I don't know how true it is anymore, but certainly in times gone by, brake fluid made a damn good paint stripper...

The aim of the game was to bleed the brakes and the clutch without getting brake fluid on anything! Fortunately, Matt has a oil sucker thingy for marine purposes. This makes bleeding the brakes quite contained and less spilly. 

Starting at the furthest point from the master cylinder, the aim is to push lots of brake fluid through the lines until you don't get any bubbles coming out in the brake fluid.

Because we have mounted the rear calipers upside down to make the handbrake more sensible, we decided it would probably be a good idea to remove them from the car and turn them the right way up to bleed them.

All was going swimmingly and we got to a stage we were happy with the rear brakes. 

Onto the front brakes, easy enough, until...

Matt suddenly noticed the inside of one of the front wheels covered in brake fluid. A quick cleanup and the problem is diagnosed. The link pipe between the pistons on one of the ATR calipers was loose. Brake fluid was being pumped inside piston housing and leaking straight out of the caliper. 

Fortunately, it looks like brake fluid doesn't kill powder coating... Phew!

Top tip - the front brake flexi hoses need a bit of a twist to keep them away from any moving parts when going from lock to lock. We also decided to protect and cable tie the hoses to the cycle wings as its impossible to keep them away from each other - will this pass IVA, we hope so!

Lastly, the clutch. These can generally be a bit of a pain. Went with the easy option and injected fluid from the slave cylinder end with a syringe so boyancy wasn't trying to thwart us. 

A few pumps and a bit of fiddling about with the bleed valve and we were in business. 

Now that the clutch was bled, we realised we would probably need something to stop the clutch pedal being flicked towards the back of the car because the pushrod just catches on the piston when it comes back in. More on that when we talk about a couple of general pedal box modifications later on.