Brake Bleeding  - Bergerac Trip 2002

We had quite an eventful holiday in France this year, with the car, I will no bore you with another holiday story. Needless to say 100 miles into France we had a fuel pump failure, I have written this up in another story so will also leave that alone.

What are the chances of a seat belt return spring failure, pretty slim I am sure you would agree, about ten days into the holiday a wurring sound came from Doreen belt she had yards of webbing, when we stopped I jammed up the mechanisms so as to have a static belt, would you believe two days later the same  thing happened to mine what the chances of this happening.?

The other problem that I have had for some time, I believe is trouble with the brake servo, I spoke to a guy from High Wycombe who repairs them,  about the problem he seemed to confirm my thoughts, having struggled with the problem for some time, I needed to do some thing as after baking the bakes were coming half back on and screaming like hell, the guy at Wycombe wanted 4 weeks to repair the unit but we our commitment to the Register I could not really be without the car that long, so had to buy a new unit, for what they cost you would think they were gold plated.

As the Gaydon event was due I decided to leave the fitting till after this, the event over I fitted the unit, refilled the master cylinder bled the brake system with an Easi bleed unit, it did not matter what I did the pedal went to the floor, I got Doreen to pedal pump instead for me, same result, I remember the last time I fitted a servo to the car some 12 years ago a mate and I had the same trouble, he gave up and left me to it.

I then remembered what I had done before so thought it worth a try, again I fitted the Easi Bleed to the system, pressurising it, then getting into the car Stamped on the brake pedal two or three times, then bled the fluid at the nearside rear cylinder, then felt the bake pedal, it had come up a bit, so done the same again giving the pedal three very hard stamps, then bled the same cylinder again, on getting to the pedal I was winning so went through the process again, bleeding, then locking off the nipple, I now have an almost perfect pedal, may be worth a try if you are struggling, maybe the air get trapped in the servo, I really don’t know but this seems to work.

 Colin