The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Driveline Speedy bleeder screws

Hey guys, just wondering if any of you have used the Speedy Bleeder screws and if you did how do you like them..... I'm thinking of putting them on the 52panel.
Any thoughts or comments?

They are a little pricey though. Around 5 bucks each without my discount!!

I've used the ones from AutoZone - they work fine.

I know the guy who makes them (Speed Bleeders anyway) and I put them in everything I do brakes on. Couldn't be easier. The ones I get even come with the clear rubber hose and bag to see everything coming out. Easy one man job.

I just did mine last week, they seem to work... Made the job easier... They sell for $ 12-13 for two at Napa...

Follow up:
Thanks guys. I just picked me up 4 of them. $12 for a pack of 2.
Thank goodness I get a 20% discount at Advance!!
I got me 4 and will use them but right now I have another "brake" problem I'm dealing with. Got to pull the M/C.
Thanks again.

Will get them tomorrow. thanks

One of the smartest moves I've ever done is to install and use the speed bleeders. I completely evacuate the brake fluid yearly, and this invention makes it a one person job. As below going over 50k soon daily driver year 'round, only vehicle.

Put on my Bolt. Then I put em on my '96 F150 and flushed that. Can't see anything bad about em.

Forgive my ignorance on this, but how is it a one person job when you need to be pushing the brake pedal and at the same time watching for air bubbles on each wheel? Do people also use something like a power bleeder or mityvac? Thanks.

It is one person to carry out the pumping/bleeding step.

magfarm51: A power/vacuum bleeder is always an option, but even without it it can be a 1 man job...

There is always room for individual improvisation to come up with a way to know exactly when each wheel is done. But the brute force method is to not worry about when the bubbles stop, and not worry about the price of brake fluid, and just operate the pedal, monitor the MC, and push enough fluid through each wheel to completely displace the volume of the line and wheel cylinder and then some.


Alvin, what about you? What approach are you thinking of once you put the speedy bleeder screws on? Gonna refil the MC resevoir twice for each wheel?

Keith

MacX.... after I bled the left rear it didn't take much for the rest of it. The sad part is my luck has been on the down side. I got a couple adapters to the master cyl and lines and when I put the pressure to it I had a half dozen leaks. I've been to every store and seems none of them understand pipe thread, regular U.S. threads ect ect....not to even mention the thread count.
Today I finally got it all plumbed in and bled.....only to discover I still had one leak at a union and one leak at another adapter fitting at the M/C. I'm beginning to get pi$$ed so I stopped and put the gas tank under the panel. Just had to get away from it for a spell.


I have a fairly large dual M/C so I only had to refill once on the left rear... and about two more times. I took a piece of vacuum hose and pushed it up on the bleeders then the other end in a plastic water bottle. I had drilled a hole in the lid just big enough to make the hose fit tight and I made the hose long enough to sit outside the left rear tire. I cold see the front ones through the floor. Oh, I did have to "run around" to the right rear a couple times but that was it. I pumped a little extra fluid but no problem. It was that or either wait until my wife got home and I'm an impatient man The speed bleeders also keep you from having to put fluid in the bottle when you do it by your self that way without the speed bleeders.

I will still have to re-bleed the rear wheels when I find the right adapter fitting :mad: I spent half my day looking for one. Advance, Auto Zone, Carqusest, NAPA and O'Rielly's. Hard to believe isn't it!

I don't get it guys. Bleeding requires one person to step down on the brake pedal to pressurize the system (unless you have a pressure bleeder) and another to monitor the fluid to observe when all of the bubbles have been evacuated at each corner. The last of the bubbles are very small and you have to be right there watching to see if they are still present in the fluid being bled. How does this gadget change the fact that one person plus one person equals two people?

It seems that this gadget is no more than a check valve to eliminate the step of closing the bleeder screw when the brake pedal is released.

MacX says "...to not worry about when the bubbles stop". Wow, that is scary. I hope you never have to stop quickly to avoid running into me!

yar, got to use a little common sense here. Believe me, I pump enough fluid to be way past the bubbles. Brake fluid is cheap compared to an accident.

ALSO.... once bled all you have to do is wait a little and it will tell you if you have a problem. Like, is the pedal still firm or does it go down?, does it "pump up" indicating still some air in the system? Lots of checks and balances you can notice before ever putting it on the road...which in my csse may be months and plenty of opportunity to evaluate. Like I said, good common sense if you know anything about mechanics.....if not then yes, leave it to the pros.

I might add that bench bleeding a m/c will take a lot of work out of bleeding a system.

With or without a speedy-bleeder-type type device, I use this inexpensive one-person bleeder kit to catch the fluid and to look for air bubbles in the outflow-line.

A hose from the bleeder into a catch-bottle is all that is needed to see if there is air in the fluid in the hose (I assumed that a "drain hose" was being used in my earlier one-person response - sorry).

I'm sure these bleeders are as good as everyone says they are, anything that makes the job easier. I've put together a pressure bleeder which is great, pressure plus a tank of fluid at the MC and all you do is move from wheel to wheel and open the valve. No one needs to pump the pedal, truly quick easy, takes all the frustration out of a brake job.

I said dont worry about stopping ~right~ after the bubbles stop in order to conserve brake fluid... Like Alvin said, the implication is that you push a liberal and excess volume of fluid through, so that you ~have~ to be well past all the bubbles, unless something else is wrong. And, in the case that something else ~is~ wrong, you do completely test the brakes in many stages after bleeding them... You dont make your first try of the pedal at 50 MPH and hope it holds....

Alvin, I empathize with you... I had Mac start the brake job by pulling off the MC last December. By the time he was putting it back in for the 7th time and bleeding the system for the 20th time, in late May, he was starting to get a little impatient and bored with the "progress" we were making... When the pedal finally stood firm, and stayed there day after day and then week after week, we both felt very good. He's got all his excitement and enthusiasm back now, though, since it only took 2 sessions to get the engine to come back to life...

I dont have the speed bleeder screws, though. I use something similar to what Tim referred to. Before the 1-man check-valve gadgets were on the shelf, though, the same thing could be accomplished by priming the drain hose so it was full before attaching it to the bleeder screw, and having the output end of the drain hose in a large bottle that already had fluid in it, where the hose was held down below the level of the fluid... essentiall using the syphon effect of a submerged hose to be a check-valve...

Keith

Tclederman, does that Harbor Freight one person bleeder require a seperate vacuum source? I'm still trying to understand how brake bleeding can be a 1 person job unless there is pressure applied to the MC by a pressure bleeder or vacuum applied to the bleeder screw discharge line.

This discussion has me thinking that I could probably use the vacuum pump that I use for air conditioning service to make a vacuum bleeder. Applying vacuum to a glass jar and connecting the jar lid to the bleeder might be a plan. What do you think?

Tim will have a much better answer, and be able to put it into much better words, and probably address the question about adapting the refrigerent vacuum to make a bleeder system.

Harbor Freight does have a vacuum bleeder kit ready-made that is very affordable too (I think about $20), so you may want to check that out first to see if it is worth the trouble to adapt your refrigerent vacuum or not...

On the manual 1-man bleeder kit and/or the speedy bleeder screws... If you have a second person, it does make the job easier. But, if you dont have a second person available, you can reliably and safely get the job done yourself... hook the hose and collector bottle up to the bleeder screw, open the screw enough, and then go push the pedal. Come check after a push or two that the bleeder is open enough. Here is step 1 were a the job is easier with a second person to press the pedal for you on command, while you watch the bleeder screw. If you are conservative about how much to open the bleeder and doing this by yourself, you may repeat this part several times before you have really "started" on the first wheel... With that small bottle in the kit from Harbor Freight, I think 3 or 4 pushes of the pedal are going to fill up the bottle, so you have to stop pushing, close the bleeder, drain the bottle, might as well top off the MC while you are stopped, and then start over. When you came to check if the bottle was full and needed to be emptied, the drain tube leading to the bottle would either have bubbles in it, meaning you were not done, or it would not have bubbles...

You empty and fill the bottle as many times as it takes without seeing bubbles in the hose to make you comfortable that you have evacuated the air from that section of line and that cylinder.

If you have the speedy bleeder screws with the integrated check-valve, you can use as big a bottle/jar/bucket as you want to catch the evacuated brake fluid without stoping to refill every few pumps of the pedal.

But, to really make the job as simple and foolproof as possible, then a power or vacuum kit, like Jim Merit referred to, is the way to go.

The low-tech speedy bleeder or 1-man bleeder kits are a little more old-school...

Keith

I think I will give the speedy bleeders a try too. Anyone know what threads a '75 Impala caliper and 2000 F150 drum would take? Please disregard. I found on the RusselPerformance.com site that both are 3/8-24.

Good description and explanation, Keith

I bet your wondering how you can be sitting in the cab pressing the pedal, and looking at the jug or bottle to make sure all the air is out at each wheel, at the same time.

When I did mine I was lucky. I had the cab and bed off the frame. I used that same Harbor freight one man bleeder.(purchased mine from auto zone) Quickly found out the bottle was to small so made my own out of a glass jar and spare piece of brake line.

It worked real well. I didn’t have the speed bleeders but will install those later. they look handy.

If My truck was together I would of just installed a longer piece of hose from the bleeder to the jar so I could monitor air and fluid level of the jar from where I would be sitting in the cab

One interesting thing I found was that when I released the pedal I was sucking back a small amount of air through the threads of the bleeder screw. I placed a small amount of grease around the bleeder screw threads and it corrected that.

Also remember to elevate your collection bottle/Jug.

I had to use a metric wrench on the bleeder for the rears. I replaced the wheel cylinders. They must be from overseas. I saved the original, might be able to rebuild them.

I remember an advice I read somewhere: during bleeding procedure do not push the pedal to the floor, because the travel of the M/C piston is limited in normal use of the brakes; that is, it normally does not reach full stroke, so creating a tiny step or the like on the M/C inside wall. This difference on the surface may scratch the piston seal if it reaches farther. To avoid this, it was recommended to place a block of wood or other suitable material under the pedal to limit its travel to its normal amount only.
Is this real?
Fabio.

With new or reman m/c I would think that would not be a problem as from what I have seen the entire bore is nice and smooth. But, if a guy just took a m/c apart and didn't hone it or anything, then I could see where pressing it all the way to the floor during bleeding might put things out of their normal operating range when there is a full pedal...... BUT who, in their right mind, would rebuild a m/c and not hone it all out smooth?? I see your logic but but can't see it happening..... but I also learned a long time ago to never say never!!!

The vacuum bleeder from HaborFreight is on sale for $20 ... if you want to check that out before spending effort tryin to adapt you refrigerent system vacuum...

Sorry, Achipmunk, but reviewing my posts I noted something about your answer that did not come to my mind at the time (more than an year ago), that is: I was not thinking of a new or reman M/C, but of a simple periodic brake bleeding only, such as when changing fluid, when the cylinder is kept as it was.
Regards.
Fabio.