I've read what stoptech recommends:

http://www.stoptech.com/tech_info/wp_bedinstock.shtml

They are really the ultimate source for any and all info on brakes. The only problem is, where on earth can you all find a place to do 10 simultaneous 60-10 stops? I live in a suburb or new york city, i'm not farm raised, lol - where on earth is there room to do these stops????

What have you all done?

 

most people have tried to find an isolated industrial area to do this... aiming timewise in the evenings.

yeah... it's a pain sometimes... worse if some cop comes out of nowhere and wonders wtf you're doing.

 

Just go to almost any community college parking lot on the weekends when its empty and do it there. You should have a big enough area to do it or flip a couple of u turns w/out braking.

 

Well I just did it out on a long, empty side road. I wouldn't want to do that again though. It wasn't that safe, and even with my detector, having to bring it up to 60 in a 30 is NEVER a good idea being that it's so obvious that you're speeding. I was able to travel the road numerous times though to get it done, but that wasn't the safest thing i've ever done.


Holy moley by the way. I can't believe how much brake fade you can experience. I've never experienced it like that! Now that they've cooled though, they do real nice and the slotted rotors look sharp.

 

if you experienced brake fade, you need to re-bleed your brake fluid to get the air out that is near the calipers now, otherwise your pedal will feel mushy as it compresses the air before it starts pushing the fluid, fluids cannot be compressed, air can.

It takes 30 minutes max to bleed the brakes, just read up on how Stoptech recommends doing it, bribe a friend with some beers, and get it done.

 

I'm definitely aware of how to bleed the brakes, but I never openned the brake line. I suspended the caliper from the spring with some wire as I did the brake change.

When I first started to bed them in (60-10mph), the pedal stayed up top as i hit it hard. As I got to number 5-6-7 (I had to do it 10 times according to stoptech), the pedal started feeling mushier and started going down real far and it was getting hard to stop. When the brakes were cool, it was easy to stop. I always thought that that was brake fade.

Can anyone confirm that I need to bleed the brakes based on what I said? (I don't have steel brake lines btw, regular rubber or whatever)

 

steel lines will help with the mushyness of the pedal. But i wuldnt go through all the trouble. You acted like the bed in process was something way out of the ordinary for you and you called it dangerous(which it can be giving your location) this leads me to believe your chances f ever duplicating the scenario again is slim to none. So why pay fr stainless lines and bleed out the brakes for something your never going to experience? What im saying is if you drove like that all the time and had brake fade on a regular basis get new lines and higher temp fluid (stoptech sells a kit) but since this is the only time youve had a problem and dont drive like that or see a track regularly just rock it stock for now.

 

Alright. I definitely hear what you're saying and I agree. The bed in process was only dangerous because I was doing 60 in a 30 zone (which is really dangerous). Like you said though, I have never had brake fade like that before, it was waaay out of the ordinary to me. So like you said, I don't care to spend the money for upgraded brake lines when they wouldn't benefit me enough. So yea, I don't think i'll ever duplicate that again. If I drove like that all the time, I would be without a license - unless i'm on the track (which I don't do)

But for now, I don't need to bleed the brakes do I? Until I get them SUPER hot like I was saying, I don't feel any brake fade and the pedal feels normal. So i don't need to bleed em, right?

 

you should be all set.

 

Thanks for the help!

 

Dont worry about bleeding the brakes...you experienced pad fade, not fluid fade and it is highly unlikely that you boiled the fluid during a bed in procedure. As the pads fade and outgas, they also can become compressible causing that longer pedal feel. Its not a bad idea to bleed or flush your fluid if you havent done so in the last 18-24 months or so but also not required if you arent driving aggressively all the time.

 

Awesome. Thanks for the explanation. I actually followed the bed-in procedure on stoptech's website. I too was actual thinking that maybe I had boiled the fluid, but honestly, it just doesn't seem that likely. It was 50 degrees out and I thought it takes a major beating before it boils. I did allow plenty of cooling time between the first 2 sets of 10 stops. I didn't realize that the pads could become compressible however. Thats good to know. I also didn't know that we are supposed to swap out the brake fluid ever 2 years, I was aiming for 4 years. That too is good to know.

On another note, what exactly is it that causes brake fade? I mean, I know it happens when the pads/rotors get overheated, but why does heat effect the friction capabilities of the two? I was discussing this with my dad and we couldn't figure it out.

 

the reason I said bleed the brakes is because if you did 10 consecutive hard stops from 60-10, there is most certainly going to be brake fade, and I'd almost guarantee the fluid closest to the caliper reached boiling point unless you have upgraded the fluid to a much higher dry boiling point than the stock DOT3 fluid. When fluid boils it expands and contracts creating dead air in the lines close to the calipers, steel is an incredible heat conductor, and the heat from the calipers is most certainly going to get transfered to the fluid. Try grabbing one of the spokes of your aluminum front wheel after a few hard stops, it'll be pretty hot, now imagine fluid directly next to a 500F steel caliper.

My temp gun on my rotors shows them getting in excess of 250 Celsius under hard-stops as you would under a bed-in procedure, and much higher if you continue doing hard stops, and DOT3 fluid has a standard wet-boiling point of 205C, and a wet-boiling point of 140C. Fluid is considered "wet" after it absorbs water over time equating to about 1-2% of it's total, so depending on age and seal, your fluid may have a much lower boiling point than if it were brand new.

I bleed my brakes before and after every racing event, it takes very little time and effort and keeps that brake-pedal "wall" feeling I enjoy so much, where you push the pedal and it reacts and doesn't fall to the floor or move farther if you keep pushing it. I don't mean a full brake-system flush, just enough to make sure there is no air near the calipers at each corner and to get newer fluid near the calipers, maybe 1/5th of a bottle per brake bleed.

If you haven't bled your brakes AT ALL since you've owned it and have done some brake upgrades, regardless of whether or not you got into the lines, I would seriously recommend a full brake bleed with quality fluid, like ATE Super Blue or Motul RBF600(what I use)

It's a severely easy procedure, and a full brake-bleed with high quality fluid like Motul (about 3 bottles) would cost less than $50. But also remember that the higher the boiling point of the brake fluid, the more hygroscopic the fluid is (meaning it will absorb more water needing more frequent bleeding)

On the overheating issue making the brakes not work as well, I would say it is due to the fact that the reason brakes stop the car is because they transfer motion energy into friction, and the byproduct of that friction is heat, if there is too much heat, the friction cannot do it's job like it should. I don't know everything about brake systems, just what I've picked up over the years, and Instigator works with the stuff, so his word obviously would hold more value than mine.

 

Awesome writeup!!! Thanks for the time you took to do this. So what you are saying is that although I probably didn't boil ALL of the fluid, I probably did boil the fluid closest to the calipers.

So if I am already down there bleeding the brakes and in 2 years i've never flushed the system, maybe I will just drain it completely and throw in some Motul 5.1 Brake Fluid. I was looking on stoptech.com and that seems to be a long life synthetic fluid which is an upgrade from stock, but since i'm not a racer/tracker, I probably don't need the RBF 600.

Now not to be a real big pain in the butt, but i've never bled my brakes on any car and am really unaware of the process. I've heard of an auto-bleeder I think, but not really sure how that works.
How do I go about flushing/filling the system and can I do it with 3 bottles or would I need a fourth to get all of the air out?

 

If you are going to change all of the fluid and dont plan to track the car, save some money and get Valvoline SynPower DOT 4 at your local auto parts store. Its cheap and will handle pretty much whatever you can throw at it. I still highly doubt that you boiled you brakes on a bed cycle though...ive bed in plenty of cars of various levels of upkeep and have never experienced fluid fade. You just arent maintaining heat long enough to heatsoak the calipers.

 

I happen to agree with you. I was doing the fluid change less because of the risk of having boiled it and more because I respect your opinion highly and said to swap it out every 18-24 months.

I also like the fact that the motul 5.1 is as it says, a "long life synthetic fluid". So I am making the assumption that I could probably leave that in even longer than 2 years w/o tracking the car. I'll look at the valvoline too, I just learned a while back that it doesn't pay to be cheap. but if you're saying its good, i'll take a look

 

I put the SynPower in my Mom's car so I believe in it for normal daily use. Any brake fluid should be changed at normal intervals since all brake fluid is hygroscopic and will absorb water readily leading to reduced boiling point and corrosion in the system.

 

Cool, thats good to know.

So now to actually swap it out, do you go through an extensive bleeding process? or is there another way to do it? I mean, I guess that I can keep bleeding it until it is empty and then start adding the new fluid, but is there a better way?

Also, are you supposed to start bleeding in the front/rear? left/right side? Is there a specific order?

 

stoptech's got a great write-up on it, but you should NEVER allow the brake fluid reservoir to empty or come close to empty when you bleed the brakes. You should bleed them farthest away from the master cylinder first, so right-rear, left-rear, front-right, front-left.
jack car up - take the wheel off - put a 1/8" clear silicone tube on the bleeder valve end and the other end in a bucket
have one person sit in the car and pump the brakes and hold it and say "applied"
then the other person opens the bleeder valve and closes it again when the fluid stops flowing and that person tells the person inside "release" and the inside person responds with "released"
the person outside says "apply" when ready, the person inside pumps the pedal a few times and holds it, then you repeat. Every few bleeds (5 at the most) check the brake fluid reservoir and never let it get past 1/2 empty, just keep refilling it with the new fluid.
Your brakes are properly bled when you can see the new fluid coming out of the lines if you are doing a full-flush, the right-rear will take a lot of fluid to flush through, the other 3 corners will take considerably less, plan on killing an entire bottle on the first corner.
After the system has been fully-bled, or if you are just doing a partial-bleed, you only need to repeat the process 2-3 times per corner, and once you have a system down, the longest part is getting the wheels off and putting them back on. You'll know when all the air is out of the system when you don't see any more air bubbles in the clear silicone line.

make sure the person pumping the brake pedal does NOT lift his foot up when the bleeder valve is open, or you'll suck air into the lines like a vacuum and have to bleed it more and make more work for yourself. The brake pedal will fall to the floor when the bleeder valve is opened, it's NORMAL. Make sure the person knows that it will happen and to hold it to the floor until told "release" - there are warnings about not letting the brake pedal hit the floor due to possible damage to the piston and valves in the master cylinder, but I've never had a problem and I've bled a dozen cars countless times with never a problem.

This entire process is very, very rudimentary and simple, two five-year olds could do it (if they could reach the pedals) and yet mechanics just LOVE to make it out to be such a huge deal with scare tactics and charge an arm and a leg, cars are extremely simple to work on once you know how

One last thing while I'm still feeling long-winded, you don't want to use synthetic fluid in the car, DOT5 is synthetic silicone fluid that can damage our brake system, DOT5.1 is NOT synthetic fluid, but not recommended for our brake system. DOT4 fluid is perfect. I've actually got a near-empty bottle of Valvoline SynPower DOT4 fluid next to me, I've used it, it's a great daily-driving fluid that's readily available, but not too well suited for track-day racing. You'd need 2 bottles to fully-bleed the system.

 

Interesting. Very good write-up once again. That should really be in the tech section.

I have 3 questions that come of it.

1) The instructions are very clear, I just want to be sure that after i've bled the lines at all 4 wheels, I then have to go back and repeat the process 2-3 times? I plan on throwing it on 4 jackstands, so it wouldn't be bad, i'm just double checking.

2) So the motul 5.1 stands for DOT5? So thats not for the tC then. I guess I will use the valvoline synpower dot4, i'll try it get it at my local napa I guess. Is this the fluid that you also recommend? The Motul RBF 600 is just real pricey!

3) I guess it is then possible to mix the old fluid with the new fluid as the cylinder can't ever empty? Unless the color is different on the 2 fluids, how do you know when the new fluid has reached the caliper?


Thanks so much for your help guys, I really appreciate it. You guys are what make SL worth it!