Shimano Road Hydraulic Disc Brake Bleed - Made Simple! 

Who is this guy? I've watched more than a dozen of his excellent DIY videos on Free To Cycle. He's truly a top notch mechanic. And yet, I've never heard him say his own name.

Very simple but incredibly effective. Well done.

this guy is amazing. EXCLUSIVELY great maintenance tutorials.

This channel is the best. If you have shimano groupset it’s the only source you need for maintenance. Which is invaluable.

Thank you!! Just bled my rear Dura Ace 9120 brake caliper as described in this video, and now it works perfectly! Very easy method of brake bleeding. I appreciate your sometimes redundant explanation of bicycle repair work which is so helpful for the non professional bike mechanic!!

Excellent DIY! I found the 1/8" ID x 3/16" OD Silicone Tubing to be the perfect size to connect to the bleeder screw. Much better than clear vinyl tubing.

You are the best mechanic I have watched. This tip with the spray bottle fixed a problem I had with my rear Dura-Ace 9170 caliper. I spent hours on end after following all the other videos covering bleeding the brakes and I still always had a lever that I had to pump up or the first pull would go to the bar before I got brake. The front brake I never had a problem with. I was ready to buy a whole new lever and caliper because I thought there was something wrong. I bought some of the tubing you mentioned and followed you instruction and now I have a perfect brake. I don't know how you figured this out but it's the method I will use from now on. Thank you very very much.

This is genius I was struggling to get all of the air out but trying this sorted it in 5 minutes

Great video, I usually bleed by pumping the lever but thinking I’ll give this a go. One point with using a bleed block or not, it ensures you have the pad pistons fully retracted when you finish the job with the reservoir topped off with fluid. If you bleed with worn pads in and brim the reservoir, you’ll need to remove the cap to let fluid out when pushing the pistons back for fitting new pads.

You have the best tutorials on the internet! I'm always reassured when I need to do something and one of your videos are available. Thanks so much and hope you are well on the mend.

Best tutorial ever, no fluff all content

Worked really well. I tried the "traditional" method with average results. Gave this a bash and was really easy. This guy has great useful content for every eventuality for the at home bike mechanic. Cheers

You are amazing !!! You have taken away the fear in bleeding hydraulic disc brakes. Your DIY tutorial is just Fantastic. Thanks again for the video. ❤️😊👍

Great video. Excellent description step by step

Great idea! Speeds things up quite a bit. I'll be sure to try this next time.

marvelous: very effective and helpful presentation.

Brilliant! This video was so helpful for my first-time bleed. Pulling the old fluid out at the caliper end makes so much sense, as any dirt in the fluid is likely at that end anyway, from brake dust potentially entering the system via the pistons. Why pump dirt from that end all the way to the lever? Thank you so much!

I was terrified of installing my own hydraulic brakes until I saw this vid.... brilliant!

Simple, quick, and clean. Genius!! Thank you!

This is the best way to do it. I've had issues with Shimano's crappy bleed kit, gravity bleeding is ok but this just takes a couple minutes per wheel and works flawlessly. Great job! Everyone should know about this.

Thanks for the hack! Just completed a new build and my rear brake was spongy. Came home today and followed the steps in your video, worked like a charm. Only took about 15 minutes. 👍👏

This is amazing... Very informative! Cheers

This is simply brilliant, mate!!! 👍👍👍 thank you!

I like the way you put this together. The bleed kit we got was missing that stupid road adapter, but will definitely be using this method. Cheers

Mind blown! Going to try this out.

Thank you so much. I followed all your instructions and everything worked out quickly and easily when bleeding my Ultegra 8170 rear caliper. When screwed into the shifter, I found that my Shimano bleed funnel was on quite an angle (e.g. ~45 degrees towards the rear of the bike) when both wheels were on the ground. I raised the rear wheel up 600mm, that brought the bleed funnel on the cockpit to be essentially vertical. This raised the caliper to be 3-5cms above the brake level/piston, which I reckon would have assisted in the bleed process (???). Got lots of bubbles. No mess. Great advice.

Great video. Thank you. Learning much from your videos. Clear, concise, practical.

Absolutely clever, always a pleasure seeing your contents! Congrats

Brilliant. I used an old alcohol spray bottle from post covid. At the end I just flushed some alcohol through it to glush out the dregs of the oil.

always struggled with my hydraulic brakes. ill give this a go tomorrow

Wish i had seen this before i bled my brakes. Put spacer in calliper pushed pistons back bled brakes now ive got no pressure in system. Great video

Thank you for this video. I have referenced your videos many times and they are always the best, even better than ParkTool's. A lot more practical. I have to join your Patreon channel. Ride safe.

Quality and no nonsense 👍

Nice hack! I am learning about hydraulic brakes before I commit to one

Simple and brilliant technique. 👍

Excellent idea👍 Will be off to try that out later on.

Thank you for mentioning how crappy the bleed block spacing is. I use an old set of brake pads with a business card folded over enough times to simulate pads and disc spacing. I don't trust myself to not contaminate brake pads, if you saw stains on my shop walls, ceiling, floor you'd understand.

Clever! Reminds me of my old moto daze bleeding double disc front brakes with a vacuum pump just for the purpose. Gotta admit I never thought about a cheap spray bottle for the same purpose though the typical syringes with most bleed kits does pretty much the same thing.

that's a totally different method than that found on Shimano manual. This includes a number of steps: 1) inject oil from the caliper 2) gravity bleed 3) pump bleed (like on cars) 4) additional pumping with the funnel on, and the funnel tilted forward and backward. In each of these steps one should pay attention at the orientation of the lever/ funnel. Overall is very time consuming and a bit of a nightmare - which makes me hate hydraulic control for disk brakes. What I like of this method instead is that the sprayer effectively sucks oil out, with a stronger action that any of those Shimano steps. So the sprayer may be able to dsiaplace air bubbles more effectively. I will give it try! THANKS!

Excellent idea! I’ve had hydraulic disc brakes for a few years now and no way would I go back to calipers, especially now I can bleed them quickly and efficiently, thanks!

Great hack, keep them coming 👍

This is genius.

Use some old disk pads (if not fully worn out) if you're worried about any contamination while doing work without a bleed block. Then once done clean it all out and put existing pads back in. This is a much better technique though as so many times I've had to add extra fluid after take bleed block's out as were still spongy.

Wow…Amazing video! Thank you for all your help!

Genius! Hope you are healing okay.

Wonderful ,new there had to b an easier way ,well done.

As always, the best info. Thanks!

Great video, worked a treat, thanks!

Brilliant mate thank you so much 😊

Great tutorial and tips.👍

Complete Genius

you are so amazing!! A very creative mechanism

looks like this beats the crack off/pumping/ cracking off caliper nipple for 20minutes, going through buckets of fluid and hopefully get a solid bleed. the 7050's are a b**** to get them solid. I'll give this a whirl tomorrow.

you make this soooo simple, thanks, i feel confident now to do this myself. What about a stripped screw head for the break callipers? how on earth do you remove that?

brilliant idea, cheers for that. 👍

Brilliant idea!👏👏👏

Genius. Top hack.

Thanks so much!

Beautiful hack!

An excellent video. Thank you.

Masterful.

I love you mate

Really baffled by this, I can get a firm lever with the bleed block, but it always goes all the way back and doesn't become firm when I'm bleeding with the wheel and rotor fitted. Thanks for the alternative approach! I'll bleed my own brakes correctly one day if it's the last thing I do.

Just thinking that this method wouldn’t be suitable if you replace your pads with new ones after you’ve bled. Because the fluid volume may be overfilled for newer thicker pads.

I have always been a bit scared of fiddling with my road bike's hydraulic brake system, but money is tight and I can not afford to take my bike to the shop to get very spongy brakes bled. After seeing this today after doing the front brake the hard way (Which did work) I went onto amazon and bought a length of Silicone rubber tube and I am doing my rear brake today! and the brakes on my Hybrid! THAN YOU so much I assume this works for front brakes as well? PLEASE PUT YOUR NAME UP SO WE KNOW WHO TO THANK!!!

Amazing!

great video once again. What's your opinion on doing lever bleeds / burping the brakes? A lot of people seem to swear by it, but you look like you're enjoying proper bleeds.

Nice!

good idea mate, you seen that park tools guy be there all day, cool want to know were to get into the lever, but going to try this too cherrs man

Genius method. Thank you. I really have never understood the fluid from the bottom up method. Why did Shimano make it so fiddly?

Genuis!

Hi. Just wondering where I can get a decent length of bleed tubing from? Another great tutorial as always. Thanks

Quality vid

Genius

Excelent: 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

could you have done it the other way? Bleeding by pushing new brake fluid from the caliper using a syringe into the bleed cup...will that work too?

Great tutorials! I’m curious about the left brake lever controlling the rear brake. Is that a personal modification?

Seems like a good method but not a big fan of bleeding with a wheel on. You should always take the wheel of when bleeding to avoid contamination the rotor or pads

Where can you source the 3ft of hose from? Thank you, great video.

wow noice

Keep the tube as short as possible otherwise you’ll end up with most of the fluid in the tube and not coming out of the nozzle!

no moving the handlebar needed? loved It....I guess It can be done with MTB brakes?!

Excellents advices, as on other videos. I’m just curious about one thing: what’s the difference between the spray bottle and the syringe usually provided in bleed kits? Does it pump with more pressure, or is it the same?

How does one get a hold of this hose?

Show 👏👏👏👏👏

This was one of the best videos on hydraulic brake bleed. If I can find a spray bottle like that I will utilize his system should make it a lot simpler. Unfortunately RU-vid made it exceedingly difficult for me to come back to this video after watching at least a half-a-dozen many of those not so good. I done brake bleeds on cars and motorcycles looks like a bicycle is going to be the most complicated. But RU-vid made it all the worse by making it exceedingly difficult to just come back to this video I hate Google and since they bought RU-vid they done nothing but loaded up with ads no improvements or anything don't be evil Google but alas you are greedy SOB's

It's just at the end that I realize that you put your rear brake control on the left, you must come from the motorcycle world ...or at least from the clutchless motorcycle world.

Hello, I’m trying to bleed my brakes but fluid is coming out of the port on the lever! I’ve tried to tighten it up but it get to a point where it just turns without tightening. I haven’t used much pressure at all so it can’t be threaded! These were bought last month and installing today. Any advise would be much appreciated.

i wanted to try this method. after replacing the hose (because of cahnge of bars) i couldnt get it to pull fluid through, so i wanted to start with the original method of pushing fluid from caliper to lever, then do this afterwards. but i am not able to push fluid through the caliper no matter how hard i push the syringe. i have opened the bleed nipple and removed the plunger in the cup at the lever. any tips on what to do, is there anything to try before pulling the hoes out of the caliper and lever and checking the barb/olive ?

Does the brake fluid come in different colors? It'd be nice to be able to tell when new fluid is coming out in the house ( fully bled ).

So I tried it, and I have one concern! When I was spraying the oil into the cup, I noticed the spraying part was infusing the oil with air bubbles. Did this affect anyone?

When you order a BR-R Ultegra 8170 caliper on line does it come with all of the different lengths of fastening screws or do you have to know which length you need and order a caliper with the proper length.

Fantastic! How do you clean your bleed cup?

Does anyone know what the internal diameter of the tubing used to connect to the brake caliper?

Can i do this to sram rival? It look easy

Can you make your content inclusive by formatting the auto captioning into closed captioning please? it is extremely hard to watch it relying only on the auto captioning sadly (I'm Profoundly Deaf), hence why I and others don't subscribed.

Like that it looks like that really good like that.

Great information. Thank you