Re: Bendix Treadle Vac, Myths, Fiction and Facts

Posted by Craig Hendrickson On 2017/2/22 15:19:37

Thanks Fred and James for this study and your documentation. No doubt long term storage affects the BTV in the manner in which you describe.

In my personal case this was NOT the situation. To reiterate my experiences. I had 4 BTV failures in 4 years, all the BTVs were from different vendors except the first one which was in my 55 Pat when I bought it from the 2nd owner. That one failed after about 1 year of relatively frequent driving (2-3 times a week). The 3 replacements also failed after about 1 year. Not all failures were no-notice catastrophic pedal-to-the-floor-no-brakes ones. A couple were pedal-slowly-to-the-floor ones. Anyway, I'd finally had it with the BTV and engineered a solution using new, modern components. That was 13 years ago and it has operated flawlessly ever since.

FWIW & YMMV.

Craig