Bled my Shimano brakes for the first time on Sunday (so easy!!) – just wondered what the deal is with the little metal plate thing inside the reservoir? Is it meant to be oriented a certain way? It seemed to just be floating (well it had sunk obviously) around in one of the reservoirs and I didn’t know whether it was meant to sit at right angles (if that makes sense) to the reservoir or something? I didn’t really pay much attention to it in the first reservoir.

Also, if I needed to take the cap off the reservoir again to fix this could I just top up with mineral oil and re-fit the cap or would I need to re-bleed?

TIA all.

You shouldn’t need to re-bleed after opening the reservoir, I don’t know what your little bit of metal is though, I don’t recall finding one in my LX brakes (last years model) although I didn’t really investigate the contents of the reservoir in much detail. The Shimano site has plenty of tech. docs so you ought to be able to find out what you need to know there.

I think the metal plate is some sort of baffle. I hope someone can confirm this and how critical it may be.

I am certain that if you need to move it, you will be OK to just remove the top cap & diaphragm, top up and re-fit without needing to rebleed.

If you’re talking about what I think you are, then it’s supposed to be sortof clipped into the bottom of the reservoir.

You should be able to take the caps off no problem to have a look. Just make sure that the levers are parallel to the ground obviously.

Nice one, thanks all – I will have a probe at the weekend. I might even take a look at my brakes too. Boom boom.

Yup, just a baffle, not really vital to normal use but stops fluid squirting out when you’re bleeding them. It’s a press fit with both “legs” going either side of the raised dots just above the transfer port into the cylinder.