Motion Pro Mini Bleeder - October Newsletter
Flushing and bleeding your brake system is essential for maintaining optimum performance from your brakes. In the past, bleeding or flushing brakes meant juggling wrenches, hoses, waste brake fluid bottles, clean up rags, etc. Now Motion Pro has introduced the new Mini Bleeder, a tool that incorporates many different bleeding tools in one compact package and makes this essential job a lot easier. Your brakes are perhaps the most important component on your bike in terms of safety and control and regular brake fluid changes are essential to proper operation.
However, bleeding brakes is a job that is not a whole lot of fun, and if you get brake fluid on your nice paint job it can be very messy and potentially destructive. Nobody likes to make a mess, so sometimes this job gets neglected, which is not a good thing at all because it can compromise the effectiveness of your brakes.
Aside from having enough pad material in the calipers, the brake fluid and its condition is the most important part of your brake system. Without going into a lot of technical details, heat and time will reduce the performance of the fluid. One of the most detrimental aspects is that most brake fluids attract water, which is quickly absorbed into the fluid, and has a much lower boiling point than the fluid itself. If enough water gets into the fluid, and you get it hot enough, the water will boil, introducing gas pockets into your hydraulic system, and resulting in your brake lever heading straight to the handlebar, a bad deal in any situation.
The Mini Bleeder interior rubber seal fits snugly around the nipple of the bleeder to prevent leakage of brake fluid. The built in floating wrench handle features 12 points on a 6 point hex on the tool body, making the handle micro adjustable for position on the body and allowing it to be used in super tight spaces. The short length of the handle reduces the chance of over torquing the bleeder. There is a one way check valve inside the body of the tool, greatly reducing fluid spillage when removing the tool from the bleed screw, and also allowing fast fluid flushing when desired.
Using the tool is very simple. The Mini Bleeder hose should be routed to a brake fluid catch bottle, and then you simply connect the Mini Bleeder to the bleed screw and start bleeding. You can perform the job in two ways, standard bleeding, where you build pressure in the closed system by stroking the brake lever, and then open the bleeder to allow fluid and air to flow out, and then closing the bleed screw before releasing the brake lever. This method is best for removing air from the system as a final process. The alternate method is to use the Mini Bleeder as a flushing tool, simply opening the bleed screw and leaving it open while pumping the brake lever to flush the fluid through the system. The check valve in the Mini Bleeder body will keep the fluid flowing out and all you have to do is keep the reservoir filled until the fluid runs clean out of the Mini Bleeder. Then finish off the job with the standard bleeding method to remove any left over air, and you are ready to go. As you remove the Mini Bleeder, there will be a tiny amount of fluid left in the bleeder, so keep a small rag handy, but it is a much cleaner job than just a hose and a wrench!