The secrets of a good shimano bleed

Can bleed hopes perfectly, have watched all the vids for shimano, have the little syringes, funnel thing, right mineral oil, spacer. All the kit. Cannot get a decent bled on a new lever. 3 bleeds now it feels great when the syringe / funnel attached, nice firm blade etc.

Turn the bike over to fit wheel, lever goes soft, so air still in the system, and loads of travel in the blade.

Tried bleeding lever at different angles, flicking lever, knocking with Allen keys.

What am I missing?

pinkbikes ‘5 minute bubble bleed’ sorted that for me.

I do a top-down gravity bleed and dangle the caliper so the hose is straight. Once the new fluid is through and no more bubbles, shut the bleed port on the caliper. Then tap the caliper and hose a lot with spanner to get any final bubbles up to the top. Works fine.

I haven’t got a syringe or funnel through. I just take the top cap off and pour the fluid in from a spare little bottle with the reservoir as level as I can get it. Don’t know if that would make any difference.

just for a change.. I bleed from the caliper up. it seems very easy to trap air in the brake lever on shimano brakes. make sure theres no bends in the hose, eg take the caliper off the bike if required. also angle the brake lever at 45deg with a funnel for the excess. when you remove the funnel the brake lever should be fully topped up.

In addition to the above, lever adjusted as far out as possible and the free stroke screw out as far as possible if you have one.

Remove wheel
Remove pads
Push pistons back
Insert spacer
Set bike up so hose is as near to vertical as practical.
(rotate lever around bar to keep it horizontal)
Open reservoir. Wrap rag around lever to catch overspill
Attach syringe to nipple on calliper with suitable tubing, undo 1/4 turn, drain system.
Dispose of old fluid, or top up syringe with new fluid.
Tap all bubbles out of syringe.
Pump back into calliper until lever reservoir is brimmed.
Close bleed nipple, close reservoir.
Remove spacer, replace pads.
Replace wheel, pump the lever a couple of times.
Ride.

Free-stroke/bite-point screw shouldn’t make any difference as it only moves the lever relative to the master piston, it doesn’t move the piston.

Check for damaged seals as well. Disappointingly the lever seal on one of my BR-M615 Deore brakes seems to have gone only a couple of months after the warranty ran out. As far as I’m aware you can’t buy rebuild kits for Shimano brakes.

Therein lies the downside of cheap stuff.

Therein lies the downside of cheap stuff

true, but the other advantage is all of it just about works with other bits across the range. I’ve got slx levers on deore calipers, deore levers on lx calipers and soon to swap some slx levers onto some xt calipers as the levers are worn out.
So when one bit fails, just get hold of another caliper/lever for as little cost as possible and get going again.

I follow epic bleed solutions instructions and it always works for me.

http://www.epicbleedsolutions.com/blog/how-to-bleed-new-shimano-brakes/

Weird but I really like that job

Buy a mityvac vacuum pump. Much easier than all that syringe stuff.

+ 1 on the Epic bleed method, don’t skip the end bits which get the last bits of air out…

Epic bleed works for me. Did a quick bleed yesterday. Oils black so I guess it’s time for a change …..

I did my son’s bike the other weekend.
The levers have to be dialled in closer to the bars for his little hands, so it has to be a good bleed.
I found the best way was to take the pads out of the caliper and replace with either the Shimano spacer or something narrower (Park tyre levers are good).
When bleed is complete (Shimano method for me), replace the spacer with the pads and they should need pushing slightly apart. This made for a nice stiff feel at the lever.

Thanks for the tips. Ive put all the stuff away in a huff so ill be giving it a go tomorrow

I recently used the epic bleed method but with 2 syringes (from my reverb pack) top syringe acting as a funnel (no plunger fitted). The bit about tapping/rotating and pulling/flicking the lever got a lot more bubbles out after a standard reverse bleed.

Forgetting to wrap your knuckles in a rag and undoing very tight SPD pedals

using the Epic method worked for me. if you buy the Epic bleed kit then you get 2 syringes. the larger of the 2 syringes replaces the funnel and does a better job

I have to say I’m not impressed with the ease of bleeding on Shimano.

I reread the paper from the funnel box recently and found a suggestion that if you’ve got excessive air you should let all the fluid out and start from scratch with an empty system, which I may try. Annoyingly, I’ve managed much better bleeds on my mates’ Zee and XT setups than my XT or SLX. I’m wracking my brains for what I did that was different those times.

I was having problems with the lever going soft/too much travel, traced the problem to using my old avid disks. Changed to superstar rotor and got a good feel to the levers

Fair point removing all fluid and starting again- doesn’t take much. I just changed hoses which means completely filling brake from scratch. Attached funnel to brake lever res, attached syringe full of fluid to calliper. Making sure no bubbles in fluid, open bleed screw, squeeze syringe until fluid starts to fill funnel. Brakes feel superb.

I use the same method as yak and irbandito.

I use citreon suspension fluid, been ok so far on the scruffy hardtail, and done the yeti to. So far no problems.