As and abundance of caution, I went ahead and replaced all four brakes hoses while changing out all the rotors and pads on my son's college car. Since he's in SoCal and we live in NorCal, I wanted to do my best to reduce the odd of a breakdown.

All the parts changing went well and as planned, but when I went to bleed the brakes, after spilling lots of fluid when I changed the hoses, I couldn't get any significant amount of brake fluid to bleed from the nipples on the rear brakes. Even with the aid of a Mac Tools hand pump brake bleed vacuum pump, and lots of pumping, holding and opening of the bleed nipple, not much came out of the rears. The fronts bled normally and as expected.

The result is that the pedal is still spongy and the brake warning light is constantly on.

What's going on? How do I fix it?

Thanks,

AL

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03 CLK430 Cabrio 211K Pweter Silver/ Oyster Leather
90 300SEL 214k Pearl Black/ Alto Grey/Black Leather

Prior: 85 190E, 88 300TE, 89 300TE, 90 300E 2.6, 90 300TE, 92 300E 2.6, 91 and 93 300SL, 87 Ferrari Mondial Cabrio

Did you change the hoses on the rear calipers too? If you did the problem sounds to me like it is master cylinder related. Otherwise you've probably got a blockage in the back lines somewhere.

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1992 W201 190E 1.8 171,000 km - Daily driver
1981 W123 300D ~ 100,000 miles / 160,000 km - project car stripped to the bone
1965 Land Rover Series 2a Station Wagon CIS recovery therapy!
1961 Volvo PV544 Bare metal rat rod-ish thing

I'm here to chat about cars and to help others - I'm not here "to always be right" like an internet warrior



Don't leave that there - I'll take it to bits!

Take a look at the antilock actuator.

I had the one on my 95 E300D fail and not pass fluid on to the lines and calipers.

You can bleed the lines at the actuator behind the left headlight.

If you get fluid going in, but not going out, then you've found the problem.

Also, hand pump vacuum at the caliper is not sufficient to bleed a car with antilock brakes.

Jim

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14 E250 BlueTEC black. 45k miles
95 E320 Cabriolet Emerald green 66k miles
94 E320 Cabriolet Emerald green 152k miles
85 300TD 4 spd man, euro bumpers and lights, 15" Pentas dark blue 274k miles

Timmyr let me know about a thread regarding two compartment reservoirs and that I need to top off the front before it spill over to the rear. Hard to see, but its there. Need to post this warning along with the Sticky How to...

AL

__________________
03 CLK430 Cabrio 211K Pweter Silver/ Oyster Leather
90 300SEL 214k Pearl Black/ Alto Grey/Black Leather

Prior: 85 190E, 88 300TE, 89 300TE, 90 300E 2.6, 90 300TE, 92 300E 2.6, 91 and 93 300SL, 87 Ferrari Mondial Cabrio

You are on the right track with 2 compartment reservoir. You have to seemingly overfill the reservoir to get the fluid to spill over into the compartment in the rear of the reservoir. This is the fluid reservoir for the rear brakes. You will have to do this a couple times while bleeding the brakes. It has a much smaller volume than the front part of the reservoir. Once you get this bleeding is sttraightforward