Brakes won’t bleed HELP !!

Kingbarber340 said:

Hey yall. Here’s the situation. I have a 2008 Tahoe Ls 5.3 4WD and for the love of living I can’t get the brake pedal to return properly it goes to the floor after bleeding brakes.I changes all components with new booster/M.Cyl/brakes/calipers and I auto bleed and manual. What am I not getting right ? The ABS lights isn’t on and I’m not getting a code for it and it doesn’t activate even with soft pedal to the floor. I bleed the master twice just to be sure I used vacuum pumps one way Flo bottle and all. Nothing

Click to expand...

wjburken said:

What was the motivation behind replacing all the parts you replaced? Did that all happen before you had problems bleeding the brakes or were they replaced due to issues with bleeding the brakes? Just want to understand the sequence of events better since so many parts have been swapped.

What exactly was your process for manually bleeding the brakes?
Auto bleeding?
Bleeding the master cylinder?

The typical problems I recall seeing folks have here are:
1) calipers installed upside down. This has already been asked and it has happened even to experienced folks.
2) not properly bleeding the master cylinder and leaving air.
3) letting the fluid reservoir get low and letting air back into the system
4) pushing the pedal all the way to the floor when manually pumping the brakes. Put a 2x4 behind the pedal to avoid this.
5) not bleeding the ABS module. This can be done with a proper bi-directional scan tool, cycling the key on and off a number of times to get the ABS module to cycle, or taking it to a grassy field or gravel road and slamming on the brakes causing the ABS to engage a number of times.

Getting defective parts has happened. One individual went through a couple reman’d master cylinders before they hit one that would actually work properly.

Click to expand...

Geotrash said:

It sounds silly, but make absolutely certain that you have the correct caliper on the correct side. Bleeder screws should always be on top of the caliper. 9 times out of 10 that’s what’s bedeviling people here when their brakes won’t pump up.

Click to expand...

RoadTrip said:

Provided you have the correct calipers on the correct wheel, you will need to do both the vacuum bleed and a wheel bleed.

The abs unit is in the middle and with a vacuum bleed only, you will still have air in the calipers.

When I did my ‘05 a couple months ago, I idled the engine to activate the abs unit to make sure no air was trapped inside. It took longer to fo both types of bleeds, but the result was a solid pedal.

Click to expand...

Geotrash said:

It sounds silly, but make absolutely certain that you have the correct caliper on the correct side. Bleeder screws should always be on top of the caliper. 9 times out of 10 that’s what’s bedeviling people here when their brakes won’t pump up.

Click to expand...

Kingbarber340 said:

Bleeder on the rear side ?

Click to expand...