Time to hit the hay here, but I may venture out in the car tomorrow and see what happens.....less steep hill the opposite direction for the first half mile and then I could use the hand brake if necessary.

Not that long a hill and I should never get brake fade after driving less than a mile on a cold morning.

I'm working pretty long hours for the next few weeks which provides no real time in the evenings to try and pursue and then other maintenance items come up that take precedence.

The pedal went to the floor with virtually little or no braking power....at the time I actually had descended the hill and was turning onto a level area. I had another longer steeper hill in about 1/2 mile and after pumping them up, decided to negotiate the hill and made it ok, then another 6 or 7 miles that day with at least as many stops. Brakes seemed ok, but for the no pedal return. Never had this problem of no pedal return on any car ever previously.

The Edsel and Lincoln units are both up 8-12" higher well above and away from the steering column or any airducts. It'll take some time to tackle it on the car as I have the carpet to deal with first before getting to the plate. If it were not for those extremely hard to get to brake lines, I'd just try to pull it all out quickly, but they are right in there beside the fender and a real pain on this car. Then the whole adding fluid back once the problem is found, bleeding...just takes time.

I did check the vacuum hoses and Tee clamps and hoses appear good and clamps on tight.

OK, yes I posted this on the AACA forum as well a week or so ago. Been too busy with work to get into trying to inspect things, but to recap quickly: First the brakes failed unexpectedly going down the hill even though I sensed no problem backing out of the gararge and stopping or going up my driveway hill and stopping at the road. It is the next time I applied the brakes that they faile as they did about two years ago and then never again after that until a week or so ago and the car has been driven a number of miles including down some signifiant hills on the local mountains. I pumped the brakes a few times and they became as normal except then the brake pedal failed to return, and Keith I cannot really at this time discern that the brakes are still engaged...it just feels like the pedal doesn't return because I feel no drag or resistance. This booster was rebuilt by Ed Strain who rebuilt my others and in fact rebuilt both the Edsel and Lincoln T/Vs quite a few years ago and they are doing fine. I just will have devote some time to this down the pike. And yes, the car is stored in a garage with heat on if it drops down into the 20s. I took a quick look again this evening and believe the only way I can get the top off the filler hole is throuigh the inside after removing the bracket. There is one screw under the steering column inaccesible. Will try to report back as soon as I can look at this. I did back it out of the garage this morning and back in this evening and the brakes felt good but the pedal did not return.

My brother has both an Edsel and a '56 Lincoln Premiere with Treadlevacs and we've not experienced the problems we've known on the Packards. Also he rarely needs to top off the reservoir. On all four of my '53-56s, I need to top the reservoit off several times a year. And on the Premiere and Edsel, access to the unit is right there up high rather than on the ground and in the floorboard....what WERE they thinking!

I could not get at least one of the screws out a couple years ago when I tried to remove the cover on the car. Due to access and the screws being in tight, an offset will not work. I'll have to look again but I just remember one being where I could not see it or even get a screw driver on it.

You'll see from my posting on the AACA Packard forum, I too had a similar problem with no brake pedal return just last week. Initially the brakes failed until I got them pumped up and then they worked normally except the pedal no return. This unit, as all my units, was rebuilt by Ed back in 2003. Access to the unit in the floorboard and brake lines is such a pain (nuisance). It will be awhile before I can do anything with mine other than try to observe through the filler opening what be happening but that's very difficult to do.