What kit for bleeding Shimano

forgotrafe

I see there are a couple of kits available for bleeding Shimano brakes. A cheap one with enough oil to do one bike and a more expensive one with no oil.

Any advice as to which is best?

Anonymous

to be honest its usually very easy to just use a standard (gravity fed?) bleed, in which case you would only need the mineral oil and an appropriate bit of piping (fit securely over bleed nipple) and something to contain the passing oil.

forgotrafe

Same as a car then. Won't go spending lots of cash then Ta.

stumpyjon

I built up a set of XT brakes from scratch without the bleed kit. Only thing I got with brakes was some pipe and a couple of plastic bags (which I didn't use). Managed to bleed the brakes fine.

craker

Can one get the mineral oil of the shelf? Shimano suggest using only shimano oil in their brakes, haven't looked up a price but it'd be good if I could use a cheaper (car?) substitute.

Torres

Bargin

stumpyjon

^^ that's a bit overkill, I only used the two small bottles (100ml) that came with my brakes when setting them up from scratch (and I've got some left).

http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Mode ... odelID=663

maybe slightly better value for money and you get the free tube . Don't use car brake fluid, it's not the same as the mineral oil, it'll seriously mess up your brakes and eat the seals. I did consider buying the 1L bottle but that would last for ages and I don't like the idea of using mineral oil that's been open to atmosphere absorbing water.

As for using other fluids, there's a fantastic thread on here somewhere about using cooking oil in your brakes (don't :shock: ).