Bleading the Brakes

I am going to Remove my (Rear)Calipers this weekend and I was told I would need to Bleed the brakes ,Does anyone know the cheepest and easiest way of Bleeding the Brakes when you do not have 2 people to do the job? Thanks much

Depends what you're removing them to do... are you going to disconnect them from the brake lines? If not, you don't need to bleed the brake system. If you open them or disconnect them from the lines, you will need to bleed them. Either way, you will need to replace the caliper bolts - they're only $3 if I recall, but they're made to be used only once. Take a look at the articles section for an article on removing/changing rotors - you need to torque the bolts to a certain value (I don't recall right off hand) - and it's critical that the torque on them be accurate. There's also articles on how to bleed the brakes - most people use a pressure bleeder. brad

Thanks Brad I guess there is more to this then I first thought .I will have to get my ducks in a row before starting this project. I have to dissconnect and remove the Calipers due to the fact that when I first bought my car 2.5 years ago I had a guy Paint my Calipers Red and he completely removed them from the car -He was a Nissan/Infinity Tech not a porsche Tech( and a bud smoker at that ).when I was at the dealer the other day the Porsche tech pointed out to me that the Calipers on the Rear are UPSIDE DOWN!!! So I think they are not only upside down but on the wrong sides correct? I cannot believe this has been on my car for over 2 years without an issue ,I am in total dissbelief and shock check out the picture.this is Upside down correct?

Yep, they are definitely upside down (the bleeder nipples should be on top) it looks like they must have mistakenly switched the right and left sides, assuming the decals are on the outer caliper. I wouldn't think that it was possible to mount them upside down, but I guess you can. :crazy: There are a couple of ways to bleed them yourself, with either a pressure bleeder (e.g. Motive) or a vacuum bleeder (I have one from Griots) - either will work fine.

Interesting. The main symptom you should notice is that the pads should now be tapered (due to the piston diameter's being staggered backwards). If you don't mind, just for academia, take a rough measurement of the thickness of the remaining friction material, and see how much it tapers from one end to the other. If they're worn much, you may even want to replace the pads.

Peter - I think you should get some of the articles I mentioned and read through them and see if this is something you want to tackle yourself. It might be something you'd be better-off having done by someone who knows Porsches (this time) and can straighten things out. Brakes are nothing to trifle with. I'm simply amazed your rears worked on the wrong side and upside-down sheeeeeesh... brad

Very good point, Jeff. brad

Brad I think you are right , I will contact my Porsche Tech at Max Rpm and see what they will charge to do this.I am still in shock and still amazed that my brakes worked perfect all this time . No fluid leaked out :crazy: The nipple is on the bottom:crazy: this is embarrising Jeff G in NE GA I will measure and take a few photos .This should be a lesson to all .USE A PORSCHE CERTIFIED TECH !!!!!!!!!!!

Re: Brad The other amazing bit is that he was able to get the things bled. I would have expected air trapped at the top.

Re: Brad Don't be too quick to think that Porsche techs are perfect. I am about to do a front rotor replacement along with pads. Pulled my front pads to find that when I had the pads changed last year the dealer rear pads in the front. Been that way for 1 year, and half a dozen DEs. And doing your own rotors is almost as easy as doing your brake pads and though everyone says you should use new caliper bolts my porsche tech at the dealer said no big deal to reuse the original ones, so who do you believe? Tried finding caliper bolts at the three dealers in my area and guess what none of them have them in stock go figure. Read the articles on changing your rotors and pads and once you pull the wheel and see what you are up a against you won't be intimidated. And you don't have to bleed the system if you just change out pads and rotors. Now that I have all the right parts I will finish my rotor and pad install tomorrow morning. And I probably have just jinxed myself seeing how my Bosch front load washer just went out as did the hydroboost system on my Ford super duty, they say things come in threes. I will let you know how it all works out.

Re: Brad Its not a difficult job to do this and you can do it yourself fairly easily. Make sure you have a good set of wrenches so you don't round off the nut on the hydraulic line to the calipers and everything else is very straightforward. Get a new, sealed pint of brake fluid and do all four (may as well). One you have the calipers correctly bolted back on, start at the position furtherest from the master cylinder and do just a basic bleed. If you have an assistant, you can do it the old-fashioned way and have them pump the brakes....hold the pedal to the floor.....and the you release the bleed valve. The brake pedal will go to the floor and they hold it there until you close the bleed valve. Repeat. On the first one, you will have to do it several times, the second rear one less, and the fronts just a few times. Use ATE Super Blue and then you can watch for the blue fluid to come out on the bleed end. When you see Blue, you know you're done. Alternate brake fluid colors (get ATE GOLD for the next bleed in two years or so) and again watch for the color changes. I do the bleeds by myself, so i use air pressure cap on my cars, and power it with 30 psi off my air compressor. Fast and easy that way. The important thing is to NEVER let the master cylinder run dry, so you have to stop and refill. If you suck air into it, then you have to start all the way over again from the beginning.

Re: Brad 30 psi is more than I have ever used. I usually use about 8 psi. I believe I read somewhere that there is a risk of blowing an O ring on the brake fluid reservoir connection.

Re: Brad There's no bleeding these, at least not through the bleeders. You could loosen the connection that's now up top, but if an air bubble got into the crossover tube there would be no way to bleed them. How the heck did this guy get them working, I don't know. I suspet that when you get them corrected you're going to have a "Holy Sh--" moment when you realize that suddenly your car has 4 brakes working instead of two and a half.

Re: Brad GB, For the brakes to have worked ok as indicated he had to have bled them in some fashion. Either high pressure on a pressure bleeder, a large vacuum bleeder as mention or loosening connections that shouldn't need to be. Any of these should have been a large screaming clue that something wasn't right to the tech, Porsche trained or not. Then again maybe he learned his trade at my local dealer. Of course as you've said there's also the opportunity for a moment of perfect clarity when he gets it all back together properly and finds out that all that was working were 2 and a half brakes. With the weight balance of the Cayman the rears do more than on most cars. On a side note too much pressure can damage the fluid resevoir. I'm not sure about the current design but on the older cars it wasn't just an o-ring that went. The whole resevoir could be popped out of the rubber seals that mated it to the master cylinder. I don't recall what the max was but 30 is well over. Sounds like a serious mess to clean up. Hopefully before the brake fluid damages anything. Like Alan I use pressures in the 8 psi range.

It's also possible that the tech realized he goof when he went to bleed them. At that point, he could have loosened the calipers to raist the bleeder side, bleed them, then put them back on. Any way you slice it, I have to imagine that the tech knew he goofed.

Re: Brad The factory service manual for the caymanS calls for a pressure of 2 bar, which translates to 29 psi. I was suprised to learn this, as I have always used about 15 psi with my pressure bleeder. Also, when doing the old school method of bleeding, both the factory and other sources now say to not 'pump up' the brakes. They call for slow application and release of the pedal. I believe this is to prevent breaking big bubbles into many small bubbles.

Re: Brad Now that I have changed out the front rotors with new Pagid Blues and changed the rear pads to pagid blues as well, what should I suspect in the way of pedal feel? The front pads were very hard to get in but got them to fit but not much in the way of clearance between the pad and rotor......very tight fit. So is this normal and what shoud I expect to experience when I go to break the pads in? Will the rotors rub until I wear off a bit of the pads to gain clearance....since this is the fist time I have done this I am a litte unsure as to what to expect. It is just that the Pagids up front were huge compared to stock front pads and the rears that the Porsche dealer had installed in front by mistake. Any feedback would be greatlyu appreciated. I am worried that the pads are going to be binding until there is some where......thanks.

Re: Brad Do the wheels turn freely? If so then very little clearance is probably correct. If there is very much in the way of clearance you'll end up with a lot of pedal travel before the pads clamp down on the rotors.

Re: Brad The wheels spun with a little resistance but no real binding as far as I could tell, but I will put the care back up on the jack tomorrow morning and see how much free wheeling there is before I head out to bed the pads in. I suspect that the breaking experience is going to be very different since I now have the bigger and beefier pads up front as oppossed to having rear Pagid Oranges up front that had been mistakely put on there by the local Porsche dealer, go figure, and the rears have been upgraded from the stock textars. I will keep my fingers crossed. Thanks for your feedback.

Some tightness is to be expected when you put new pads on, there is some drag on the rotor no matter what the car or pad. Just make sure you give you brake pedal at least three to four good pumps on the pedal before you pull out of the garage to test them. You want to make sure your pedal is 'up'. Pagid Blues are a low temperature pad, so they will perform similar to a stock street pad, no surprises for you. Try to avoid hard stops for the first hundred miles and just drive normally as much as you can.

Removing Calipers Getting my Calipers corrected tomorrow 8 am . The tuner shop was amazed that someone could have actually done this and made them work propery as you all stated . Not too bad on the price including Bleeding $150.00 I was going to DIY but my garage is 35 Degrees and raining outside so I could not do it outside . Money spent well IMO Will post results tomorrow .

Re: Removing Calipers Let us know. Bummer that no one noticed this sooner.

Sucess!!!!!!! They ended up charging me only $100 !! and its a world of difference Gone is the slightly mushey feel and squeeky noises I had before and Back is the Porsche Braking Perfection . You were Right GB its just a world of difference Look mom ,I cant stop now !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Great deal for that work. At that price, it's not worth messing around with it yourself. I sort of suspected.

Indeed a great price! Any specific reason they knocked down the bill 33%? I still like to do my own work whenever possible, only because I KNOW it will get done correctly.

Re: Brad The factory does indeed specify a surprising 2.0 bar (29 psi). Good catch. Since the bleeding process seems to work just fine at 15 psi that's what I'll continue to use, but it's nice to know 15 psi probably doesn't stress anything! Vacuum bleeders (like a Vacula) seem to work just fine too.

Re: Brad Porsche must have changed the resevoir to do this. When I got the Speedi-Bleed years back they specifically cautioned me about that. They'd apparently had more than one report of the old rectangular plastic resevoir popping off the master cyclinder. I do agree that the higher pressure will better get air out of convoluted passages. ABS units anyone? One thing I'd want to know before using this pressure is if the Porsche tooling that goes with the 2 bar pressure uses a strap under the master cylinder to hold down the resevoir.

Re: Brad Hello ! How many of you also change / bleed the clutchcylinder while doing the brake bleeding job ? Instuctions avaliable for the clutch ? The Dot 4 fluid comes from the same reservoiar for the brakes and clutch. Thanks !

[Raising Hand] I do....! It's kind of an incomplete job if you're going to leave old contaminated fluid in the slave. The procedure on bleeding the slave is very specific, but that's mostly for getting air out. If you're just looking to flush/replace fluid, you don't have to go too crazy.

Hello,i did see / read an instruction on Renntech regarding bleeding the clutch / slave cylinder for a Porsche 996. I am not sure but i think it is a´very similiar operation for a boxster 987 S with 6 speed gearbox ? Has anyone noticed any differense in feel after ? Does the the porsche workshop people do the clutch flush also or just the brake lines ? Thanks !