Opening the bleed nipple when winding back calliper pistonsW

[bobfather]

When planning to fit new rear pads to my '09 Honda Civic I Googled to find out whether it was a left or right hand drive to screw the piston back in. During that research I spotted a couple of threads that mentioned opening the bleed nipple so that oil wouldn't be forced back through the ABS system.

Is this normal practice? I've done this job many times on many cars and not opened the bleed.

[mrmr96]

I've never opened the bleed nipple to push pistons back in, and I've never seen it done either. I do take the top off the fluid reservoir and put a rag over it to catch any excess though.

I would think that opening the nipple and then messing about with the piston would be more likely to get air in the system. (Normally the nipple is only opening when you're bleeding the brakes and have pressure in the system to guarantee no air will be sucked back in.)

ETA - It's always been cars >5 years old I've been working on, so I don't know if there's not some technical reason why, on an '09 Civic, you need to do things differently. Is there a manual available for your car?