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Hello all,

Need some major help, doing a ton of research this weekend, and hoping someone can help me.

Situation: Today I was flushing my brakes with denatured alcohol to remove Silicone DOT 5 with intent to replace it with Glycol DOT 4. I was using a pressure bleeder to one-man bleed. I have GT-R Brembo brakes with the two bleeder valves on top. The bleed started off well. I bled both the rear calipers without much trouble and pushed out the old brake fluid until only alcohol was coming out. However, when I went to bleed my front-passenger caliper, I got nothing, no fluid. To make matter worse, my pressure bleeder just stopped working and would not hold pressure. I borrowed a compressed air vacuum bleeder from the shop and tried that, but sttill nothing. My passenger-front caliper will not bleed. no fluid, nothing. I tried with the vacuum bleeder, and only managed to extract the fluid that was in the caliper. After that, nothing. I tried with the two-person bleed method, still nothing. The other three calipers will bleed, but this one will not. Additionally, there appears to be no pressure building up in the brake pedal. Even when starting the car. We can get a small amount of pressure, but not very much.

Any advice? And thoughts? Any experience? I'm going through forum posts and YouTube videos. Im at a dead-end right now. Could it be air trapped in the ABS? Could it be a problem with the master cylinder?

Thank you in advance.

Edited by IXMandalorianXI

I've seen brake fluid turn to a jelly like substance and then become really difficult to bleed. Have you tried removing the bleeder nipple completely and jamming the vacuum bleeder in the hole?

Other thoughts include removing the ABS unit from the equation - https://au.gktech.com/stainless-steel-braided-teflon-lined-abs-delete-kit

  • Like 1
On 4/8/2023 at 10:54 PM, Murray_Calavera said:

I've seen brake fluid turn to a jelly like substance and then become really difficult to bleed. Have you tried removing the bleeder nipple completely and jamming the vacuum bleeder in the hole?

Other thoughts include removing the ABS unit from the equation - https://au.gktech.com/stainless-steel-braided-teflon-lined-abs-delete-kit

I think this might have been it.

I ended up letting the car sit for two days with the denatured alcohol (hobby shop was closed for Easter) and when I went back on Tuesday and tried again, everything bled without a problem. Best guess I have is that was some sort of blockage and the alcohol broke it down.

 

14 minutes ago, IXMandalorianXI said:

I think this might have been it.

I ended up letting the car sit for two days with the denatured alcohol (hobby shop was closed for Easter) and when I went back on Tuesday and tried again, everything bled without a problem. Best guess I have is that was some sort of blockage and the alcohol broke it down.

 

The curse of the jelly brake fluid strikes again lol.

Glad it's sorted now though :)

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