I've been trying to bleed the brakes on John's 240D so that I can drive it home. I seem to have no end to the air that seems to be stuck in the lines, and I am wondering if there is an issue I am not detecting either with me or with the system.

Here is the situation: after installing and bleeding the new clutch master, I drove the car around his property and found I had no brakes. I pulled the car back into the shed and my friend and I set about bleeding the brakes. After about 5 minutes of no luck, I realized I was hearing a slight squirting noise and looked over to the front passenger caliper to see fluid spraying out. I went over and found that Purplecomputer (guy John bought it from) had started doing something with that caliper but not finished, and had left the bleeder valve clean open, partially drying out the system. We tightened it and kept working on bleeding the passenger's-side rear. After a while of no luck, John passed by and suggested bench-bleeding the master. Sure enough, the master was pretty dry, so we bled it out until steady fluid was pouring from all three lines back into the reservoir.

After bleeding the master, we set back about the passenger's-side rear. After a while, when we were still having no luck, John passed by again and noticed that I had forgotten that I needed to CLOSE the bleeder valve every time my friend let the brake pedal up, so I was basically purging a bit of air, then sucking it back in, etc. Once we did this, we bled all four and took it for a test drive. The brakes were a bit firmer, but still very wanting. Nonetheless, I felt that we had made progress, and so we wrapped up and left for the day (my friend's mom wanted us home for dinner).

I went back last night, intending to bleed the brakes one more time and then drive it home. However, after 45 minutes of trying to bleed the two rears, we were still out of luck. After an intial pass of clean fluid and then some bubbles coming through on the rear passenger's-side caliper, we all of a sudden got tons of air -- more air than fluid -- coming through. Eventually I switched over to the other side, and was just getting tons of air most of the time. My dad was pumping the pedal for me, and I was closing the bleeder each time I told him to let it up (in fact, before I told him to let it up), so that shouldn't be an issue?

Anyway, at this point, I'm totally befuddled as to what is going on. My thinking is to go splurge on a pressure bleeder and open both bleeder valves on the rear brakes and loop them into a bottle on top of the trunk, thereby eliminating the variables of pedal bleeding and hopefully punch out whatever air is in the lines all at the same time. I could then do the front brakes individually.

What do you guys think? Good idea? What else should I do or look at? The master is pretty definitely bled, and the car doesn't appear to be leaking fluid anywhere else.

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1982 300SD -- 211k, Texas car, tranny issues ____ 1979 240D 4-speed 234k -- turbo and tuned IP, third world taxi hot rod

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