Soft pedal / dead zone after new pads
 

1) Put on new front brake pads —old ones were worn out.
2) Bled brakes with help of another person. Brake pedal felt very firm.
3) After starting engine, brake pedal feels very soft the first 50%, almost (but not quite) like a dead zone. It does not become firm again after shutting down engine.

Drove for a couple days. Successfully bedded my pads at night with no traffic around (no more squealing on these PMU CR). Tried bleeding brakes again, two person method plus vacuum pump, same result.

Any hints or tips? I've changed pads and bled brakes several times in the past, but never had this problem. Could it be air? Should I try bleeding again?

Buy the motive power bleeder. Its like magic and cannuse alone. Did brake flush and pedal is like a rock now

Did you bleed in the correct order? You need to bleed the furthest from the master cylinder and work closer. For a LHD car that's right rear, left rear, right front, left front.

Any possibility that you sucked air into the master cylinder? The reservoir wouldn't look empty, there are cavities below the pickup point that will retain fluid. The fluid level needs to be maintained above the minimum mark at all times.

I bled in the right order, and I topped off the MC reservoir after bleeding each corner, so I don't think it sucked any air..

I'll try bleeding one more time before taking it to a shop..

If you want to do a thorough bleed:

1. Reverse bleed the brake system feeding fluid from the nipple up to the reservoir. This will help push any air in your system up from the calipers through the reservoir. Very time consuming tho.

2. After you've done the reverse bleed, do the standard method but bleed the brake fluid out of each of the threaded connections (banjo bolts, connections to abs, connection to master) step on brake, loosen joint, then tighten back up like you would at the nipple. Only thing brake fluid will be squirting out of the joints, so have water and towel handy.

3. Finish up the standard method through the nipple on each of the calipers feeding from the reservoir down.

This is the most anal way to bleed your brakes possible, and may take a couple of hours to complete if not more not to mention messy. I've only done this way a couple of times using a gravity fed brake fluid IV I made. Really really time consuming, but the peace if mind is worth it if you are having problems with trapped air.

if you have issues what i do is put a tranparant hose on the bleeder and put that hose into a bottle of brake fluid, that way it cant suck air , if you press the brake pedal to the floor and dont close the bleeder before the person lets off the pedal it will suck air backing to the caliper. using a girl to run the brake pedal while bleeding will usually do this, so to ensure you dont get air sucked backin submerge a hose into the dot3 bottle and if its a clear hose you can see the air bubbles coming out, it also puts the excess fluid in the bottle and not on your caliper, this works great when doing them alone.


and also, i dont know how new to wrenching you are but dont get dot3 or any brake fluid on paint, it will destroy paint and impregnate into the metal under it making it very hard to repaint. dangerous stuff for your car dont spill it.

Man... Don't need to scare him. Just try to keep it off the paint but if it does get on painted surface just rinse it off with water and wipe it clean. It will be fine.

By chance you blow a vacuum line and have a leak? (Are you running forced induction)

Don't waste your time. The motive power bleeder is ~$60 shipped. Shop is going to charge you more than 100 for a brake flush.

Seriously, get the right tool for the job and you won't have any problems. In this case it will be cheaper to buy the right tool and do it yourself.

Yeah thats a good idea but I mean in all reality its not hard to bleed this car, and if he did it three times properly blowing through a can of fluid and still has a mushy pedal something else is going on.

I'll second ZionsWrath on the Motive power bleeder.

I bought one for when I did my track pad upgrade and it's brain dead simple. You don't have to go in and out of the car to pump the brakes.

Just put the fluid in the bleeder, pressurize it, and go to each brake in sequence. You might need to re-pressurize if you are doing a full flush.

For everyone complaining about a soft pedal, what brake pads are you running? The difference in feel between my stock pads and my ferodo DS2500's is huge. The stock ones are way more compressible and the pedal feels much softer. I know it's the pads because I've swapped back and forth a couple times now (once to install, back to stock for winter and then back to aftermarket this spring).

Replaced front rotors and all is well now. They had developed rather deep grooves, so the total contact surface with the pads was much reduced.