Brake fluid flush used to take me all day, now it's an hour tops

Back in 2018 at my old shop in Tulsa, I'd do the two-person pump and bleed method with my buddy yelling 'push' and 'hold' through the bay. We'd burn 2 hours on a simple F-150 flush and still get air bubbles in the rear calipers. Picked up a Motive power bleeder for $80 last spring and it's night and day, no helper, no drama, just hook it up and crack the bleeders. Anyone else switch to a pressure bleeder and wonder why they waited so long, or is the old-school way still working for you?

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amy_west1mo ago

Man, I feel this one hard. I used to hate brake jobs for this exact reason, especially on trucks where you gotta have arms like a gorilla to reach the rear bleeders. Now I just hook up the pressure tank, set it to about 15 psi, and walk around cracking each valve. Still worth it to double check the fluid level in the tank halfway through though, cause running it dry makes the whole thing pointless. And I always give the master cylinder a few slow pumps before I even start, just to push any old crud out of the system. The old way still has its place for guys who only do one flush a year, but once you go pressure, you don't really go back.

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