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Brand specific brake bleeding methods vs generic gravity bleed

rockhopper70 · 2023-02-15T16:14:46Z

Across the five bikes in our family, we have Hope Tech3/E4, Shimano XT (M875/), Sram Guide r and Tektro. The Hopes were recently sent to Hope for servicing and new pistons, which included a bleed. Recently, I've bled the XT and the Guides and doing a bit of research online for "how to" videos, there appears to be as many methods for bleeding brakes as there are YouTubers sharing bleeding videos. But I stumbled across the "Marshy" method for the Shimano brakes and gave that a go, as I have the plastic cup for the reservoir already. It did seem remarkable easy, and from the point of view of logic, particularly sensible...ie, the fluid flows under gravity from the high point of the filled cup and out of the caliper, flushing the old out. There is none of this pushing and pulling of fluid back and forth which, by my reckoning, must surely mean that you don't extract all the old fluid? I'm yet to test the brakes in anger but if I have got an air bubble behind a piston or somewhere in the caliper body, pushing and pulling, pressure and vacuum etc isn't going to remove it and more then gravity is it? The oil isn't compressible, that's the point of it? Strikes me that the process would be suitable for all brand, it's just a case of getting a complete fill of fluid between lever reservoir and caliper bleed nipple? I haven't checked what they do for automotive brakes, but are they brand specific too, or not even comparable to MTB brakes? *** Caveat this with the concession that I did the Guide brake before the Shimano and did use the two syringe bleeding edge tool/method but thought that it could be done with a gravity bleed just as easy.

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sillyoldman

Posts: 3837

Full Member

To be fair - the Shimano instructions start with telling you to drain the old oil out of the system out through the caliper first.

Posted : 21/02/2023 7:46 am

sillyoldman

Posts: 3837

Full Member

This is how the Shimano techs train their service centres to do it.

That’s not how Rich (one of the techs) showed me, but that could have been as it was on a relatively new set of brakes.

Posted : 21/02/2023 8:08 am

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