[salguod]

So, after being on hold due to business of life and cold temps, the never ending brake job on the 318ti is in its home stretch. I've patched the blown metal line (flaring brake line above your head while on your back on cold concrete in 40-something degree F temps is not for wimps), time will tell if it will leak or not. I dug into repairing the parking brake and after surveying all the rusty bolts, I decided to live without it. So, all that's left is replacing a front brake hose and bleeding the system. Before digging into the hose replacement, I decided to give each bleeder a good soaking in PB blaster. When I get to the LR, I'm confronted with the attached image.

Note the absence of a bleeder screw? There seem to be no threads, there is no broken bleeder in the hole (EDIT: Looking at it again compared with images of broken bleeders, it does look like what I've got is a broken bleeder.) and no evidence of leaking fluid. It feels like a blind hole, maybe 10mm deep. All the paperwork I have on the car, including receipts back to new, show no caliper replacements, so this is likely the BMW original part. There is a receipt for a brake flush by the dealer in 2000. How'd they do it with no bleeder?

It doesn't make sense and I hate the idea that I probably have to buy a caliper just to bleed the brakes. Argh.

Anyone run into this before? Any ideas aside from replacing the caliper?