How to Bleed Your Brakes ?

Air in the brake system can make your brake pedal feel spongy and vague. It takes only an hour or two to bleed the system. The fluid should be flushed every two to three years. Your elderly car has required little in the way of episodic repair, for which you're glad.

But at your last scheduled maintenance, the service manager advised you that you would need to replace the brake pads, front and rear, before too long. But deferring that expense for a while wouldn't be a problem, he said.

And all was fine for a couple of months, until you noticed the brake pedal dipping a little too close to the carpet while sitting at traffic lights. Not a big problem. Replacing the pads yourself on a Saturday morning should do the trick.

Except that now, despite the new pads all around, the brake pedal still feels spongy and low. You need to bleed your brakes.

Air-Cooled
Here's what happened. The pads wore so thin that the brake fluid level dropped too low in the master cylinder reservoir. An air bubble or three got pumped into the lines. And because air is compressible, you now have the equivalent of a very soft spring in the solid column of brake fluid between your foot and the wheels. Bleeding the brakes will flush that air out.