S3 1 Ton 109" Bleeding brakes (Again!)

Have you set the adjustors on the back of the drums? Having them too loose will give you a lot of pedal play.

I have had trouble with a crap pedal on my landy. Try tighening all the adjustors all the way up, and see if that gets rid of your pedal slack, if it does, then you havent got any air in the system, and the problem is with your adjustors..

You could also try clamping off the flexible pipes and seeing how that affects the pedal. You can locate air this way, or find troublesome cylinders. You can buy proper pipe clamps, or could use some grips (though these probably dont do the pipes much good)

All the problems i have had with my brakes (and ive had a lot!) have been due to faulty wheel cylinders, loose joints or leaky flexy pipes.

Tom

I'm assuming that you've replaced the seals in the master cylinder, this can cause problems. Secondly, I would reccomend that you junk the valve on the chassis, it only serves to light the lamp on the dash when the brakes have failed on one circuit. And you'd know when one set aren't working anyway. Replace it with two t-pieces.

However, to bleed the brakes, try the following. Get two friendly helpers. Rear axle, furthest from driver seat, then nearest. Next bleed the front axle, again furthest, then nearest. If you still have bad travel, bleed again, only this time bleed both the front and rear (nearest will do) axles at the same. Ie, open both bleed nipples, stroke and close (now you know why you need two helpers)

I found this to be about the only effective way to bleed the brakes on my S3 1ton. Although I have removed the fail valve on the bulkhead. Mine was full of thick sludgy brake fluid and the seals were shot. Having fluid leaking between the two systems does not help with bleeding.

Alex

I'll second this one - set all the brake adjusters so that the shoes are tight against the drums and then bleed the system.

If that fails check the flexible pipes - they're a few quid each....

One often overlooked favourite of mine is the air in the mastercylinder trick..to Bleed the master cylinder jack up the fron so the front of the master cylinder is well high..Slacken the unions from the master cylinder to the brake lines. Get some one to pump the pedal once to the floor and hold..tighten the unions...release the pedal. Repeat above several times.

Air in the master cylinder is highly unlikely to bleed by any other process.

I had your current problems bleeding the brakes on Percy (Stage 1 system - SIII V8 LWB...or was!) I ended upwith the hub off and manually pumping each slave by clamping one piston into a pair of mole grips...locking the oposite brake shoe in position with a good screwdriver...biggest you have across the face of the shoe then up against the rim of the back plate.

Spanner fitted to the bleed nipple then compress the pistoin with the mole grips attached...release the nipple and listen for the bubbles squiring out...retighten nipple then carefully pull back the piston again and repeat process. You need to keep checking the fluid levels in the master cylineder. This process identified that one cylinder had leaking seals that leaked such as they didn't drip fluid out but would suck air in.

HTH.

There is life after bleeding LR brake...

Lee D

-- Project Percy - Jaguar 4.2 and Auto in to Series IIa 88 see it @

alt.fan.landrover hall of fame -