[350TSS]

Next I turned my attention to the front brakes. I spent a solid hour cracking the bleed nipple on the furthest caliper, pulling the brake lever to the bars, closing the bleed nipple, releasing the brake lever and waiting 10 or fifteen seconds for the bubbles to rise through the master cylinder. I knew it was going to be painfull as the sytem was completely dry to start with. At the end of an hour I had not needed to refill the master cylinder despite seeing a stream of bubbles every time.
A long time ago I used to work on cars quite a bit and have bought over the years 3 "easy" bleed tools.
1. Gunsons - working off tyre pressure forcing fluid through a reservoir into the master cylinder via a sealed cap - this is no good as none of the available caps fit a motorcycle master cylinder.
2. A hand pumped system that creates a vacuum and draws the fluid through from the manually topped up master cylinder (between the bleed nipple and the vaccum pump there is a reservoir to capture the fluid before being drawn into the vacuum pump), and
3. A system that works off an air line and works rather like a spray gun, blowing the compressed air across a venturi that creates a vacuum that draws the fluid from the manually topped up master cylinder into a "paint kettle" below the venturi.
If you are a designer working for a manufacturer of easy bleed systems you only have one job, which has two parts a) to make sure the system has an adequate seal to all the various types of bleed nipple available on any vehicle (including motorcycles) and b) to make sure that the reservoir for brake fluid has sufficient stability to overcome the tendency for the necessary pipework to overturn said reservoir.
The designers of both the the systems I have purchased need to go back to school or at least try their product out on a motorcycle.
I tried item 2 above first. It would hold a vacuum provided you did not move the pipe attached to the bleed nipple which is virtually impossible whilst you are vigorously generating the vacuum with the hand pump. When the flimsy reservoir tipped up and emptied its contents into the hand vacuum pump end of the equipment and started spraying me and everything in the vicinity with brake fluid out of the back end of the pump I switched to number 3.
This was marginally more successful and would probably work very well with 15cfm air supply, unfortunately I only have about 10cfm. The system is very air hungry and draws a lot of fluid.
After running it for about an hour I had used 3 litres of brake fluid and still had no brake lever.
The problem really I think is that drawing the air downwards through the fluid is not the way to go. Air naturally wants to rise in brake fluid and if the bleed nipple was at the master cylinder end (top) of the system I think it would have worked.
So 5 hours in the garage, no clutch system, no front brake and I haven't even started to work on the rear brake. Not a great day