Took my mechanic's advice on brake bleeding, kind of regret it now

He told me to gravity bleed instead of my usual pump and hold method on my 2012 Civic, and now my pedal feels softer than ever after 2 hours of dripping fluid. Has anyone else had worse results going against their standard routine?

2 comments

2 Comments

oscarmurray23d ago

Yeah, "softer than ever" is a red flag that makes me wonder if the issue isnt the method but something else going on. In my experience, a gravity bleed should actually give you a firmer pedal if done right, especially on a 2012 Civic where the ABS module can trap air with pump and hold. Maybe you disturbed some crud in the master cylinder by letting fluid drip for 2 hours straight, which could be causing internal bypass and that soft feel. Another angle nobody considers is that if your brake fluid was old and absorbed moisture, the gravity method can pull that contaminated fluid back up from the calipers and make things worse. Take this with a grain of salt, but I'd check your master cylinder fluid level and maybe do a quick pressure bleed before blaming gravity entirely.

nancy_miller23d ago

Did you check if the master cylinder was actually sitting level when you did the gravity bleed? I had a similar issue on my 2008 Accord last year, and what fixed it for me was taking @oscarmurray's advice about the ABS module traps. I ended up doing a quick pressure bleed with a cheap vacuum pump from the auto parts store, and it made a world of difference. The pedal went from spongy to solid after I hit the ABS module with the pump, which made me think the gravity method just wasn't pushing fluid through the right spots. Also, I swapped out the old fluid first, because that dark brown stuff had probably been in there for years and was causing all sorts of problems. It's a pain, but sometimes you gotta work past the simple methods to get those little trapped bubbles out.