Hi, I got my new brake master assembly replacement, two new rear calipers, brake hoses replacement, and full brake flush/bleeding done last week. Here is a write up of some good and bad things I experienced during this project.
Thanks to all the contributors of this post, the info and help you provide here really help me to get this done. I very appreciate it!
- Overall
Before this project, I got a lot of friendly warnings about "the risk of working on master cylinder", and this is the first time I really work serious brake stuff (of course, I changed pads and rotors many many times). Honestly, I am pretty dread to do this. But, actually, this work is much easier than I think, for example, if we consider the difficulty of front CV axle change as 50 points, this probably only 30 points of difficulty. And If you don't have a trusted shop to do this, do it by yourself could be a very reasonable choice, because any half-ass mechanic and shop could hide a lot of things from this work. For example, I called three shops for this, two of them don't even know LC100 requires ABS bleeding, and the one who knows ABS bleeding does not have a tool to do this...
- First, be careful about the shipping damage when you choosing purchase a master cylinder assambly from a non-local dealer with free shipping.
For this expansive part, you can save almost 200 dollars if you purchase it from some tax-free state dealer with Toyota free shipping. But the problem is how Toyota package this 2000 dollar more part, they use very cheap cardboard box without any shockproof material. And the damage usually comes from the bottom of that cheap package, the hoses and motor at the bottom will be easily got some dent during the shipping. To avoid this, I decide to buy it from local dealer with local picking up and have to pay more for tax, even though the first coming assembly was damaged on some bottom hoses and the side plastic case. But I can easily return or refuse to accept it because it is a local purchasing part. And even though the customer service is great and they are very sorry about that, I have to wait for another week for another one.
- Second, it impossible to replace the master assemble without taking off the kick panel and all the bottom parts under the steering wheel. break loosing the brake hoses on the assembly before you took off all the mounting nuts from the cab.
Here is a video that could clearly show how to remove all these panels/cases.
For a 04 LC100, you'd better have some swivel socket and, in my opinion, you have to have some long extensions to get all the mounting bolts out there. And a 1/4 extension and socket set will make this work easier. 3 of the MC assembly mounting bolts except the one in the right top corner is accessible for a torque wrench.
- Third, All brake line connector includes the connectors on the calipers and matter assembly are accessible for a torque wrench.
you can use a crowFoot and extension to torque them. Here is a set I bought for this work.
Amazon product ASIN B000N7DHFK
- Forth, I got the bleeding include abs bleeding done with "Motive power bleeder" and Techstream, I'd say it turned out awesome.
By this bleeding method,
I used totally 7 bottles of OEM brake fluid (covered two new rear calipers replacement)
If you go with "Motive power bleeder", you have to buy the adapter "BA10" reservoir cap adapter, I bought from here and It cost 50 bucks and two weeks shipping
Power Probe BA10 TOYOTA SMALL BRAKE BLEEDER ADAPTER | Tool Discounter - https://www.tooldiscounter.com/product/power-probe-toyota-small-brake-bleeder-adapter-pprba10?gclid=CjwKCAjwoNuGBhA8EiwAFxomAx6ZbWWjGtvRjLWAMjTIicdrMfL9-
When I use this adapter, it still got some kind of losing pressure when I do the test, But it is working fine during the whole real bleeding process.
The bleeding order I follow is "FR, FL, RR, RL".
For the Techstream, I used v7.0 on a window 7 32bit system, the installation is pretty straightforward. And if your version of Techstream is too high, you probably can not find the "utility" for the ABS bleeding from the interface of Techstream. (For example V15.0+++). Additionally, if you have a very new laptop you might experience some difficulty with Win7 installation. Because, technically, most of the motherboards of the laptop from today's market do not support Win7 installation right away, you need a lot of tricks for making it work. If this is the case for you, then you'd better buy a used laptop. Below is the ODBII adapter I used for the Techstream: