Good to meet you here too... Charley's site is a great source of information for all Radicals. :-)

-nikki

Vacuum bleeding works fine for me... but if you are too aggressive with opening the bleed nipple (not how fast you open it but how far) then it can cause air to be pulled in down the side of the bleed nipple threads and back up through the nipple into your bleed line.  This makes it look like air is coming out of the caliper/system... but it is not.  It is simply getting pulled in on the outside of the bleed nipples thread and then immediately getting sucked up through the nipple into the bleed line.  Don't be fooled by that (I was until I worked out what was happening... )

The way to prevent this being a problem is to only open the bleed nipple a small amount - just enough to establish a flow from the caliper. For me that's normally about 1/8 of a turn or less.

(Assuming you haven't got air in the system all the way back at the master cylinder) If there is no air getting pulled through after you have drained about 50ml of fluid through each nipple... then there is no air in the system.  Lock off the bleed nipple and move to the next one.  I bleed the inner nipple on each caliper first.  Bleeding 8 nipples with about 50ml each uses around 400ml and brake fluid is normally sold in 500ml lots... so easily enough to bleed the system.  I bleed the clutch slave every second time I bleed the brakes and there is still enough to do that as well. 

The other good thing about the vacuum bleeder is that if your fussy (I am!) and don't want any brake fluid residue leaking out over your caliper after you've finished.... then once the bleed nipples are locked off you can go back around with the vacuum hose on the bleeder and suck the remnants of brake fluid out of the nipple (in the hole in the top).  After I've done that I then use some brake cleaner aerosol to fill it back up and then suck that into the bleeder as well.  The nipples are always nice and dry after that.  

Hello Rod! so i took your advise...

yes correct re: pressure bleeder, attaches to the reservoirs.   The reason I was doing both at the same time was because the local team I have used in the past to help prep with the car said they use a dual bleed bottle and bleed with both nipples open whilst pumping the pedal, so i was trying to replicate that (without pumping the pedal). 

Anyway this time i've done one nipple at a time (inner then outer) and I believe i've resolved it as i didn't see any continuous air bubbles and made sure the resevoir wasn't draining to very low. There was a lot of air in the system. 

I'd say the pedal feels somewhat normal now. A vacuum bleeder might be the way to go as i guess you can then easily top up the reservoirs, whereas with my pressure bleeder it attaches to the reservoir and I have to remove, fill, reattach, repressurize for each caliper. 

now to figure out the transmission grind when I let out the clutch…

The issue I am experiencing is that I am not able to shift gears.

The compressor is on and holds pressure, the paddleshifter levers do not initiate any response unless I have the neutral selection button pushed and when that is pushed, you can hear the pop of shifting gears.

I hope I just missed plugging something in during the re-assembly process and is a super easy fix but I have no idea where to start that search.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks!

Bryan

Looking for either a used part, at the very least the center shaft itself would work and I could reuse my ends.