Actually, I wasn't sure what was going to happen with brake fluid resevoir. So I undid the "child safety" cap, but left it on, which (I don't think) didn't break the seal. I was afraid of unnecessary moisture exposure. However, I also didn't want exploding brake fluid, so that's why the rag was around it. My take is that for the small piston movement I compressed, it did not overflow the resevoir. So it turns out the rag was just a precaution.
Also, I only needed 1 or 2 pumps to get the pressure back, and I had no spongyness so I'm guessing I never introduced bubbles which would require bleeding of the brakes. So, I never bled the brakes. I've driving it around a bit braking it in and taking it easy and all seems well. In a couple days I'll try using the brakes hard to see.
My lesson learned: BRAKE BALANCE IS EVERYTHING!! (ie, you really need to upgrade all four brakes the same amount to maintain the designed in; unless you really know what you're doing and taking measurements.) This means that if you still have rear drums, you're screwed. Good luck finding matched drum shoe upgrades. Disc swap is the only way, otherwise, leave the setup stock.
I thought the "slight upgrade" in just pads at the front wouldn't be bad since I also got stiffer springs. But since I had no real specs, I ended up with too much clamp force at the front. I theorize this exposed a worn bushing and corner weight imbalance inherent to my current setup (I don't have coil overs). This was overloading the right front tire too quickly and I got bad camber/toe-like wear; even though I have in-spec static alignment. Plus, the rear drums were hardly wearing AT ALL (assuming because they were doing very little work).
Last edited by chimchim; 01-22-2006 at 10:13 PM.