E-450 brakes fading on long grades, normal or should i worry?

my favorite subject, so settle in. the E-450 has decent brakes for its weight on flat ground and not a lot of spare on a long grade if you ride them. what you felt sounds like fluid fade more than pad fade. brake fluid pulls in water every year it sits, the boiling point drops, and on a long hill it boils in the calipers. that is the soft pedal. Ford has a flush interval, and almost nobody follows it on a motorhome that does 4,000 miles a year. on a 2019 i would bet yours is original.

flush it with fresh DOT 3. then change how you drive the hills: push the tow/haul button, drop it to 2nd, let the V10 hold you at 3,500 to 4,000 rpm, and brake firmly in short bursts instead of dragging the pedal the whole way. dragging is what cooks it.

joe is right about the downshift. the first time i did it on the coulee roads around La Crosse the engine noise scared my wife, she thought i had broken something. the V10 is fine at those revs. it sounds worse than it is.

living on the Front Range i see a class C with smoking brakes at the bottom of an I-70 grade every summer. the brake check pull off at the top of Vail is there for a reason. also worth two minutes: run your VIN through the recall lookup at nhtsa.gov. coaches that changed hands a couple of times sometimes have open chassis recalls because the notice went to the first owner.

coffee colored here too when we did ours. Thompson Hill coming down into Duluth is our local test, short but steep, and since the flush the pedal stays firm all the way to the bottom.