Brake bleeding photo pictorial
 

If you've never removed wheels before or bled brakes, this is for you. Some are able to bleed brakes without removing tires; I considered this but wanted to learn how to remove tires anyway. Do keep in mind that this procedure was a bit messy my first time, but I made sure to not get any brake fluid on the paint!

The method I used involved the Mityvac tool, but once you know where things are any method can be adapted. I bled the four brakes, but not the clutch. This was my first time; please let me know if there is anything I could have done better. Total time: 5 hours.


3 Mistakes I made:

1. Not enough brake fluid. If I had brought 24 to 32 oz of new brake fluid I would not have had to ration toward the end.
2. Used a common wrench and rounded 1 of the bleed screws. Afterward I went and purchased a proper brake bleeding tool, dual hex (six sided) with 8mm and 10mm. If you fail to follow this advice, bleed screws are available through the Mazda dealership parts counter at $7 apiece for fronts, and $5 apiece for rears.
3. Didn't bring turkey baster. The old brake fluid floated to the top of the reservoir as I put new fluid in; I could have sucked that top layer out.


What I did was:

1. Engaged parking brake.
2. Jacked the rear of the vehicle up.
3. Supported with 2 jack stands.
4. Aligned wheel lock key.
5. Placed airgun onto wheel lock key, using a 21mm socket.
6. Loosened wheel lugs gradually in a star pattern, going around several times.
7. Removed rear wheels.
8. Removed rubber cap on rear-right bleed screw.
9. Attached Mityvac tubing and began pumping for vacuum.
10. Filled reservoir periodically with new brake fluid during vacuum.
11. Detached Mityvac tubing, wiped with rags, and reattached rubber cap on bleed screw.
11. Repeated steps 8 through 11 for rear-left bleed screw.
12. Reattached rear wheels.
13. Hand tightened wheel lugs, jiggling wheel to remove slack as lugs were tightened in a star pattern traced several times.
14. Tightened wheel lugs gradually in a star pattern, several times, using a torque wrench set to 108 lb/ft.
15. Let rear wheels back onto ground.
16. Jacked front of vehicle up.
17. Repeated steps 4 through 13 on front-right, then on front-left bleed screw.
18. Let front wheels back onto ground.
19. Step 14 applied for final tightening to spec with front wheels on ground.


Photos: these should show up as small images on your monitor. They should not be big enough to fill your screen at only 800 pixels wide.

Location
1. Auto hobby shop
2. Bleed screw visible through rear wheel well

Tools and Parts
1. Brake bleeding wrench, hex
2. Automotive thread seal tape. I don't believe it helped much.
3. Jack compartment in trunk
4. Wheel lock attached to bar
5. Wheel lock removed
6. Tool layout
7. 21mm socket
8. Airgun with 21mm socket and wheel lock key attached

Procedures
1. Jack wasn't an exact match
2. Car jacked up
3. Wheel lock on lug
4. Bleed screw
5. Bleed screw with cap removed
6. 10mm on rear bleed screw
7. Mityvac adapter option1
8. Option2
9. Option3
10. Mityvac tubing connected
11. Pump suction
12. 8mm on front bleed screw

Great post !

You should've name your thread like

DIY : Brake Bleeding Photo Pictorial :P

I will put my DIY for replacing SS lines tomorrow, with brake bleeding of course :)

Now that's thorough. Thanks.

nycgps - do it. It'll give me one less reason to put off replacing mine for yet another weekend.

Did you bleed the Master Cylinder? Great DIY

Per workshop Manual

Note
• Keep the fluid level in the reserve tank at 3/4 full or more during the air bleeding.
• Begin air bleeding with the master cylinder and then continue with the brake caliper that is furthest away from the master cylinder. Finish by bleeding air from the master cylinder again.

I just did the rear, damn, its actually extremely easy even cave man can do it :)

I will post it up later, I just had lunch, taking a break, and will resume later.

Something horrible happened tho. Will post that up as well.

Quick question- why/when is it necessary to bleed/replace brake fluid? Is it something that is regular maintanence? I've got 40K on the car and I don't think that's ever been done. I also have a track day coming up so I think I should be sure about the condition of my brakes....thanks!

I always wondered about that also but for me it just made changing the brake pads much easier when I bleed the brakes. As far as the track is concered alot of guys strongly recommend switching to dot 4 fluid. Since you have 40k on the car I would recomend bleeding the brakes:) . Oh and yeah great write up user 24!

Why - Because our (most) brake system depends on brake fluid pressure. Brake Fluid is something that love moisture, the longer it sits in the system, the more moisture it will absorb. Moisture = Water.
Water is something that wont expand when heated. and when it absorbs too much moisture, it will lower the fluid's boiling point. and when the boiling point gets too low,the result is lower braking power, because you're having too much *water* in the system. and you dont want that to happen to you when you drive, right ?

When - I will say do it once a year. You dont even need to take your wheels off. Slide ur arms in to do it. its about a 30 minutes job, if you take your time.

I just switched my Brake lines to Stainless Steel(read my other DIY), and bleed the whole system with DOT4 Fluid. You can think of DOT4 Fluid as DOT3 Version II. One of the best thing is that it has a higher boiling point. do NOT use DOT5 tho. Our system DOES NOT work with DOT5 fluid, it might work with DOT 5.1, but those are very rare fluid and I think Im fine with DOT4 for now.

Thanks User 24. The thing that really helps me were the pics of the bleeder screws. But probably removing and putting lug nuts and tires could have been posted in a separate thread.

nygps, did you use any special product for bleeding screws by yourself without a helper? I know User 24 used the Mityvac. How effective is Mityvac? Did anyone use bleeder screws? What else have others used and how effective?

Ok, in the SpeedBleeders thread, although many people talked about using them on their miatas and RX7's for many years successfully, ZoomZoomH had problems with leaking (he may have had the wrong size for the master cylinder) and speedbleeders that wouldn't close off (rear brakes). He had the ones from Summit Racing.

TeamRX8 says he just uses the OEM bleeder screws and runs the hose a few inches higher than the caliper and then down to the ground into the container, and this method prevents air from getting back into the fluid in the brake line, that this way you can do a "one-man job" and just leave the OEM bleeder screws open and pump the brakes until no more bubbles.

Should I do what TeamRX8 does?

great DIY!!

I mentioned to someone that I wanted to replace my fluid soon, and said this same exact statement. There response was why do you need to flush the whole system when its a 'closed' system, how would water be able to get into the system to contaminate it. They proceeded to say there was no need to flush the whole system but you could just bleed a small bit from each caliper to clear any corrosion and be done with it. I'm still going to change to ate super blue anyway as I have 50k miles, the for heavy wear is 30k for a brake fluid replacement, so I'm a bit overdue, for 10 bucks and 30 minutes of time why not do it?

Anyway is there any merit to there statement of a 'closed' system?

Not really. It's not sealed: the reservoir is vented so the air space can adjust as the fluid goes down and back up. When moisture enters the system, it would be at the top. Fluid at the calipers gets grungy from heat and from the piston seals slowly eating away. Not sure which of those two effects is responsible for the stuff at the calipers turning dark. The combination of moisture at the top and grunge at the bottom means flush it periodically.

There was a time when recommended practice in the US was to not routinely flush brake fluid. The reasoning was that flushing provided an opportunity to get dirt in the system. European practice back then was to flush periodically. After disk brakes, with their high temperatures, became common, US practice changed to match Euro.

Ken