Pickle Jar

I had a proof-of-concept at one point for bleeding brakes on the car.  It was a simple design, based on a large bulk jar of pickles.  I had drilled two holes in the lid, and used teflon tape and brass fittings to seal the jar.  Then, one of the lines is run to the brake zerk fitting on the brake calipers.  The other line was connected to a vacuum source.  This allowed me to connect it, start the vacuum, open the zerk, and then simply top off the fluid at the master cylinder until I had fluid in the jar.  Functioned pretty good, until I loaned it to someone who broke the jar.  He got me a new jar, but I thought I'd make a better lid for it.

I ordered two things - a chunk of 4.25" aluminum round cut-off, and a rotary table (needed to cut the bayonets in the lid so it would lock down).  I turned it oversized according to the dimensions from the existing lid, drilled a through hole it (so I could thread in a rod and hold it up (hang it).

I then marked a groove (for concentric attachments, drilled 120-degree-apart holes, then tapped them with a pipe thread.  That allowed me to simply thread in the brass pipe inserts.

The hardest part was putting the bayonets on the bottom lip.  There were six of them, so I HAD to have a rotary indexing table.

First, I used a boring bar to cut it to a solid lip on that bottom inside edge.  Next, I had to mill out between the bayonets.  This is what required the rotary table.  I threw a collet into the spindle with an end-mill, positioned it for a cut, then simply milled the lip off to get a bayonet.

Then I assembled it into a functional brake bleeder :

While I was at it, I had a neighbor who needed a thumb screw for a photography gimble.  So, I cut two of them :

Now I can get back to work on the corvette!