POV: The previous owner said "yeah I do all my own maintenance"
i.imgur.com
Context for the inexperienced: these are cone seat GM lugnuts, the cone portion is supposed to face IN towards the wheel as they are self centering, not OUT... guy didn't know wtf he was doin
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I'm probably among the least mechanically proficient people in here, and even I know to turn nuts with that centering cone thingy the right way.
I don't do a whole lot of maintenance myself, but during a period of being broke as a bum and really needing new brakes to pass inspection, I did figure out how to change disks and pads. A little while after that I also learned to get rid of air in the brake system.
lol
Yeah, I had a short commute, during which I noticed that the brakes weren't quite right. I'd only changed calipers on two of them, and the others never had their brake hoses disconnected, so it wasn't that worrysome, I just had to plan for slightly longer stopping distance. And the brakes had a lot of give in them, and as a geek I know that air compresses, whereas fluids don't, so my diagnosis/guesswork was spot on. I still don't know how one properly gets air out of the system, but I figured that the air would either travel up to the tank, or it'd stay near the calipers, so I just disconnected the hoses and hit the brakes until the hoses stopped farting before I reconnected them. After topping up on bake fluid it worked as normal.
Heres the "correct" way to do it: get a buddy to pump the brakes (engine not running) until the pedal is hard. Keep pressure on, open the bleeding valve, see and hear the farting, once it stops, close the valve, release pressure from the pedal, pump pedal until hard, keep pressure, open the bleeding valve... etcetc, repeat until no more farts come out. Also, repeat it in every corner, air might get into the other lines as well, especially if you have the lines open for long periods of time. At the end, make sure the brake fluid reservoir is full.
If you are like me and have no friends, get a vacuum pump, attach it to the bleeding valve, start sucking, open valve, close valve once no air is coming out. Check fluid levels.
No friends here either, but I somehow managed to contract a GF once upon a time, and she helped.
What are the chances my car (an ancient Volvo that still runs fine, by the way) doesn't have bleed valves? I can't recall seeing anything very obvious.
None.
https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/BE3BLkIlAeLu2qlE.large
That picture shows a Volvo 240, but the tube is connected to the valve.
https://turbobricks.com/index.php?threads/1990-volvo-240-brake-bleed-process-help.298643/
I've only worked on one Volvo, but I owned and fixed several SAABs.
That caliper looks very similar to the ones I have on my 940, so I guess I just didn't notice it.
This is a demo video for a 940
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DKwEwYursdA
The ancient ones always run better than the new ones anyway. I recommemd you hold on to that brick as long as you can. And I say this as a Finn, so its high praise for a swedish product.
"see and hear the farting" Classic, page 872 of the Mechanic's Handbook!
One of the videos on the real mechanic react youtube channel had a clip of a car that was making farting noises from the fuel filler cap lol