I was bleeding all day

[byunbee]

I made you look! Ha!

I was trying to align my calipers so that it doesn't rub against my rotor and when I loosened the caliper from the fork, somehow air got into my front brake. My front brake lever became unresponsive, so I figured, I needed to bleed my brakes. Ordered a generic shimano kit from Amazon for about $20. Tried it for the first time and didn't really do it right because I hurried through the process without paying attention to the air bubbles in the syringe. I got discouraged and tired, so I did other chores and tonight I tried again. This time making sure to expel the air bubbles before attaching the syringe hose to the brake caliper. Slowly I pushed the syringe watching the reservoir on the brake lever fart out the bubbles. I did this a second time for good measure, and sure enough I can see more farting, but that did the trick. Now my bike is back in business and I learned a new maintenance skill.

I have to say that bleeding is a messy business which i hope I don't have to do more than once a year....

 

[Deacon Blues]

I had to bleed the front brakes on my Pedego RidgeRider a number of times (probably had a small leak somewhere). I only bled the rears once and it didn't go well for me. I ended up taking the bike into a Pedego dealer to get it done.
I found the Shimano bleed kit, which only sort-of worked with my Magura brakes, to be cheap and crappy. I had a hard time getting all the bubbles out of the fluid in the syringe, because the crappy seals let in air.

Over the years I've rebuilt and bled the brakes on a number of cars and never had the hassle I had with the bike bleed. Luckily, my two road bikes haven't needed brake bleeding in a combined 14,000km.

 

[TomD]

I found it surprising easy to bleed mine. Less stress with mineral oil. Easy clean up if you spill. Not looking forward to working with DOT fluid on my SRAM brakes as it's toxic and corrosive.

 

[TomD]

I bled all day too...

And it was delicious!