BRAKE & CLUTCH BLEEDING - A NEW TECHNIQUE...FOR ME AT LEAST.

If you knew this already why didn't you tell me

So the 1290S is now wearing a bit of orange Oberon bling - Clutch slave.

I bled it by priming the slave cylinder and then pumping the lever once installed.

I have a pro bleeder that I bought this year (Ace!) from machine mart, the one that you pump pressure into the bottle and it forces the fluid up the pipe....in theory. Didn't work on the clutch for some reason and when the lever was pumped and bleed nipple opened the lever wouldn't pump anything after the nipple was closed again. Odd. Anyway, discovered this:


Attach some brake bleeder hose to the nipple.
Back-fill some fluid to fill 4" of the hose.
Pump the lever 4 or 5 times.
With the lever in, open the bleed nipple and leave it open. Air will probably come out & I found that fluid was naturally drawn back into the slave.
Release lever and pump once or twice.
Wait a few seconds then close the bleed nipple.
Pump the lever up again and repeat until no more air comes out of the bleed nipple when opened.

What this does is prevent air from being drawn back into the bleed nipple - this is because you effectively have a gravity feed of fluid acting on the bleed nipple and it's threads. Obvious really, just hadn't thought about it before.

I hope this helps someone

Just as an extra to this, I had the same issue with the rear brake on the Freeride 350. This time I put an open topped syringe onto the pipe that goes onto the bleed nipple. This gave a bit more gravity (head) of fluid to act on the bleed nipple and it's obviously easier to fill a syringe than a piece of tube.

Had the rear brake bled in 5 minutes start to finish using this method, rock solid now! It's been a right royal pain to bleed in the past!