Automotive Brake Bleeders

Brake Bleeders

Proper brake function is essential for safety on the road. Brake bleeders help to keep your brakes in good working order, ensuring that your car remains safe to drive.

Over time, air bubbles can build up in the hydraulic fluid found in brake lines. Typically, this occurs when brake pads wear too thin, allowing air to enter as the brake fluid sits too low in the reservoir. Having air in your brake lines will make your brakes feel spongy. If left unchecked, it can also become extremely dangerous. The more air that enters your brake lines, the less responsive your brakes become and the higher the likelihood of catastrophic failure gets. If your brake pedal touches the floor, it is definitely time to do something about it.

If you want to take the air out of your brake lines, the only option is to bleed the brake. The simplest way to bleed brakes is as part of a two-person team. One person uses a wrench to loosen the bleeder valve, making sure not to break or strip the screw, and then attaches it to a bottle with a little clean brake fluid in it via a plastic tube. They then work with the helper to synchronise brake pumping with tightening and loosening the bleeder valve. When the brake pedal is pushed down, air and old brake fluid will be ejected into the bottle. Repeat until the fluid runs clean with no air bubbles, making sure to keep the reservoir topped off to avoid introducing more air into the system. However, bleeding brakes with ABS systems is more complicated than this, and the precise process varies from system to system.

Brake bleeding kits are sold by a wide variety of automotive tool manufacturers and contain everything that you need to bleed your own brakes. At minimum, this includes a bottle, a tube and a bleeder wrench. However, many also include other automotive tools to make the process quicker and easier. Often, a vacuum pump is included. This allows you to suck used brake fluid out of the line instead of relying on the brake pedal to push it out, making it possible to bleed the brake line on your own.

Bleeding brake lines is not the only automotive repair that you can perform yourself. For example, valve spring compressors allow you to take cylinder heads apart for maintenance, while jacks and jackstands allow you to lift the body of your car up for easier access underneath.