My recipe for an awesome brake/clutch/misc bleeding tool

[Luni]

For those of us who hate pumping clutch pedals and brake pedals, and found that the cheap ass plastic hand bleeder pumps are crap, and if you want a good one its gonna cost you some money, this is a good alternative that WORKS, its CHEAP as hell to make, and its EASY.

Ok, get a gatorade bottle. 32oz or 16oz, doesnt matter.

Go to autozone/checker and buy some vacuum line. About 6 feet will prolly do it. Maybe even less.

Drill 2 small holes in the cap. Make the holes slightly smaller than the diameter of the vacuum line you are using. DRILL the holes, so they are perfectly round. Stuff the vacuum line in (you will have to force it) and push it in just a little bit. Should be relatively flush with the bottom of the cap. Screw the cap back on, seal one line while sucking on the other. It should be airtight and hold a seal. If it doesnt, then use some RTV or hot glue or something to get it to seal and then continue. You cant move on until that bottle seals perfectly. I got mine to seal first time.

Pull your bleeder screw off and put teflon tape on it. Then screw it back in and tighten it down all the way with your finger so it seals tight. Stick the vacuum line for one side on the end of it so it seals over the bleeder hole. On the other one, suck the air out of the bottle. It should seal airtight and start sucking the sides in because there will be negative pressure in there. Keep sucking till the bottle starts to distort cause youre depressurizing it inside. Put your finger over the end you were just sucking on to hold the negative pressure in. (you could even put a valve on it so you can just close it and not worry about it losing pressure).

The cool part now. Open the bleeder valve, the sudden influx of negative pressure on one side will SUCK all the air bubbles and fluid through the clutch lines. Youll see the bottle start taking on fluid, and spitting out air bubbles.

It took me over an hour of trying to hand bleed an SW20 clutch to no avail. I put my self made bleeder on there and seriously 10 seconds later it was bled.

Just make sure your master cylinder is full cause this WILL suck fluid through pretty quick.

It works. If you make it right, and the device seals, it works. I promise. And it works better than any hand pump.

Whats cool about it is if you wanted to get lazy, you could connect a vaccum line to the other side, if you installed a valve, and start the engine. Then simply turn the valve and the cars vacuum would bleed it for you. And since its being deposited into the bottle, your engine couldnt suck anything back up into itself unless the bottle filled up, and that is unlikely cause youre watching it and thats why you installed a valve.

It is like the perfect bleeder. Works on brakes, works on clutches, works on anything that is a pressurized system that uses a bleeder valve to purge air from the pressurized system. It even will bleed an SW20 (never done an AW11) coolant system faster.

Mine I call the "SW20-B" (B is for bleeder).

And another cool thing about this thing, is you can now bleed your brakes, clutch, etc ALONE. You dont need a buddy pumping stuff while you get fluid all over the place trying to bleed by hand.

[Breanna]

That's awesome.

[Luni]

So I just used my tool to bleed an SW20s clutch yesterday.

It took about 5 minutes sucking half a bottle of fluid through. before the fluid coming through was clean (so I pulled all the nasty old crap out).

Then I had the owner pump the clutch pedal a bit while i had the line closed, then I sucked pressure into the bottle, opened the line, pulled the air through. Then I had him pump clutch again, and his pedal feeling came back. So, you still have to pump a little bit, a few times, but only really to get the pedal feeling. He only had to pump a few times and it was done.

Still a LOT easier than doing it all by hand.

[TomsMR2]

it sounds like you just made a more complicated mityvac?

[Luni]

more complicated?

LOL its a bottle with 2 hoses on it.

And it cost like nothing to make.

And it works better than any mityvac Ive ever used short of an electric one.

You suck into the bottle, seal it, and turn the valve and let physics take care of the rest.

It works great, and you dont have to DO anything while its working, where with a mityvac you have to sit there pumping with your hand.

It works better than a mityvac for sure.

[PearlJammzz]

It was my car we did it on. We tried doing it by hand for a LONG ass time, and it did very little.

Luni had this killer idea and so he ghetto-rigged this up w/ a Gatorade bottle and 2 vacuum hoses and I think it seriously took 10 min, if that, and very little pumping.

Try it, if there is anything easier/cheaper I would be surprised lol.

[Weasy2k]

i have a little vac tool i got for 20 bucks with the same concept + a vac pump vs mouth

[Luni]

It took 10 minutes total on Borinals car when I did it saturday. It didnt take long at all.

Pulled all the nasty old fluid through as well, so whats in there is fresh.

And its bled perfectly.

[TomsMR2]

i think a lot of people have trouble with the mityvac pumps.. if used right it takes less than 5 minutes to bleed anything.

i have an aversion to sucking anything involving chemicals with my mouth. a hand pump is a pretty good solution.

[Luni]

I really dont know how there can be a right and wrong way to use a mityvac.

You connect the hoses like you should and you pump with your hand.

The one I used was a POS and didnt build ANY pressure. It was cheaply made.

The electric ones are MONEY.

[Sylvan]

I used your Gatorade bottle idea with the two hoses this weekend, but instead of sucking one end with my mouth, I connected that end to the inlet of my air compressor and let that do the work. I put an open "T" into that line so I could plug it with my thumb to start suction from the bleeder nipple or release my thumb when I wanted to stop sucking. This worked well and quickly for the brakes and clutch line. Sucked doing it by myself cause I had to keep stopping to go fill the cylinder. The clutch line cylinder is small and drained very quickly with this method.

[Luni]

AHA! AWESOME.

Im really glad to see someone use this and report good results.

And you improved on it too nice.

[stealth]

Question... When you open the bleeder valve, do you still need to have your finger plugging the other hose, or can you un-plug it to release the air?

[Luni]

I modified mine with a check valve so I can suck air out but the bottle cant suck air back in.

[stealth]

Nice, so no more holding the hose I take it?

[Luni]

Yeah, check valve works great.

Im going to post up a new recipe for one, using a stiffer container, and its going to be more "professional"

I think Im gonna try and keep cost down, and use some sort of an electric battery powered pump. It shouldnt take much pump to work vac in that bottle. I might even put some sort of a gauge on there so I can see.

Ive got the bottle. Its a metal bottle my tranny fluid came in. Im gonna use that, or just a high tensile plastic (like a scientific bottle or beaker of some sort), and attach the pump to one side, a counterweight to the other (so the pump doesnt throw it off balance - maybe Ill put the batteries on the other side like a counterweight).

Ill post it up, Ive been doing a lot of brake/clutch bleeding lately, and I want to get this thing perfected.

[Mr2crazybyong]

put some pics up!!! great idea luni!!

[Luni]

The other idea Ive been toying with is using a gauge and a variable valve, I can connect to a vacuum port on the engine itself, start the engine, and then manipulate the valve to the desired amount of vacuum applied.

That idea would be far simpler than the vacuum pump, im having a helluva time finding a cheap small battery powered vacuum pump.

[CyFi]

didnt someone make a post similar to this a while ago but using engine vacuum?

[Gairloch]

^^ At first I thought that's what this was ...

Someone did exactly this but they hooked one of the lines up to a vacuum port on their intake manifold.