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A 'low' pedal is not an indication that the brakes need to be bled. The feel when the brakes finally engage (high, low, or pumped) indicates if they need to be bled. A firm, solid feel means there is little or no compressible air bubbles in the system. A soft, springy sort of feel indicates that compressible air is making 'slack' between the master cylinder and the brakes on each wheel.
A 'low' pedal - where the brakes only engage when the pedal is further down, or after 'pumped' means there is an excess of mechanical slack between the brake shoes and the brake drum. (Of course a pedal can be 'low' and soft at the same time if the brakes are out of adjustment AND need bleeding). The discs on the front are self adjusting in the manner they operate - but not the rear brakes. Well, some of them have auto adjusters but they are prone to sticking. And older cars (like my '63 PV) have manual adjusters that must be adjusted every 10K miles or so. If pulling the hand brake seems to temporarily cure the 'low' pedal its a good indication that the rears need to be adjusted.
AFAIK if you are going to put silicon in you need to clean the system very well to rid it of all the old style brake fluid, and since you broke a bleeder off (soak those daily with PBlaster for a solid week before you try to get them off!) I can't imagine you got the old fluid out.
Fluid can't just disappear. It has to leak out somewhere. If you don't see it dripping out under the car or under the hood two more sneaky options remain. First is leaking out inside the car from the end of the master cylinder, trickling down the floorboards under the mats. Another possiblity is that if you have power brakes the motor could be sucking fluid through the vacuum connection with a couple of failures in the booster and master cylinder.
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I'm JohnMc, and I approved this message.
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