[parapaul]

Did this yesterday. just over £30 for some good quality fluid on eBay:



As always, I use an EziBleed. One of the best £20 I've ever spent, it's lasted me years and still going strong. It took ages with this car though, I don't know what's different but particularly with the rear brakes, it just dripped through. Must have taken an hour just to do the back brakes.



That's the colour of the new fluid in the reservoir bottle, but I was amazed at the colour of the fluid that drained out - I've done quite a few cars over the years, some with decidedly dubious service history, but I've never seen brake fluid as dirty as this!



Anyway, that's all done for another couple of years although I might bring the next change forward and make it a summer job... It was snowing by the time I finished yesterday!

[Dr Dave]

That fluid is clean compared to some of the crap I've flushed out of some systems!!

Did you use the whole 3 litres or not??

[parapaul]

Not quite - about 2.5 I reckon. I siphoned that stuff from the header tank, then flushed about 500ml through each corner.

Looking through the service history, the last time BMW did a brake fluid change they billed the owner for 2 units of brake fluid at £4 each. Presumably that was 2 500ml bottles at that price. There is no way that 1 litre would have been enough to flush the old crap out!

So, £30ish to DIY and know it's done properly, or upwards of £50 for half a job and a stamp in the book?

[raj55]

I paid 70 Euros at a cheaper non BMW garage to flush brake fluid in my car. BMW garage wanted double that!

[brumex1]

what psi did u use

[Phil325i]

OP how did you open each of the valves in the ABS unit for bleeding? Ezibleed won't do that...

[doughboy]

+1 I thought you had to use ABS pump commands via OBD to allow new fluid to pass through the pump/valve block?

[Jules59]

Originally Posted by doughboy

+1 I thought you had to use ABS pump commands via OBD to allow new fluid to pass through the pump/valve block?

I thought you only needed to do this to displace air trapped in the system upstream of and including the ABS unit, following say the replacement of an ABS unit. The traditional standard flush as described above would still flush brake fluid the whole system just not clear air out of the ABS unit. Maybe Im wrong.

[doughboy]

Could be right jules, I'm not sure.

I have read about a purge mode that vibrates the ABS block, but i'm sure 99% of garages will just pressure bleed as normal.

[seanblee]

I don't think you need to do anything special with the ABS system when bleeding so long as you don't let the reservoir run dry at any point.

[parapaul]

To answer all the above comments - I've done this on quite a number of cars now, probably all of which have ABS. It's never been an issue.

[Phil325i]

Originally Posted by parapaul

To answer all the above comments - I've done this on quite a number of cars now, probably all of which have ABS. It's never been an issue.

Which probably means each time you did it you left old fluid trapped inside the ABS unit...

[seanblee]

Originally Posted by Phil325i

Which probably means each time you did it you left old fluid trapped inside the ABS unit...

How do you figure that? The brake fluid goes from the master cylinder through the ABS modulator to the caliper, so if you push the fluid through the system from the reservoir to the caliper, you must have replaced the fluid in the modulator too...

EDIT: Just did some checking and it seems you're quite right, so apologies - apparently there's a reservoir in the ABS unit that's sealed off from the brake system except when the ABS actually operates.