Re: Aaron's First Packard

Posted by HH56 On 2012/2/13 22:09:29

Would be interesting to hear his experiences. I know there have been comments on the Chevy and Buick forums that somewhat parallel ours.

There are some on the forum who have never had a failure and point to the fact that many mfgs and millions of cars used the unit in the day without problems. There are others who have had sudden failures, some even with newly rebuilt units, and with some expensive results. Others have had failures which turned out to be a problem with a line or hose but initially blamed on the BTV. Fortunately, I don't believe anyone has been injured in any of the incidents.

The issue you will find is that due to the different method of operation, no modern unit will just drop in. All vacuum boosters will require some method of increasing the pedal ratio from the BTV's 1:1 to somewhere between 4 and 5:1. Some have mounted a new unit high on the firewall and use the existing pedal with a different actuating point to achieve the ratio, others in the air vent opening with a new pedal and others considerably modify the existing pedal and mounts to keep the unit in the original space. Some of us are still working on a different approach using the original location but trying to keep the interior somewhat stock looking. The Electro-boost is being tried by at least one member. No matter which you choose, all will result in a non stock look somewhere though and to some, that is a concern.