Hey guys ChrisFix here today I'm gonna show you how to flush your brake fluid
I'm putting brand new calipers on my truck because the old ones are going bad
They're leaking and I don't want to flush the old brake fluid into the brand new calipers
So I'm gonna flush the whole system with dot 3 brake fluid before I change out the brake calipers the other thing is this fluid
Hasn't been flushed for probably since the truck was brand new and this is a 2001 Mazda B
3000 Ford Ranger so in reality it should really be flushed anyway
Brake fluid should be flushed every two to three years because its hygroscopic
Meaning it likes to absorb water the problem with water in the brake fluid
Is when water gets in here water has a really low boiling point?
Compared to brake fluid brake fluid the boiling point could be four hundred degrees, but water boiling point is 212 degrees Fahrenheit
So it's not very high and the brakes get hot and they could easily exceed 200 degrees Fahrenheit
so if that happens
And you have a lot of water in your brake fluid the water will vaporize it will evaporate it'll boil
Creating a void when you press on the brake that void is compressible
So it'll feel like you don't have any brakes which is bad
Not only will it feel like you don't have any brakes you won't have any brakes
I'll explain more about brake fluid and how water gets in and all that stuff in another video some people say oh
You use dot 4 instead of dot 3 I'll explain all that in another video
It goes in-depth if you want to see that video the link will be in the description below but for this video
We're focusing on how to bleed the brakes
Now there are two methods to use to bleed the brakes the first method is the two person method
This is the most common method
You need yourself and a buddy the buddy presses on the brakes you open the bleeder valve close the bleeder valve
And that's the most common way to do it and I'll also show you the one-person method
So you could do the job yourself so to do this job
You need an open-ended Wrench
check your owners manual for the brake fluid your car uses and if you want to use the one-person method you need some type of
Small bottle like this and the hose that fits over the bleeder valve
I'll put a link in the description to a quick video on how to make a one-person bleeder
It's really fast and easy to do the other thing that is optional
but it's really helpful is if you have a turkey baster because the first thing we're gonna do is remove as much brake fluid as
We can out of the master cylinder
You want to make sure you clean your master cylinder with a paper towel before you open up the cap make sure the cap is
Cleaned off too, you don't want any contaminants getting in?
With that cleaned off we'll open it up set the cap aside now. We have our can here
I'm gonna suck out as much fluid as I can
And put it right in here
The reason why I want to do this first is cause when you're flushing your brakes the brake fluid is coming from the reservoir then
We're pulling new clean fluid through the brake lines instead of the old dirty fluid and speaking of old dirty fluid look how dirty this
Is new Brake fluid is gonna be clear and that's practically black
If you spill any brake fluid you want to immediately clean it up. Brake fluid is very caustic
It'll eat through paint. It'll cause corrosion on metal. You really don't want brake fluid touching anything
Okay, so you don't want to go too low on the master cylinder because you don't want to get air in through the Master cylinder?
So this is a pretty good amount taken out of the master cylinder
You can see there's still fluid in the master cylinder to prevent it from running dry so don't get air into the system now
I have my new brake fluid never buy this in bulk and always use it right away
This doesn't really store on the shelf very well. I'm gonna fill the master cylinder with the new fluid
I'm gonna overfill it cuz when I bleed the brakes we're gonna lose a lot of fluid as it bleeds out of each brake
Make sure you always cap this right away. I try to get a seal on this and then we'll cap this as well
Now I poured that fluid nice and smoothly
So hopefully the new fluid stays near the top and the old fluid stays near the bottom
The good thing about emptying master cylinder first is now you have some brake fluid that you could use to
prevent Air bubbles from getting in
So just put your tube on here
screw that in and
Make sure that tube goes all the way down to the bottom
so now any air bubbles that come out will get forced into the air up here and
Any sucking back will be sucking back brake fluid I know it's old brake fluid but it's gonna get pushed out anyway
So it's not a big deal
When you're doing this I like to follow the rule that you're supposed to do the farthest wheel
From the master cylinder first and then go in order so the second furthest 3rd Farthest and fourth Furthest so in this case
It's going to go passenger side rear driver's side rear
passenger side front driver's side front so we're going to start at the
passenger side rear that's the furthest away the abs system sometimes makes it weird because if the abs
System is in the rear then your furthest brake line is sometimes are the front ones
But in general start from the rear move to the front the bleeder valve on drum Brakes is located
usually at the top
You look for the brake line that comes in and then it's this little valve right here
And you could use a wrench over the bleeder valve to open and close it, so this is the passenger rear the first method
I'm going to show you is the two-person method with the two-person method
All you need is a wrench in another person one person presses on the brake and the other one opens and closes the bleeder valve
To bleed the brakes you really don't need to remove the wheels
I'm just doing it so I could easily show you guys and get in there and and have good camera Angles
But if you really want to you could keep the wheels on so with the two-person method move the Wrench counterclockwise
to open the Bleeder valve
press the Brakes
And I'm gonna close it
Ok so I'm just telling the person to press the brakes and they're gonna press down and I'm gonna open this press the brakes
And I'm gonna close it
Ok and when I say ok they can let go
So we're at the master cylinder, and you can see the brake fluid went down, but not a lot
It's only a little below the max so let's continue flushing the brakes
Make sure you check the master cylinder fluid about every 10 times you press the brake because you don't want to run dry
so now I'm going to add more brake fluid since we've been pressing them for a little bit now and
While adding this fluid we can see that there's no more old brake fluid left in the Master cylinder
press the Brakes
Ok press the brakes
Ok as you can see this brake fluid is as clear as the new brake fluid we put in so that means this brake line
Is flushed check out the difference between the brake fluid before? We did the flush press the brakes?
So now that we're done with this brake line
I won't tell the other person ok until I tighten the bleeder valve all the way and it's closed after it's closed
They can let their foot off the brake you should also have them check to make sure the brake pedal is firm which indicates you
Have no air in the system ok you can see this fluid is super clear, and I got a bunch of fluid out
Let's move on to the next one since we're gonna bleed a new brake. Let's add some more fluid
Close that up
Now let's go to the driver side rear brake and I'll show you how to use the one person method for the one person method
You'll be doing this on your own
So you want to prevent air from getting in while you're pressing the brake to do that we use our bottle system here
We want to fill it up with some brake fluid and then have the hose beneath that brake fluid
So if it sucks anything up its sucking a brake fluid not air
We want this hose to go above our bleeder valve. You'd see our bleeder valve is here
Just slide that over
Make sure that zip tie is really tight around that nipple
Here's where the brake cylinder is with the bleeder valve
And you can see it goes up because air travels upwards through the liquid it won't get sucked back down
It'll be up there and forced out
so now I'm just gonna crack this open a
little bit more
There you go, you can see brig fluid and air just came out
So now I'm gonna go and press the brakes as I press the brakes watch your brake fluid Force the air out of the Tube
You can see the bottle of brake fluid bubbling yet. No air flows back into the brake cylinder
I'm just pressing the brakes to the floor smoothly and then letting off the brakes and then repeating I'll fast-forward this and you'll notice how
The brake fluid goes from Dark to clear indicating the fluid has been flushed. Also notice...
It doesn't take as long as the first brake
this is 'cause the one person method is faster, and because with the first brake you flushed all the remaining old fluid out of the
Master Cylinder
so now we're just flushing the old fluid out of the brake line only so I just came out to check to make sure there's
No bubbles in the clear Tube. It's actually getting a lot clearer. You can see that's what it was before
This is after so this is working great by myself now
I'm gonna go and check the master cylinder, okay, the master cylinder is low
It's at this line down here, so I'm going to add more fluid
We've used almost half of this which means that we're almost halfway done
This is 32 ounces almost 1 liter, and that'll be just enough to get this brake flush done
Let's finish up on the driver's side rear and move to the passenger side front brakes you can see that
There are no air bubbles in the brake fluid by the bleeder valve which means that you can tighten it up
And you won't have to worry about any air in your brake system before we move on the one person bleeder is pretty much full
So I'm gonna empty it a little more than halfway
So now we're going to the passenger side front brake on this car the front brakes are disc brakes
It's gonna be bled the same exact way. Here's the bleeder valve
It's at the top you is Loosen
It same exact thing
so it doesn't matter if you have drum breaks or if you have disc breaks the bleeding process is the same so now I just
Bled this you don't need to see it. It's off-camera
I'm gonna do the driver's side
And you'll see that one just so you can see what it's like to do disc brakes even though
it's the same but you don't need to see this so I finished the
Passenger front disc brakes let's move to the driver front put a last break bleeding
So we're doing the same process as we've been doing get your clear hose
slide it on there, just like that and then slide down your
Zip tie so it looks exactly like that
The brake Line still goes above the Bleeder valve to let air out
So I'm going to just crack this open
Now I'm Gonna go press on the brakes
So if nothing is coming out like in this situation
What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna unscrew this the whole way be prepared because break foods probably gonna come out put a bucket underneath
just in case
We get a lot of Brake fluid
The reason why the brake fluid doesn't come out of here is because it's clogged. So we're gonna unclog it
So now is a good time to get a tool that has a pic on the end or a toothpick or something ready?
Brake fluid is gonna start coming out and you can see there's all rust and contaminants in here the actual Bleeder valve
Has a hole in it, and that holes right there
There you go
you can see
that thing was rusted shut
In reality you should replace your bleeder valve like this if it's like this, but I'm replacing the whole caliper
I'm just trying to bleed all the contaminated fluid out first, so this isn't a big deal
But if I were you, and this is the situation, and you weren't replacing the brake calipers
I would totally get a new bleeder valve because this could just rust up again
You're getting your brake fluid contaminated
And it's just gonna cause you problems and eventually if this is rusting it's Gonna just snap on you
They asked me how I know about that. We got the whole working again got all that rust out
Let's see if it'll work now all we're gonna. Do is just close this up?
And get our clear plastic hose back on this plus this time hopefully this will work now
I'm Gonna go check by pressing on the brake oh
man look at all that rust
That is disgusting brake fluid thank God. We're doing this that is all rusty brake fluid
So we're right here. We want to check our master cylinder, and you can see it's low, so we want to fill it up
Very fluid in there looks really clear compared to before and that is great
Just gonna bleed this out a little bit more and then call it a day
Fluid running pretty clear right now. That's good. So now I'm gonna tighten this
Good the brake pedal is nice and hard. I'm gonna remove this
So there's our finished product you got about one and a half of these
Which is exactly a liter or 32 ounces. There's gonna be just enough to fill this back up
With brand new fluid so let's do that now and we want to fill this to the correct level now because we're done
good that's the correct level right to the max line, and we'll make sure the cap is sealed on nice and tight and we
Have brake fluid that is good for two to three years
So that's how you flush your own brake fluid hopefully this video was helpful
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I just drained out all the brake fluid and look at all that all the little pieces of metal and everything all the grit
I'm glad we did that that was definitely something that needed to get done