Messed up my brake fluid change!

So I put in SpeedBleeders today with my son and flushed and bled the brakes. I used new SpeedBleeders all around inside and outside of the calipers, total of 8. And a new liter of ATE 200 brake fluid. My brakes were fine before I did this work but I have my first DE next week and I needed to flush the brakes so I enlisted my son to help... And I think that's were I went wrong! When I had him pumping the brakes while I was flushing the old fluid out I believe he let the brlake peddle back up while I still had the nipples wide open and no cap on the master... I now have at least half of the peddle travel before I get any response from the brakes!!! I had my girlfriend come out and help me after I saw that the peddle was out of whack and she was able to keep constant pressure on the peddle while I cracked all the nipples one at a time and re-bleed them again. I am now out of new brake fluid and my peddle is still terrible... What should I do now! Get more fluid and re-bleed them again?! Any suggestions would be appreciated!!!!!!

Get a Motive bleeder. It is a one man job and very easy. Also Right rear, Left rear, Right front and Left front in that order. Girlfriend and nipples in the same post are awesome.

I did follow the right sequence... I'm just hopeing that I can get the air out... What a pain this is turning into... +1 on the Motive Bleeder... Getting one soon!

"I enlisted my son to help... And I think that's were I went wrong!" Uh,huh...blame it on your son - that always works... Did you tell him to hold his foot down until you closed the bleeders?

If you know which line has the air in it you may be able to bleed only that particular line/caliper (as the others are hopefully ok) and solve the problem. You will have to get more brake fluid though.

correct me if i'm wrong, but with speed bleeders, you can pump the pedal while the bleeders open (hence speed bleeder). Did you let the level in the reservoir run dry?

Exactly what I thought as well. I would put the stock bleeders back on and start fresh with a Motive bleeder.

Need about 2-3 liters of brake fluid to flush out the air. Start with the corner that has air. Usually, that's the rear corners. You can get cheaper fluids to flush if you like.

I didn't think you needed a second person when using speed bleeders and I also didn't think you could mess up the bleeding procedure. I guess I was wrong on both accounts. I agree with the dry resorvoir theory...

We need a pic of the girlfriend if under 35 to make a thorough diagnosis.

I hate speed bleeders... They aways end up leaking air around the threads. Bleeding brakes even without aids like speedbleeders or promotive is still a pretty simple job... 'press', 'hold', 'release', (repeat) Very uncool blaming it on your son. It sure seems like regardless of who was pressing the pedal (not peddle), you need to take responsibility for the job and for communicating clearly and exactly what you want done inside the car.

Quotes source post: 12197639

Dang......dude that is just sooooooo freaking wrong! Just getting your son to help is awesome, who cares if the there's air in the line!

Joe, Father and son time is always good. Next time may I suggest going over a game plan with him in more detail before the actual job? I did this with my wife once. I told her to pump the brakes 3 times as hard as she could then hold down the pedal on her last attempt and yell "hold" out the driver window. I would loosen it and tighten it and yell back "ok!". That would give her the sign to release and repeat. I also told her to remind me to top off fluid levels every 3 "hold" sessions in case one of us forgot.

Quotes source post: 12200434

The question in my mind is whether you mentioned nipples at all?

I never �Blamed� my son� that was supposed to be a joke. I made the mistake of not telling him �Exactly� what I needed him to do. My fault� My mistake� My problem! What I wanted was any suggestions on rectifying the problem with my brakes: 1 -Get 2 liters of fluid, one to flush out as much trapped air as you can and one to re-do the job correctly. (Good Idea) 2 -Use a Power Bleeder. (Ordered) 3 -Pro or Con on the SpeedBleeders. (Will use them for now and see how they work out) 4 -Set up a protocol for �HOW� to bleed them correctly. (ABSOLUTLY)! This is not my first time doing this kind of work during my life time� but it is on my 996. I wanted to completely flush out my old fluid and start fresh for the season� I wanted to make it easier for the next fluid change� I wanted to include my son� So now that I�m done ranting� I should be getting the rest of my supplies by Friday and fixing this problem on Saturday� work pending� and go to my first Auto Cross DE on Sunday!

Why are the speedbleeders worth the trouble if you already have a Motive bleeder? I'm just curious. As another poster has mentioned it's easy to see air can be sucked back into the caliper through the threads...

Depending on how much air is now in the system, you may need to bleed ABS: http://www.planet-9.com/reviews/elec...functions.html

Thanks for some feedback! The SpeedBleeders were originally bought with the intention of making things easier... So far that has not happened... We will see how the next flushing and purge goes. The recently ordered power bleeder is to force flush what I might have trapped in the lines by mistake. 5chn3ll, could you please give me a better link to what your directing me to?

Quotes source post: 12201040

The top part of that page explains how to use the durametric to flush the ABS system. I don't know of a better link - that one is fairly exhaustive.

To bleed the ABS, you need Durametric. I think unless you ran the reservoir dry before, most likely you don't need it though. You can just revert back to the stock bleeders and use the Motive bleeder to flush all the calipers first and see if that fixes it. Since it's not clear what happened. It could very well have been the speed bleeders. Who knows. There are 8 of them. I hate to second guess a part. You're better off just remove them all. The Motive is very simple to use and it's fast and reliable. Just top up the reservoir to full first, then pour 1L brake fluid into the bleeder, connect it to the reservoir and pump it up to 15PSIG. Then just go to each caliper and open the outer bleeder first , then the inner. Drain out ~125mL per bleeder valve .

Got it... Was looking for it all wrong! Thanks!

As long as we are talking about brake bleeding, I just did mine last week after a rotor and pad change. Anyhow, I was searching the web to see where I could buy the Pentosin fluid locally. I found an Advance Auto in Jacksonville that actually had it priced for under $2 a liter when they rung it up. Obviously mispriced but that is what they charged me. I bought all they had. So, if you need Pentosin DOT 4 it may be worth a shot.

Murray's/O'Reily's has been carrying specialty brands too lately.

Quotes source post: 12201828

I was surprised a while back as well to learn that my local "air freshener and fuzzy dice" part store (O'Riellys) had Pentosin coolant and other specialty fluids... Of course they don't actually keep it out on the shelves in my local store, but in the back. And unless you get the right employee, they haven't a clue and it's a five minute conversation to get them from "Pento-What?" Never heard of it to "Yes, you do have it. Go look in the back or find your boss"...

Here in the Northwest, NAPA carries ATE and Pentosin both. Not all stores locally carry it, but the "main" store does in my town.

regular pentosin is meh compared to ATE 200

SuperBlue for the win! (if you can still find it...)

1) ATE blue FTW +1 2) I ran my reservoir dry once (maybe even twice), and pushed air all the way through with my power bleeder for good measure (longs story). I never did bleed the ABS pump after that and my pedal came up perfectly hard - no issues for years now. The chances that your soft pedal is due to air in the ABS pump is remote I would think given your description. 3) Where are the girlfriend pics ?

ATE and blue are awesome brake fluids but for under 2 bucks a liter I will stick with the Pentosin until Advance Auto figures out the pricing error. I am hitting more stores tomorrow.