesterday until steady fluid came from each bleeder, and the brakes aren't working. when i press the brakes it feels like there must be a substantial amount of air in the system, and up by the brake booster/master cylinder its making a squishy air kind of sound different then what its supposed to im thinking. could it be because i didnt bench bleed the master? can i continue to have someone pump the brakes 5-10 times and bleed them until the air passes thru? i removed the abs module and took it apart as well, i was told i didnt need special tools, but to bleed the brakes as normal. its a 97 del sol vtec. thanks for any input ahead of time.

verycleanhatch

From what i've read if you do the pump and hold method it will take you along time to get all the air out from the master cylinder.

This is kinda of like what i had to go through. I took off all my brake lines. I bleed my brakes twice(using a phoenix systems injector) and it was still spongy. It was done twice still spongy.

I was thinking i might have a bad master cylinder so i replaced it and got a reman one and bench bleed it. When i was pumping the brakes i could not build any pressure.

Thinking about it now i should have bench bleed my old master cylinder, would have save me some money. It was still working before i did work on my brakes.

Re bleed my brakes using the old method and now brakes are good. I don't know if the thing i was using didn't work(phoenix systems injector) or because of air in the master cylinder.

I would bench bleed it. don't know how long it took but it's not that hard to do. I bleed it without using a vice.

kommon_sense

If the master ran dry at any point, then you must bench bleed.

Crazed-Sol

i never ran COMPLETELY dry. anyway. i went out to the shop today, and bled all 4 corners according to the service manual rear right then front left, then rear left, front right, did it about 3-4 times. and got i think, all the air out of the lines. now my brake pedal is nice and stiff and feels good, but it doesnt engage the brakes all that well.. it will stop the car, but not without hitting the brakes HARD. i did not bleed the ABS module, and i removed it from the car to clean it up. (drained the fluid) so im thinking i need to bleed the abs module as well? i have clean fluid coming from all 4 corners and like i said the pedal feels good when the car is sitting, but when i turn the car on to test the brakes and move the car a bit and apply brake pressure, it doesnt grab very well until im almost standing on it. i was told that you dont NEED to bench bleed the master cylinder unless its new. im hoping thats true because one of the brake lines is stuck on there. anyway. still needing to figure out what the deal with the brakes are, i had a friend of mine at the shop say it wasn't a big deal to pull the abs module apart. so i did to clean it. thinking maybe i shouldn't have, and hoping i can just bleed the abs tomorrow and be good to go (p.s.- Im not using ABS axles right now, so im not worried about abs working or not)

Crazed-Sol

ha. wow. ok so the brake booster vacuum line was on backwards >=(. all fixed. thanks guys