An easier way to bleed the brakes

Bleeding the brakes on my 16v turbo must be the most tedious job I have to do on the car. The design of the reservoir does not allow the old fluid to be extracted. Its also painfully slow to fill. I assume this is normal. Is there any easier way?

Has anyone tried a pressure bleeder? Is an adapter cap available? Or, has anyone replaced or modified the reservoir to better suit? Perhaps drill a hole in the top to extract and fill it more easily. A bung or the like would need to fit the hole. Another idea would be to remove the reservoir, empty out the fluid out and refill it. Make the hoses easier to disconnect.

Years ago I used to open all bleeding valves & let out all old fluid, then still with valves open refill with new fluid. This did take a while & did work, but this was back in the 70's on an old Ford, I'm sure someone with more knowledge will tell you if this is still possible. Yes I've tried the pressure bleeder in the past with the spare tyre.

Scuderia, I have used a pressure bleeder. The selection of caps with the kit did not have one to fit the coupe.

However the clutch reservoir cap on the Fiat X1/9 does fit, so I modified the one on my car and bought this replacement reservoir from Eurosport UK They ship worldwide.

A word of caution though: keep the pressure down as it's possible to blow servo seals and they are not easily available for 16vts.

I have used the Gunson's Eezibleed system on a Coupe years ago, I used to use it on my Fiat 124 Spiders, and in fact used an old Fiat 124 Spider brake fluid cap drilled out (a lot of Fiats from the 70's onwards used a standard size of 44 or 45mm IIRC) and it fits the Coupe. As Pete says, you need to drop the pressure on the tyre to something low like 10 psi IIRC. And then when finished, use the pressure with an empty fluid bottle to drive the level down in the reservoir.

But another way is to use a hand-held vacuum "pump" to suck the fluid out at the caliper. You squeeze the trigger several times to create a vacuum (check on the supplied gauge) and hey presto! out the fluid comes. Here's a typical example but you can pay more. That's my favourite method so far.

You can get other vacuum "pumps" that connect to a compressor, so I assume they act like an ejector to create vacuum, but only any good if you have a compressor.

I always use the hand vacuum pump on each caliper. I have done this for years. Just make sure the reservoir is kept topped up.

On several cars I've had over the years I've modified a spare reservoir cap by gluing a schrader valve from a tubeless wheel into the cap. I can then pressurise the system with a pushbike pump.