Hi Scotty, and this wonderful community!

I have a 2004 Acura TSX (it is my pride and joy. It is my first and only car, that I have had for 13 years!)

I will also mention I am a younger woman and don't know too much about how cars work, so I'm sorry if I'm not using the proper terms, and would be happy to clarify or answer any additional questions.  My boyfriend has had to deal with the brunt of this car work (and don't worry, I have been handing him all of the tools and buying him as many steak dinners as he asks for LOL).

Okay, on to the problem:

Lately when I have been driving at highway speed, and step on the brakes, the car starts shaking.  We believed this may be due to bad/warping front rotors.  So I bought brand new front rotors, calipers, and brake pads.  We installed them with minimal issue.

When we started bleeding the brakes, everything seemed fine (I was the pumper, and he was the bleeder) but the brakes would not rise/lift.  So we kept bleeding them.  Anyway, some air was coming out, and clean fluid was coming out, and then dirty fluid from the backs were coming out, and then after bleeding them all ~10-15 times, clean fluid was coming out of all of them, and no more air...

But the brakes still weren't rising!

So we double checked that we installed the calipers on the correct sides (apparently a common problem), made sure there were no leaks anywhere in the system (there are no leaks, 100%), tried turning the car on, tried taking the emergency brake off, tried lighting a candle and hopping around on one foot etc.  But still, no luck!  So we kept bleeding them (and topping off the brake fluid, of course.)

After some online research, we found that for a 2004 Acura TSX, you are supposed to only pump half-way (and not to the floor!) and also the bleeding pattern is Driver's Front, Passenger Front, Passenger Rear, and Driver's Rear (which is abnormal, I guess?)

I've changed the rotors and have done some caliper piston maintenance in the past (and by "I," I mean my wonderful father, who loves your channel!) but we had never experienced anything like this before.  (But, we had also never replaced the entire caliper before, either).

At this point, my boyfriend thought that maybe by slowly pumping all the way to the floor, we had somehow trashed the master cylinder, since we were only supposed to pump half-way... and we know it has never been changed (My family bought the car second hand with only ~10,000 miles from a lovely older couple who had sold it back to Acura).  Maybe it was just coincidental timing that the master cylinder went?

So I bought a new master cylinder.

We followed the steps to bleed the new master cylinder to the letter, and installed it into the car earlier today.

But...after bleeding everything again, another ~7 times, there is very minimal improvement. (My boyfriend, the one eating the steak dinners, did say that there is just a very slight improvement from what he saw before we installed the new master cylinder).

We are at a loss and scratching our heads over here!  We both called our Dads (Dads know everything!) and we even asked our coworkers (who are also Dads!)  We are all stumped.

The brakes were 'working just fine,' except the car shaking at highway speed when braking, prior to us installing the new front calipers, pads, and rotors.  To be clear, we did not change anything on the backs, except the bleeder screws on those calipers.

I sincerely appreciate any advice or tips you have!  All of the Dads I've talked to are just as confused as we are, and that is VERY worrisome.

Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions!  And thank you SO VERY much for your time.  This post is probably way too long, but I'm hoping I gave enough information for some concrete help.  I am at my wits end!

______

TLDR; Installed new front calipers, brake pads, rotors + replaced master cylinder on 2004 Acura TSX. No leaks, nothing weird, except brakes still won't work?