Update: my brother works at a shop so I asked him if they could bleed my ABS module. He said they don't normally have to do that if they use a certain technique for bleeding. I was intrigued....... So he came over Monday night and helped me with the brake bleeding. What he did was open up the bleeders one at a time in the normal sequence, but instead of opening and closing the bleeder each time the pedal was pressed/depressed, he just held his finger over the bleeder. The reason for this was to move the fluid through faster - I just pumped the pedal up-and-down at a regular cadence and the more-steady movement of the fluid through the system is supposed grab more air with it. He did see some air come out while doing that. Then once that was done, we went back and did a normal bleed for each line. This helped the pedal feel, but it still wasn't perfect. That's when I showed him a video I found:
Now, they claim to be bleeding the ABS, but in reality they're just bleeding the proportioning valve. Still, we gave it a shot. We got even more air out by doing that. Then we bled all of the lines again....more air still. Those internet wizards sure are smart
My brakes are much better now, though I think there may be a little air in there still. It doesn't feel like it did before the brake upgrade and I don't think it's just because of the larger caliper pistons. My suspicion is that the ABS module had a bunch of air in it....and I don't think just from me accidentally running the reservoir dry. When I bought the truck, I noticed that the ABS module was a replacement from a junkyard since it had paint pen writing on it. My hypothesis is that I probably had a little air in there all along because when they swapped it, they didn't use a scan tool to bleed it properly......at least that's my guess.
My brother has a friend that bought the old scan tool from the shop he works at. He's going to check if it will do an ABS bleed. Yes, I could just have his shop do it, but he's trying to save me the charge. If all else fails, I may just get a new scan tool that will do an ABS bleed. When I was youtubing I found a video review of a homeowner grade scan tool that will actually do an ABS module bleed:
I actually found it for $145 on Ebay, so it's really not a bad price. If I sold my current OTC scan tool I could hopefully recoup about half of that.
So that's my update for now. This weekend we're going to take a semi-local road trip so I can start racking up miles on the gears. Hopefully by next week I can be up in the 3-500 mile range so I can change the gear oil and stop babying the gears.
