Replacing my first master cylinder, anything I need to know?

If you're looking to experiment with pressure bleeders, you can make your own on the cheap

Rev, go to the parts store and buy 2 short brake tubes with the correct flares and threads to fit your new MC. Attach to MC outlet ports, loop around into reservoir, and now you've got a bench bleeding kit.

I advise against pushing fluid "upstream" from calipers toward MC, because there's always a little bit of crud / sediment / corrosion inside the calipers and inside the tubes that doesn't come out during a regular bleed. Pushing fluid upstream raises the risk of pushing some crud into the new MC or the ABS unit (I know your car is non-ABS) and damaging a seal, etc.

Rusted_Busted_Spit wrote:

AngryCorvair wrote: With a new MC, you pretty much *must* do this to get all the air out of the MC. Doing it on a bench means you can move the MC to all sorts of positions you can't do on the car to be sure you get all the air out. After the MC is bench bled, install it and fill the reservoir with clean fluid. Open the RR bleed screw and push the piston all the way in, as if you were doing a pad replacement. This pushes almost all the old fluid out through the bleeder and minimizes the mixing of old and new fluid. Then just let it gravity bleed until you see clean fluid coming out the bleeder. Close that one and repeat the process at each of the other 3 corners.

That makes it sound so easy. Will this work on an ABS car?

Yes! The passages in an ABS unit are normally open to allow flow to the brakes in non-ABS braking. The parts of the ABS unit which redirect and hold fluid during an ABS event are normally closed and spring-loaded to minimum volume, so there's no dirty fluid hanging out in there waiting to contaminate your new fluid.

The industry recommends a complete brake fluid change every 2 years. I do it by gravity bleeding on my cars. When I'm done, I will do a couple of ABS stops to wet the normally closed parts with fresh fluid. Because OCD.