Howdy. I replaced the front/rear brake pads/rotors about four years/40k miles ago. I don’t regularly drive the car (au pair drives it), but the last time I hopped in the brakes felt a lot softer than they should and required more pedal travel. I was doing brake bleeding on my new car the other day so I decided it was time to do the 5 as well. Bled everything, went fine. Au pair takes the car out after I gave it a quick test drive, and when she gets home tells me the brake light is on and the brakes don’t work well.
Sure enough the bleeder screw on the RR caliper came loose (I swear I tightened it!) and pissed brake fluid all over the place. Reservoir was empty. I refilled the reservoir and re-bled each caliper. Obviously a bunch of air came out of the RR bleeder, and a tiny bit out of the LR. Nothing but clean fluid out of the fronts. Brakes don’t feel amazing, though they do feel better than before the first brake bleed. Pads have maybe 30% of their life left at best, and I’ll be doing them again once they’re actually worn down.
My current opinion of the brakes is I still think they should grab harder. The pedal is no longer the mushy of “oh s*** all the fluid is gone and it’s full of air”, but the brakes don’t grab until pretty far down the pedal travel. Should I run off the assumption there’s air in the ABS module and get a mechanic to purge it, or is there something else I should be looking at?
Sure enough the bleeder screw on the RR caliper came loose (I swear I tightened it!) and pissed brake fluid all over the place. Reservoir was empty. I refilled the reservoir and re-bled each caliper. Obviously a bunch of air came out of the RR bleeder, and a tiny bit out of the LR. Nothing but clean fluid out of the fronts. Brakes don’t feel amazing, though they do feel better than before the first brake bleed. Pads have maybe 30% of their life left at best, and I’ll be doing them again once they’re actually worn down.
My current opinion of the brakes is I still think they should grab harder. The pedal is no longer the mushy of “oh s*** all the fluid is gone and it’s full of air”, but the brakes don’t grab until pretty far down the pedal travel. Should I run off the assumption there’s air in the ABS module and get a mechanic to purge it, or is there something else I should be looking at?
