so i'm been having fun recently trying to find the corret way to bleed brakes. When i picked my car up from the local team they had bled the brakes and the pedal felt great, I had replaced both master cylinders and the brake pedal felt noticeably less spongey.
I'm seeing different people doing different things. There's a Tilton video on youtube saying that you must do one side of the car at a time, front + rear calipers. Other people are saying that if I just pressure bleed then I can just do 1 corner at a time using a dual-tube bleeder bottle.
But then i'm hearing that if i pressure bleed (i'm on my own) then that might not get air out the master cylinder so you do have to pump the pedal.
What do you guys do? and do you bleed the pressure sensors last?
I pressure bleed (solo) with a Motive bleeder using the Tilton adapter. The master cylinders are separate front and rear systems. So you would bleed the rears and then the fronts. The length difference from right to left rear brake line is so minimal I would not worry about which side I started with (same for the fronts). Remember to keep fluid in the Motive unit and fully flush both the inside and outside bleeders at each caliper. I have never had a problem bleeding brakes solo with the Motive unit. I bleed the pressure sensor last - it has a small set screw that has to come out completely (don't lose it - it is small!) to bleed but it only pushed a small amount of fluid out.
I suggest you flush the system fully each season (rather than simple partial bleeds between events) I had to replace my master cylinders because the old SRF fluid turned to gel in the MC reservoir but they were 12 years old and I think they were only bled and not ever totally flushed.
thought i'd update this thread. I bought a dual-tube bleeder bottle and did each corner again, working in sequence, RR, RL, FL, FR. I then bought a spare Tilton cap, use a fibre washer, and attached to my Sealey pressure bleeder - we don't have Motive here in the UK.
unfortunately the rear reservoir has been mounted annoying too high up so there's not enough space between it and the crashbox to get the adapted cap on, so in the end resorted to pumping the pedal slowly 10x for the rear and watching the tubes for air bubbles, whilst topping up the reservoir in between. Another job for the winter - to remount the rear reservoir in a better place.
I was able to use my pressure bleeder for the front which worked a treat. There was definitely air in the rear system and i've successfully bled the brakes, the pedal is more like how it was before i started messing with it.
