I suppose I'm lucky but I have never used a pressurized system to bleed brakes. I have on a few occasions used a bottle with some brake fluid in it, cut a small hole in the top for a line to slip over the bleed screw and into the jar/bottle and then pump slowly until all the air bubbles are gone.
I know many of you/us have done this and you may want to try it. I had an old 47 Plymouth that fought me all the way and it was the above method that finally whipped it......just saying.
I hear what you're saying, and believe me, I have bled countless vehicles in the past. I won't pump the pedal with the bleeder left open anymore, however, because I've had that reverse the flow when releasing the pedal, and I've had it suck air back into the lines from the bleeder. This turns pumping into a 2-man operation, so someone can open/close the bleeder as necessary. While this is usually effective (mostly fool proof), I rarely have help available. Help can be bypassed with the use of "speed bleeders", but then you have to have all the appropriate sizes. Also, sometimes this just doesn't work (as is the case with some ABS modules, or potentially my hydrovac unit).
Vacuum bleeding can sometimes suck air past the threads of the bleeder, and give you false bubbles.
Gravity bleeding rarely works for me--I think some valves just need a little pressure to get things flowing.
All this has led me to using a pressure bleeder. I know it will work better, and it doesn't suffer from on the pitfalls of other methods. And it really didn't take much fooling around to put together. I'm gonna throw a pun out there, and say I'm pumped to be able to use it.
