I decided to change my brake fluid yesterday as it's never been changed to my knowledge and was pure black.

I used a 60cc catheter tip syringe and a short piece of hose attached to the bleeder valve. I started at the RR tire, hooked up the hose to the bleeder, opened the valve, and slowly started sucking fluid out with the syringe. I kept checking the master cylinder level to ensure it didn't run low, and when it did, I topped it off with fresh new ATE Super Blue DOT 4 fluid. I continued drawing fluid out of the RR caliper until new blue fluid started coming out. Then, while still applying a vacuum with the syringe, I closed the bleeder valve. I then proceeded to repeat going to the LR, RF, and finishing with the LF caliper.

After ensuring the correct level in the master cyl. I went for a test drive and was surprised to feel that the brake pedal feels a bit softer than before. Seems like I have to push it a little further down now to achieve the same engagement.

I even bled the brakes again the traditional way, with a helper pumping the pedal. I put a block of wood under the brake pedal to prevent it from traveling too far and hurting the master cyl. seals. After that, the pedal feels about the same.

Then I performed the how to fix spongy brake pedal feel fix here: http://www.nhtoc.com/vbforum/how-art...edal-feel.html
I adjusted it twice, once with 1.25 turns out (no improvement) and again at 3 turns out (little to no improvement).

This tells me that I may have air or something in the lines still if these adjustments aren't making a difference. People were exclaiming a night and day difference at only 1 turn out. My brakes felt fine before with that nasty old fluid, and after a simple bleed job with fresh fluid they feel worse? I was very careful not to introduce air into the system on both bleed attempts.

Does anybody have experience with a power bleeder system like from Motive Products?: http://store.motiveproducts.com/ford...-0107-p38.aspx

I'm sort of at a loss here, so any helpful tips or info you could provide would greatly be appreciated. Thanks.

 

if the fluid was real dirty, like you say it was, then you can sometimes get contamination under the master cylinder seal when you bleed it.

Try doing more pedal bleeds to see if it helps... you might be able to dislodge the dirt if thats the issue. And if nothing else, it will get any air out of the system.

The other thing to consider is replacing the flex lines. If you want to do that, I'd do it now... since you will have to bleed out the system when you are done.