Brake flush and maintenance questions

[ajf10]

I am going to do a brake flush and some other assorted maintenance this weekend. Want to also change spark plugs, cabin air filter, engine air filter.
I have a motive power bleeder.

Questions:

1)What is the sequence for bleeding calipers? Do I start at the farthest from the cylinder or the nearest?

2) What PSI should I use, is 15 OK?

3) What's a good spark plug? I was going to go to autozone rather than the dealer for this.

4)Engine air filter? Autozone seems to have some, should I use a dealer filter instead?

5)Cabin air filter? Only available from the dealer?

Any tricks to changing the engine air filter or is it pretty simple?

Thanks!

[jmoser]

My advice:

Order your engine and cabin air filters from IPD online, as well as Bosch spark plugs.

Start bleeding from the 'farthest away' caliper and work in.

Try a Mighty-Vac hand suction pump instead of the pressurized bleeders. You suck the air out from the caliper end instead of pushing it out the master cylinder.

[Art]

Welcome to the site ajf10!

I’ll send the brake bleeding guidelines in PDF over to Taylor so that he can post them to the resources how-to section (http://volvoxc.com/resources/how-to/index.html) of the website.

Also, be sure to check out the instructions in the section on changing the cabin air filter along with spark plug service. :)

[ajf10]

Thanks for your help!

I can't believe it took me until now to find this site, it seems really awesome. Until now I have been working primarily on my own car, a VW passat, and have had great help from ClubB5.com, but I have been struggling to find info for the wifes car, the XC. It is aggravating that there are no bentley or haynes or chilton manuals available for these cars. Theres gonna be a lot of tinkering in my future!

[gibbons]

I used to make my wife or kids push the brake pedal while I would crack the bleed fitting at the caliper. The pedal would go to the floor and a lot of fluid would be expelled fast. But then I learned that the bore in the master cylinder gets corroded and skuzzy in the "deepest depth" where the piston never goes in normal use. So, when the pedal goes to the floor, the piston goes way deep, and the skuzzy part of the bore chews up and ruins the o-rings and seals. Ooops.

So I started using a vacuum pump. But I found that if you have bubbles in the lines, this method doesn't flow enough fluid to purge them. In vertical sections of the lines, the bubbles can float upwards faster than the fluid can drag them down and out. I learned this when I did a disc brake conversion on my chevelle, I could never get a "firm pedal" by vacuum bleeding.

A pressure bleeder hooks on top of the master cylinder reserve and blows fluid in. At 15 psi (the recommended), you can run a couple of quarts of new fluid through really quickly. When I finally pressure bled the Chevelle, the lines belched out some monster bubbles. After that, the brakes felt great. My Subaru had some stowaway bubbles, too, that pressure bleeding purged. I payed about $70 for the bleeder, and it was worth it.

Also, I like Bosch Platinum plugs. Solid design, no gimmicks. I wonder what the parts store will do when I go in and buy the goofball quantity of 5? They will probably want me to by two 4-packs.