A Guide on How to Bleed Your Avid and Shimano Brakes

Sometimes, you just toast your brakes from too much brake sliding on corners, and you need to give them a little love. Here, I provide a comprehensive guide that details exactly how to bleed your Avid and Shimano brakes.

How to Bleed Your Avid Brakes

Step 1: Find the correct bleed kit

Have you had Avids before? Well, you definitely needed to bleed them, so lets go ahead and grab that old bleed kit. Oh wait! You have newer brakes? They take a different size syringe than your last pair. Scratch that, drop another $50 to get a new kit.

Step 2: Prep your syringes

Close your syringes, and pull back on the lever a bunch of times. Do this for 1-2 hours, as you need all the dissolved air out of the DOT 5 fluid because if not, your brakes will be in the same state they are in right now in less than 5 minutes.

Step 3: Bleed your brakes

Take the bleed port screws off on your caliber and lever. Feed fluid in through the back caliber, pulling from your lever reservoir with the other syringe. Do this a lot, as you probably have a metric shit-ton of air in your system. Then do it more, because there is probably a leak in your bleed system somewhere.

Step 4: Put the screws back in the holes

Put your bleed port screws back in, call your wife, tell her you love her, and then feel the lever. Chances are, it feels mediocre. If it doesn't, say a prayer or two, drop your sledge hammer, and repeat steps 2-4. If it does, this is a large success, and it's nice to know you won't have to do this process again until after your next ride.

How to Bleed your Shimano Brakes

Step 1: You won't need to bleed your Shimano brakes.

Don't believe me? Why are bike companies outfitting their bikes with all Sram parts and Shimano brakes…?