Hello, John Talley here with partzilla.com.
Today I'm going to show you how to bleed the front brakes on our 2003 Honda Rancher 350.
Pretty simple to do, I'm just going to lift it up, pull the tires off so you can see what
I'm doing, and I'll show you how to get it done.
Alright guys, this is going to be a skill level one.
The basic tools?
Really short list.
8mm wrench, a good Phillips, a little bit of hose, and a container.
Now if things start to get a little bit difficult, getting those screws out on your master cylinder,
you may need to invest in one of these impacts.
Alright, as far as the parts go for this one, you're going to need to get some good DOT-4
fluid.
I prefer to use the Honda, it's definitely what we carry on site.
Beyond that, you may want to take a look at this little gadget, makes bleeding the brakes
a whole heck of a lot easier and I'm going to show you both ways as far as doing the
manual way and using this little device.
So, once you've got everything together, I can show you how to get it done.
Alright guys, I've got her lifted up in the air a little bit, we got the front tires off,
and first we need to go ahead and open up the reservoir on the master.
If you try to do this without an impact you're going to strip out these Phillips up here.
They were nice and rusted in there.
So I'm betting that this one has probably never been bled before.
but, brake fluid is what they call hydroscopic, and what that means is that it actually attracts
water.
So, over time even though this is a closed system, it's going to draw in moisture.
If you look at the top of this little plastic insert, I'd be willing to bet that what I'm
looking at is actually water and not brake fluid.
Because that is pretty much completely clear, and I think what you're going to see it's
going to be really brown by the time it comes out down there at the end.
Now looking up top, I am correct.
Because that stuff in there almost looks like Coca-Cola.
So, I don't think this one has ever been cracked open before.
Now other than getting water in the system, which will of course corrode and really do
some serious damage to the seals both up here and down at the pistons-- when it's down here
it's constantly getting used and it's going through heat cycles.
Well after a while that starts to break down your brake fluid.
so, you need to pour in some new stuff up top and at least push it through down at the
bottom to where it has some fresh fluid to work with.
Because I don't want to introduce air into the system.
so whatever I pump out or pump down from up here, we need to keep replacing it.
Let's do that manual bleed first.
What I've got here is just some semi-clear hose and you've actually got your valve down
here.
You want to go ahead and put your 10mm wrench on the end of it and put this little bit of
hose and then put that into a bottle or as I'm using just a drain pan.
Just something to keep it from pumping on your floor.
Because this stuff is poisonous, and it would be a real shame if any or your pets or small
children actually decided they wanted to play in it.
It would not be a good thing.
Alright, so what you want to do is pump it up a few times, hold, and then open the valve.
When I did that, the brake lever went all the way in.
Now I can close, pump it up again, hold, and then release.
Close, pump it up, open it.
Alright, as you can tell, even though this is not quite clear, there's a little bit of
a blue tint to it, this should be basically clear.
And when we get the newer fluid pulled all the way down into it, it's going to look like
water almost.
So this obviously needed to be bled, because I'm betting this same fluid has been in there
since 2003.
Alright, so you basically get the process for manual bleed, but we're going to go ahead
and step things up a little bit.
Let's go ahead and top this off.
And we're gonna take this off and hook up our vacuum.
So now we just want to open it up to create a vacuum.
Now when I do that, I'm going to go ahead and open this up and it's going to start pulling
fluid through.
Now keep in mind it's going to do this at a pretty fast rate.
so you want to keep an eye on your reservoir.
Because see now it's already emptied out what we had up there just that quick.
So let's refill, and keep going.
If you have more than one machine, you really need to go ahead and invest in one of these.
They're definitely worth it.
Now when should yo bleed your brakes?
Honestly, you need to do it at least once a year.
Once it pulls through about, I'd say four times, it will have new fluid at least on
the right side.
Now let's go ahead and shut that off.
Alright, now what I want to do is just go ahead and refill the reservoir and then we're
going to reset over on the left side of the machine, because basically all it's done now
is pulled fluid through here up to a "T" and then just down to this section.
What we want to do is now get the old fluid from the "T" junction over to the left side
and get that pulled out as well.
Alright, and that should do it.
Just make sure you go back and put your dust cap back on because we don't want a bunch
of dirt and mud and whatnot getting shoved up in there.
Now that we've got the system bled through, let's go ahead and set our level.
There's a little line right here that says "lower."
It's actually in the middle of the sight glass.
Well, you can't see it but I'll bet you that one can, so through the magic of editing you'll
be able to see where my finger's pointing.
So what we want to do, knowing that we have new brake pads on the front of it, I can go
above the lower mark, because if I take it up too far with old brake pads, when you go
to replace them, guess what?
You compress those cylinders up front to get your shoes to actually fit, and that forces
the fluid back up into the system and overfills the reservoir.
And we don't want that to happen.
So, let's go ahead and get this thing filled up a little bit above the lower mark.
With that set where I want, all we need to do now is just clean off the rubber seal and
then put the cover back on.
alright set it back in.
Same thing for this little plastic cover.
And then we can get our cover back on.
Don't have to over-tighten it, just enough to snug it down.
alright, that'll finish it up.
Alright guys that pretty much wraps this one up.
Got our front tires put back on and now she's ready to go to the trails.
Well listen, if you need any of the parts that we used to do this or the tools-- specifically
that little Mityvac device, why don't you find us at partzilla.com and we can get you
taken care of.
If you have any questions or comments, just leave them in the section below and I'll do
my best to answer them.
And until next time we just want to say thanks for watching.