Brake bleed pattern
 

Looking to bleed my brakes tomorrow as my new rotors and pads arrived today. Got the fronts on and calipers painted, tomorrow morning I'll do the rears then plan to mity vac all the fluid and change it out. Should stop on a dime after that. Just need to know the sequence for an x type. Searched but found everything but the sequence.

Ben

Hi Ben,

When I do the bleed with my Mity I just use the traditional approach of starting with the right rear, then left rear, then right front, then left front. Haven't had any issues using that method, have done it at least 4 times that I can remember.

Cool, now here's another one. I can't get my rear calipers off. Seems that they are tighter than the lip and of course the twist type so I can't just compress the piston. Any ideas save grinding away the rotor lip on the top?

Well, I finally grinded the lip down enough to pry the caliper and bracket off. Both pads were completely stuck to the caliper (hence the problem). Got everything painted up and ready to go back on. Open the rear pads and they're the wrong pad. I guess the cut off date wasn't exactly 04 and 05 for the change in rear calipers. My 05 has the earlier calipers and takes the eaarlier pad it seems. They claim they are overnighting the right ones (for Saturday deliver). Balked at the price but I told 'em I couldn't get any locally unless I want crap pads. Hopefully they arrive tomorrow as I'd hate to put it all back together with the old pads to get it out of my garage.

That sucks. I didn't see your post until just now, but I'm not sure I could have offered any advice without seeing it. Sounds like you did what ya had to.

I'm really not a fan of the rear brake setup on these cars, just about every aspect is overly difficult and/or underperforming. There are so many more effective systems. Heck I just threw rear rotors and pads on my Range Rover last weekend and it was incredibly simple, 4 bolts. And one alignment screw that you don't even need anyway. 15 seconds to compress the piston and you're on your way.

Bah, I'm off my rant. What kind of pads did you get and from who?

Ebay specials, 190 shipped for evolution ceramic pads and slotted/ drilled rotors. Nothing special but should be a decent daily driver performer for me. Only put about 5k on each car a year. Bleeding the brakes doesn't seem to want to get a ton out either. Normally I can get the system flowing good without a ton of pumping. No such luck today. Lets just hope the new pads arrive tomorrow!:icon_wink:

They do seem overly difficult. Kind of remind me of early 80s subaru front brakes.

Chris X, I think the back brakes on our cars is very easy to deal with. If all that you are doing is pads, you need to simply undo 1 bolt, rotate the brakes out of the way, slide the pads off, put the new ones on and then crack the bleeder valve to allow compressing the piston. If you have a second person there with you, as you are compressing the piston, you can have them shut the valve and it will prevent the need to bleed the brakes. Now, if you are looking to remove the rotors too, sure, you have to remove 4 bolts instead of just the one, but that is true of almost every vehicle out there. I'm sure there are exceptions, but the standard seems to be that.

If in doubt of which 1 bolt to remove to rotate the caliper out of the way, look at the two bolts holding the caliper to the bracket. If you look at the lower bolt, it should have a big donut on it, you want to leave that one installed and remove the upper bolt. I then use a large screw driver and rotate the caliper out of the way.

Have to agree with Thermo. Having replaced all pads and discs recently I think the Jag has one of the easiest setups I've ever worked on.

I had to remove quite a bit of corrosion from the calipers to ensure the new pads moved smoothly in the channels. Car is 8 years old now and I see this as an infrequent necessity.

Easy huh? I've changed brakes on 5 ton trucks that were easier.:icon_wink: What else are you guys working on. Took me nearly 45 minutes to put the rear pads in as the anti rattle piece was rather stuborn and kept popping out. I could've replaced both sets of pads, rotors, adjusted the handbrake on my TVR (inboard XJ set up) in the same time I spent doing the same on the X type and that isn't an easy feet trying to work inside of a tube frame when you only have one elbow.:icon_razz: Its done though, Brake Motive came through overnighting me with saturday delivery the older style rear pads. They didn't have a return shipping sticker in there for the others so I'll be posting them in my sig. First to buck up shipping gets 'em.

I've done 3 complete rear rotor/pad swaps on the back end of this 02x and yes it gets a little easier each time, but I"m telling ya, mine fights me every time. Maybe it's because I have a very early 02, I dunno. But my rear pistons do not like to turn back in very fast. All I'm saying is that rotating pistons, in my opinion, are an unneccessary PIA. My Saabs have the same setup front and rear, have to rotate, and it's dumb. The Range Rover's are simple in comparison. As are my Jeep's. I've done 50 or 60 brake jobs in the last 10 years and the X are my least favorite next to the classic 900's.

I don't do just pad swaps. Here in PA the road salt destroys rotors. If I'm doing brakes, I'm doing rotors. Probably overkill half the time but I don't care, I don't want to get halfway through a set of pads and the rotors are junk.

I use a Mity vac for bleeding to eliminate the need for a helper.

Good one Chris..

This is the proper bleed pattern for the X-type and most other vehicles as well.

200 tons per event here at the township I work for.:icon_teeth::) At least for me I go in long before there is salt on the road and don't come home until the pavement is black.:icon_no: