Brakes

You know the feeling where you've done something to your car, it goes a bit wrong and you feel really sad and want to drive the car into the middle of a field and set fire to it? Yeah, that's me at the moment. :evil:

As a qualified Youtube mechanic, I've been fannying around with suspension and brakes on my Gen4. I swapped the stock shocks for OME ones and then realised that the extra flex meant that it could now a) unseat the stock springs, and b) potentially tear off the brake lines.

Fitting extended brake lines seemed like a piece of cake (hah!), so I bought a set of Goodridge hoses and set to work. Fitted the fronts ok-ish but got stuck on the rears as I was using the wrong tools (who knew that flare nut spanners were a thing? not me!) and rounded one of the fittings off badly.

Still tried bleeding the brakes after doing the fronts and the pedal now felt far spongier than it used to. Tried a couple more times using different techniques - have done two man bleed, one man with tube in bottle and one man with vacuum pump all with the same outcome - pedal feels spongy and the fluid that was coming out when bleeding looked oddly milky.

Eventually succumbed to the inevitable and took it to a garage (well, Halfords, don't mock me, they're close and you can book online) for a full brake fluid replacement. They did that today and it still feels exactly the same!

The brakes work, but I'd swear that the pedal feels far spongier than before and it's now possible to bottom out when pushing really hard. Am I just mis-remembering how the pedal used to feel? Should I take it to a dealer or another garage? Should I just grab the Swan matches and torch it, climb under my duvet and pretend I never owned a Jimny?

Help me collective hive mind, I'm feeling sad.

Back to basics first. Remember (with the engine off) to kill all the sevo assistance by pumping the brake pedal several times. Now the pedal should feel rock solid, at this stage don't worry about a low pedal. If it's got a spongy feel then more bleeding is required. Work from the futhest wheel away from the master cylinder and work back. If there is any risk that you allowed air in at the master cylinder then this could take a while. Get a big bottle of fluid and keep recycling the stuff 'till you get a result.
Good luck, Chris

In my experience with Dreadnaught the bleeding is a pain to get right as there seems to be places for air to accumulate that don't like being pushed out. I found that it took 3 separate attempts to get it perfect. I wouldn’t trust any chain garage to even attempt a brake bleed as it's too easy to say it's done and take the money without actually doing anything. Unless you were on site and watching them. A dealer should be able to rectify but again some of them will need watching.

I will just repeat what Chris and Lambert said above.

As a bleeder of many many brakes, if it feels spongy to you it more than likely is. It's going to be trapped air and can be a pain to get out.
Speed can be your friend if you have a pressure bleeding system, blow it through as fast as you can without blowing the cap off and getting fluid over everything. The speed shifts those stubborn air bubbles.
A vacuum bleeder is better a drawing air out as it expands those little bubbles, but you need to be careful you are not drawing air past bleed nipple threads or even the cylinder seal.
Finally the two person "push" method can work, but it can take many goes and is not good for older vehicles as you move the master cylinder beyond its normal movement range, potentially resulting in damage.

Keep at it, take a break and walk away for a day, it will come good.

I have on my series 2 Landy used all three methods above over 4 days before I got all the air out. Brakes are still useless, the golden days of none assisted drum brakes.

Funny you should mention the white stuff coming out.. I changed all the brake lines (including the two at the back of the engine bay that feed to the rear hard pipes-no point putting braided hoses on the four corners if the intermediate pipes can still bulge the rubber) and I had something resembling white jelly/blancmange coming out of the tubes in several places while doing the changeovers, a quick google suggested it was water in the brake fluid, not what you want to find on a brand new car.
With regards to the rounding of nuts, I found exactly the same issue, even with a flare spanner, the fittings were extremely soft to say the least, not sure if they are even 10mm size, and I found I needed either a pair of Knipex parallel jaw pliers or a 3/8" spanner filed out to be a very tight fit on the fittings was needed to avoid rounding off more of them.

With bikes when the brakes struggle to bleed the brakes, we tie the brake lever back to the bars and leave overnight or a few days .
With the bleed nipple closed . Then open the nipple and air purges. Just a thought.