Years ago someone told me about 'gravity bleeding' brakes. You open up the brake nipple on all 4 brakes and let her sit overnight. The theory is all the air will eventually rise to the top and work its way out of the system.Tighten them down the following morning...........Has anybody ever tried this method?

 

Overnight? All the fluid will be gone. I just did this on my Camaro because I had to replace the proportioning valve and I did it by myself. I craked a bleeder till I saw fluid coming out and left it open and moved to the next one and the next one. Once I got to the last one I made sure the fluid was still full and started at #1 and went around closing them. Brakes work fine.
Or there are bleeder screws with a valve in them for 1 man brake bleeding

 

i couldnt get a new pair of calipers to bleed no matter how much pedal i used, nothing would come out. let them stay open overnight and went at it the next day, and they were bleeding just fine.

 

I do it all the time at work, however, you still need to pressure bleed the system to force out air that gets caught in the lines, believe me it can happen, you should always pressure bleed.

 

I used the pressure bleeder first to force the fluid from the brakes to the master but it did not give me a good pedal until I did the gravity bleed

 

Because you never bleed that way. I know that there are tools that alow you to do it but the fluid was never ment to flow through the system like that. and doing that on any ABS system will damage it more than what you've just repaired. Always bleed from the master out to the wheels. I've done thousands of brake jobs and always grav bleed then pedal bleed, and not the pump-hold method, it makes more work for you. Just open the bleeder and slowy depress the pedal. it works alot better, and you spend less time bleeding.

 

I have bleed many brakes, including ABS, that way and have had no problem. It works great for motorcycle brakes and cluthces. But those systems are small. It may have worked on my car, because it has in the past, but I was on the ground and did not want to go around to many more times and I was working with a new porprtioning valve. In fact, its been so long ago since I started doing it that way, it was around the time when ABS was becoming more comon that I read at least one manufacture recomended it done that way one thier system. (it may have been the Germans. You know they want every thing done with an exspensive tool)