Correct way to bleed car brakes; Key learnings from my 2012 Superb

The brakes were immediately absolutely crisp and even sharper than before on my 10 km journey back home.

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Quote from BHPian ankitsharma:

Surprising that they used the manual bleeding method.

Also brake should be feeling more crisp after bleeding instead of spongy.

Exactly. So I too was not convinced by their argument and deducted it to lack of trained personnel and automated equipment at this satellite branch of Brite Skoda Noida at Meerut. Also gave them a mouthful on their feedback call from their main Noida dealership.

Now I had more or less made up my mind to bleed the brakes myself f. Also came across this very helpful video by Ganesh Balan doing the same on his Polo including the clutch slave cylinder bleeding: https://youtu.be/E_vPjKn2LJI?si=dSYth7k-7gyl28Dq

Now since the clutch was back to it's original crisp feel and feeling even a little lighter, I felt there was no need to touch that as, luckily, that had been bled properly as the clutch pedal hits the floor and has to be manually lifted during the bleed process, as mentioned in that video too. But I had to bleed the brakes again. Going by that video, I checked both front tyres, as they do not have to be removed to bleed the brakes, to see whether I was competent enough to bleed them myself... Lolz

So I rotated the front right wheel to access the bleeder plug. You can notice the 8mm transparent pipe which plays the most important part in manual bleeding -

Here's a close up the bleeder plug with the rubber cap removed -

Close up of the rubber bung cover for the bleeder plug -

Now with the pipe attached -

A close up of that -

And the final bleed position with the 11mm close end spanner attached -

A view of the front left wheel bleeder plug -

A close up of the bleeder plug with the cap still on -

Now they were contacting me to come to the service station so that they could rectify the job properly, this time around with a better-trained technician. And I had to go to the dealership to do the final pdi of the Kodiaq that was being delivered on Monday, anyways, so I decided to take the car to the dealership and give them a lesson or two in the correct manual bleeding process... lolz

All 4 wheels were now properly bled, as per the video and the photographs you see above -

See the additional gung brake oil I was able to remove now till the clear brake fluid came into view. So there was actual deterioration of the brake oil, unlike what I presumed, and it was only visible once you drain out the old oil into a transparent bottle -

Lessons learnt and key takeaway -

1. Transparent hose is most essential ingredient in case of manual bleeding (see the above video to understand fully). Everything else is secondary.

2. This is the feedback from Ganesh who replied to my comment on that video -Hi bro. Yes, this is the standard procedure for brake bleeding in all cars. You also have the electronic means of doing it by using the ABS module and the VCDS application but it is complicated and lengthy. You can do this with the car turned off - no problems. If you don’t have to bleed the clutch, it is all the more simpler. Just remove the wheels and bleed each brake one after the other, starting from the farthest wheel from the brake fluid reservoir first which is the one behind the front passenger side. Please have one more person sit in the driver side to press the brake pedal as you command, after the bleeder valve is loosened. Very important - tighten the bleeder valve after the pedal is depressed. Good luck!

The brakes were immediately absolutely crisp and even sharper than before on my 10km journey back home.

I hope this is helpful for members planning to bleed their brakes.

Cheers...

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