Hi Folks,

Was driving home from work tonight, sitting in traffic, and all of a sudden noticed the brake pedal was soft.

Braking was affected, could still stop but with a lot less confidence and i took it easy, slow and with large gaps in front all the way home (with one hand ready to pull the handbrake, and looking for places to steer to safely at the side of the road!!)

I'm going to check the brake fluid level of course, but what else should i check?

I'm worried that filling the fluid will do no good if there's a leak - what are the likely points of failure here?

Check level
Check fluid on brake peddle leaver, inside rear wheels and front if drums on front

First off

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Stop Licking the Dog...I Don't Care Who Started It

Look inside the wheels/tyres for leaking brake fluid.
Get someone to press the brakes while you look for leaks.
Follow the hoses from the wheels back to the body and check for leaks.
If you park the car on a hard surface the leaks will be obvious.

If it is not using fluid and there are no external leaks it may mean the master cylinder is leaking internally.

cheers guys, might take a look in the morning.

Currently trying to get our 9-week old baby to sleep and my wife's already gone to bed so no mini repairs/checks for me tonight

Looks like it's the walk/train/bus to work for me tomorrow. Annoyingly this has happened 3 days after finally selling our old family car (been for sale for almost 6 months), so until then I always had a backup!

or the booster...

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did I tell you that I won a trophy?

Took a quick look this morning, looks like i'll have to try bleeding the system to check for leaks, so it'll have to wait until the weekend.

I could see some fluid on the ground beneath the engine bay, so might well be the master cylinder or something around there, but until i bleed out the air i'm not getting any more leaks with the fluid I put in this morning...

Any tips on bleeding?

The Haynes manual rather unhelpfully says - put on flat ground, chock wheels, bleed.

How on earth a normal human being is supposed to get underneath/behind the wheels to do any sort of accurate bleeding, i do not know!

Is it best to stick it on Axle stands?
Should i get a DIY bleeding kit (as suggested in Haynes manual)?
Any other tips??

2 people, one bit of hose over the bleeder, 1st person pushes on the pedal, 2nd person puts the hose on the bleed nipple and undoes the bleeder a little bit, 1st person's foot forces the fluid out of the bleeder, 2nd person does up the bleeder, 1st person takes their foot off the pedal

don't use axle stands - get on the ground and do it

I'm obviously not normal... I don't have a one person bleeder kit, I do the above process by myself and get very accurate bleeding

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did I tell you that I won a trophy?

Have a read of this, pretty much what Simon said....it is pretty good explanation

http://www.niksula.cs.hut.fi/~mdobruck/siililand/mini/diy/2/b-tips.htm

Hmm, I googled a bit and got another good explanation very similar to the one jason posted, which also said to use axle stands.

Simon, what is the reason for not using them?

Looking at the Gunsons eezi-bleed kit, the problem is that I don't really have anyone that can help me. My wife's availability kind of depends on the demands of our 9-week-old baby so I can't really ask her to sit in the car while i pfaff about under the wheels.

best thing i found for bleeding is the gunsons ezebleed, that was until i lost the cap that fits my master cylinders, and used it to put diff fluid into my commodore and dad threw it out when he cleaned the garage, have to get myself another one sometime

Cool, just looking at whether to spend $60+postage to get it here locally (only place I can see online that does it is minisport), or $27+$11+time to get from UK ebay or get my mum to buy it in UK for around $35 and bring it over as she's coming over to visit next week!

Anyone know if supercheap/repco or anywhere in Sydney sells Eezi-bleed?

I found this site to be the cheapest http://www.mgocaccessories.co.uk/acatalog/Gunsons.html

I was able to get the eezibleed , colortune and carbalancer with postage for the price of about 2 of the items here

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David L


My greatest fear in life is that when I die my wife will sell my Mini and tools for the price I told her I paid for them!

Yeah, I saw that one too.

It depends on how many days i'm willing to take public transport to work for cos things take around 1 week from the UK normally

Still, at least I can placate the minister of finance with the fact that everyday I don't take the car, it actaully saves about $5, therefore making the repair pay for itself if it takes me a couple of weeks to fix!!

Might give it a try without ezi-bleed on Saturday if I can get a helper. Just gotta decide whether to try with axle stands or not (I don't have any at the moment)

i just rebuilt the front brakes on my min, and used a one man bleeder which consisted of a bottle with a vent and a tube going into the bottle.. worked ok, but only get a good pedal on second stroke. I'll be getting an assistant to to the pedal pushing and I'll do the loosening/tightening of the bleed nipple. It's probably the easiest least messy/fussy way of doing it. I just need an assistant.. im in a similar predicament.. 1 wife.. 1 young child.

by the time this car is back on the road, hopefully my daughter will be old enough to do the pedal pushing!

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http://www.youtube.com/user/Hanras