How To Bleed Shimano Bike Hydraulic Disc Brakes With No Special Tools

Here is how to bleed Shimano bike disc brakes without any special tools. If you have the Shimano mineral brake oil kit, you don’t need any special tools to bleed Shimano Bicycle hydraulic disc brakes. To bleed your Shimano bike disc brakes, you just need to take the plug out of the brake cylinder at the handle bar, and then plug the little plastic tube into the little plastic bottle and put brake fluid in from the brake unit at the wheel. If you have hydraulic Shimano disk brakes on your bike, watch this video to learn how to bleed hydraulic bike disc brakes yourself without needing any special tools to get the job done.
Here is where you can get a Shimano brake bleeding kit with mineral oil:
amzn.to/2CqzP2d

[@jonnyd_vids]

So you didnt actually remove your old oil... If the oil was affected from prolonged use or heat etc and needs to be replaced then you are actuaally doing nothing to help that. You should oil from the top using an open top oil bowl or syring with plunger removed and allow oil to completely flow through system till its the new oil flowing out the bottom. This is why brake stoppers are used to force the oil out of the lower collection areas and allows all the old oil to be purged. All you have done is topped up the brake fluid. Not a bleed.

[@Ris-v4w]

good idea in the beginning, but sorry you messed it up.....I'll detail for others watching...... you can do 2 things to these brakes : bleed them or top them off. in this vid, you are using a bottle meant to just top off the oil, to try to bleed the brake, and end up messing both up. To top off, you use that bottle to drip oil onto the lever itself, while it has the larger cap open, so you can see the interior of reservoir. drip there, until oil is topped off literally. the hose needs to be connected to the caliper so that you can direct the oil coming OUT from there into a pan and not into the rotor/pads. while the lower bleed nipple is open you pull the lever to push some oil out through that hose. doing this you will need to drip again oil into the lever to TOP IT OFF. that's why it's called this way! this procedure is meant just to add a bit more oil. then there is the BLEEDING procedure which means to change the old oil completely! which you do by using a syringe to push oil from the caliper up the system, and let the handle BLEED until the fresh new oil comedy out. whish way you also get rid of most of the air, as it will go up the system and come out at the lever, while having fresh oil with no bubbles in the system. you could do this the way you did it maybe with that bottle, BUT I don't think you have enough power to squish the bottle all together to get out enough oil for a bleed WITHOUT bubbles!! which is the part you completely messed up, sorry, you added into the system a very HUGE bubble there! imagine that sized air bubble will fill like 3 inches of the oil line/hose with air instead of oil. that is nowhere near what should happen. if you really want to do the awkward style with that bottle from the caliper side, at least mount first the hose to the bleed nipple, open the lever cap, then open the nipple, let oil run down (or help it by pushing the lever) to fill up the hose, THEN attach the bottle without bubbles and push everything (old oil + new) back into the caliper. be careful not to let old oil gent into the bottle in this process. of you can do this with 0 bubbles, then hat's off to you! but it will be very hard. that's why YOU DO NOT TOP OFF THIS WAY! AND NEITHER DO YOU BLEED the brakes this way! 😅 ok, long enough. but maybe helping someone not do your mistakes. cheers!

[@jamesoneil9757]

So glad to see one of these without the overwrought warnings and fussy procedures. The whole remove the wheel requirement is just to keep noobs from trashing pads then complaining to Shimano.

[@steezystonks]

I see you must have needed a spare rim in a hurry... I too, am a proud owner of a WEIMANN rim, lol! It's not as good as the wtb rim I had, and it's not tubeless, but it can take a serious beating!! Lol

[@macbook802]

You clearly introduced bubbles into the system

[@russellnolan1103]

saved me a lot less technical then the other methods and has worked for me

[@hoohoohoblin]

I’m glad I could help. This really is pretty simple to do. Some other manufacturers hydraulic brakes are a lot harder to bleed.

[@PieterJacob]

No special tools? Do you expect me to have a spare rubber tube in my left sock???

[@johnmcginn1774]

Do I have to remove my brake pads and put in a bleed block?

[@hoohoohoblin]

Nope.

[@dome4655]

..

[@dome4655]

.

[@andyc9187]

Really useful, thanks for posting. Too many other videos made me think I needed loads of special tools.

[@albertocastillo4572]

A brake burp that went into a brake fart.

[@Thomas-t5x]

This was the video i searched for! Thanks alot! Greetings from germany

[@hoohoohoblin]

You're welcome!

[@TestaFranco]

Nah this is just a refill

[@matevski1333]

Thank you so much very helpful my Crescent njord 27.5 has the same brakes.But couldn't you bleed the brakes from the top the brake lever?

[@hoohoohoblin]

You have to put fluid in from the bottom so that any bubbles will rise to the top.

[@diegeeleel]

No good. Lever has alot of play still.

[@MrHemlock51]

Thanks for the video. I wish I’d watched this one first to see how easy it really is!

[@aarondonally8153]

That's shimano brake still ain't too bad in performance

[@hoohoohoblin]

When it’s working, it works great. We found that it does need to be bled often.

[@caindenham7993]

What type of model are they

[@behzadehdaie7866]

👍👍👍

[@hmmmm2568]

Can you put the brake fluid the other way around. Meaning you put it on the brake levers near the handle bar not on the brakes near the tire

[@hoohoohoblin]

You’re not supposed to do that because air bubbles will get caught in it. Doing it from bottom to top pushes all of the bubbles out, and the bubbles or what caused the brakes to fail.

[@hmmmm2568]

@@hoohoohoblin thanks

[@johnandrewsuratos7769]

That is the right way to bleed the hydraulic brake but the problem is he not remove all old oil in there

[@Ris-v4w]

actually you are wrong. I have a long explanation here in the comments on why, please check it out

[@fallingleaveskungfu]

Nice DIY brake bleed video. Super simple.

[@hoohoohoblin]

Thanks

[@fetB]

super simple and wrong

[@paulcombes3782]

@@fetB . . . Glad you don't work in rocket science , its just a brake bleed @fetB.

[@fetB]

@@paulcombes3782 glad you dont take things too seriously

[@lrobie123]

thanks for your post. The Park Tool KZbin video for bleeding brakes on Shimano brakes is over complicated in order to display how to use the $150 Park Tool hydraulic bleeding kit. Your techniques worked fine to improve my braking

[@hoohoohoblin]

You’re welcome. I’m glad I could help.

[@alexbruce4650]

Is your back brake on the right hand side because mine is on the left

[@bmxscape]

on most bicycles the back brake is on the right.

[@harcormor]

Also greatly depends on where you are from...in the U.S. we mostly have our rear on the right. In the U.K. its usually on the left...

[@jgc4703]

Do you need to remove the brake pads before bleeding?

[@hoohoohoblin]

No.

[@robiveevee840]

looks easy thanks for the vid !

[@hoohoohoblin]

You’re welcome

[@carloswithac]

Thank you! Just bled the brakes.

[@hoohoohoblin]

You’re welcome.

[@1marcelfilms]

Hydraulic brakes on a bike? why to overcomplicated

[@hoohoohoblin]

I agree, unless I’m going downhill a lot and doing a lot of braking, like at a ski lift bike park. We bought two bikes at the same time when I bought the bike in the video. One of the bikes has mechanical disc brakes, which always work great and never have any problems, and the other bike is this one with the hydraulic brakes, and we’ve had to bleed the brakes four or five times already because sometimes you’ll pull the brake lever and nothing happens. I think with hydraulic disc brakes, if you buy the cheapest ones like these, you’re better off with cable disc brakes. The more expensive hydraulic disc brakes work great and don’t require as much maintenance.

[@zzlat_]

@@hoohoohoblin Could you please tell us what is the model of these of these Shimano breaks ?

[@Ka1981100]

Can I use dot 4 on my bike thanks

[@hoohoohoblin]

I don’t know. It would probably compress the same, but I don’t know how it would mix with the mineral oil already in the system. It’s better to use the right oil.

[@james-hb5tu]

NO do not do this

[@gryyta9617]

Im a bit late, but dont use Dot...if you search for a cheap alternative go for powersteering ATF, exactly the same as shimano oil but just 10€/l

[@Ris-v4w]

NO!! if the brake is designed for mineral oil, adding DOT to it will swell up the rubber gaskets from inside the brake and will make it feel horrible, can also block it, and will definitely degrade the rubber in time. you'll actually throw away your break at that point. the other way around though, I don't know

[@xdgmail1458]

Can I full from the top and squeese the brake?

[@hoohoohoblin]

That would probably work if there weren’t any bubbles elsewhere in the system.