Bleeding Brakes

Today I enlisted my friend Samuel in order to bleed the brakes of my Mom’s car and fully flush out the system.

Autozone

Yesterday(April 5 2026), after hanging out with Abdul at guitar center and purchasing a pedal, I stopped by the Oceanside Autozone and acquired some DOT 3 brake fluid and ATF for my Mom’s 2012 Honda Pilot.

The Process

After waking up from a horrible night plagued by the after-effects of L&L Hawaiian BBQ chicken-katsu w/ curry I immediately got to work on pulling the car out of the driveway and onto the nice level surface provided by the road in front of the house.
Once I had gotten the car prepped for the operation, I called up Samuel (who I knew would actually be awake at 1pm on a monday) and he hurried on over as he owed me a favour for helping him repair his mirror a week or so ago after his unfortunate run in with a fence that had suddenly attacked his car.
To start, we pulled the cap off of the brake fluid master cylinder and there was quite a nasty sight on display. It was made very clear that the car was long overdue for a change in brake fluid and a system flush, and most likely a flush of the transmission fluid system as well, which I plan on probably doing tomorrow.
After pulling the cap off, we used a cheapo AutoZone fluid pump and pumped all of the old nasty fluid out of the master cylinder. Next, I just refilled the fluid in the master cylinder with my brand new DOT 3 brake fluid, also from autozone. Once the old fluid was removed, it was time to bleed the brakes.
First we started by using a floor jack which we placed under the front tow hitch (as advised by the always correct internet) and pumped the car up off the ground, and then we placed a jack stand under the driver side wheel for added safety. Once the wheel was jacked up we took off the wheel and placed it underneath the frame of the car for even more added safety (lame, I know). Once the wheel was off the car we took the bleeder valve(?) cap off, put a wrench and a hose over it, and one of us pumped the brakes until there was pressure, in which the other would loosen the nut on the stem allowing for the old brake fluid to flow out until the brake pedal hit the floor. Then the person at the bleeder valve would tighten the nut again and the process would begin again until there were no air bubbles coming from the brake calipers and the fluid was clear.
Once the process of bleeding the caliper was complete, all loose nuts would be tightened and the wheel would be put back onto the car, being torqued down @ 94 ft-lbs. The master cylinder would once again be topped off with DOT 3 brake fluid and the process would start once again going in a pattern from the driver side front wheel, to the passenger side, and then to the passenger side rear wheel, and back to the drivers side. With the master cylinder being topped off between bleeding and the wheels being painstakingly taken off and put back on (Wheels are heavy FYI).
After all of this was finished, we drove the car around and the brakes actually worked! Marking another successful endeavour into car maintanence, which will soon be followed by a complete transmission flush which is probably long overdue.

Caveats

This will just be a short list of tidbits and issues that weren’t important enough to be a part of the process.

We saw Andrew Tse with his girlfriend and (maybe) Tyler Larson on the way to AutoZone, and much to Samuel’s dismay, we did not follow them.
Finding jack points was actually weirdly difficult, there was no mention of it in the manual or the internet really for this gen of Honda Pilot so there was lots of searching for suitable spots, which ended up being the tow link area thingys
Tires are freaking heavy dude, I’m definitely gonna feel that in my back tomorrow.