OK-I've told this story before over on the AACA Packard forums, I'll try to do long story short here:
My uncle worked for Ford (Lincoln Mercury) out of Dearborn during the period that Packard was hitting the skids. There were memos going around Ford to unconditionally hire anyone that showed up from Packard applying for a job, such was the respect for Packard at Ford. There was a steady procession form East grand blvd. to various Ford facilities.
My uncle used to go to lunch with a bunch of marketing people, one of whom came from Packard and still drove a 1956 Carribbean. They all were intrigued with the Packard pushbuttons and thought them to be just the thing for this new car they were working on. They arranged for the Carribbean to go to an engineering garage for evaluation, looked at the system on the car and bought the parts needed to make up the system through a S-P dealer. The one thing my uncle kept hearing was "we've got to make this thing cheaper"
The tooling had been destroyed at Autolite at the end of the run, Packard was gone and no one wanted to pay for the tooling, so Ford started all over for the Edsel. They were known to be more trouble than Packard's p-button system.
Jim Nance became the head of Edsel, and was well known as a proponent of pushbuttons, first at Hotpoint with the pushbutton range, then at Packard. He would have been more than receptive, although the idea would have to climb a long ladder of middle men at Ford before a product VP would have seen it.

Two years ago we had the Nash convention in town and they came to the facility where I work to take a tour. I was out front looking at all of the various Nashes and began talking to a guy who as it turns out was their club president. I mentioned that I was interested in the 55-56 models and his face sort of turned and said "you know those have the Packard engine and transmission, I'd avoid those" I replied that I am a Packard guy, a V-8 Packard guy and that I don't fear the V-8 or the T-U, that we kinda have them figured out and rather enjoy them. He just seemed baffled.

So the job in Wichita came through?

Good deal and congrats.

Go to any Borders books, Barnes and Nobles, etc. and get a copy of the Old cars weekly price guide. Buy a copy of Hemmings, or go to the library and look at about a years worth of Hemmings--that should give you a decent idea.

P-V8--"potting" is a term left over from my days in electronic manufacturing, it describes the process of molding a compound around an object. The reason I don't use new wire (yet) is that the pushbutton contact segment wires are cast into a rubber block (see pic. 16) as a seal to keep road dirt and water out.
A percentage (I'm guessing about a quarter) of the pushbutton units I'm seeing have this condition where there is a break in the insulation jacket right where the wire exits the rubber block, leaving about 1/16" of exposed wire. There will be 4-6 such exposed sections in the same harness, making me afraid that a loose piece of anything conductive could get up there and short out the leads, and cause trouble. I form a mold around the back side of the rubber block and encase those exposed sections of wire to avoid such problems. It's also good since it changes the bending point of the wire.

$25/hr + parts and materials, $40 for the eight fingers, The average job is between $300 and $400

here are the videos on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6nsZzGsiTs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y1fiQnHBsU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7G9WC7AiFTM

Well, Bob's pushbutton actuator is finished and back on it's way to GA. This one presented new challenges,as many do. Someone has been in it before, and had problems with water making its way into the unit. Their solution was to drill a series of drain holes rather than seal the unit!
The gearing had been taken apart and put back together incorrectly, not life-threatening, but incorrect. Many of the fingers had been distempered, and were not making contact with the contact segment. Look at picture #8--the grommet for one of the motor wires was missing--Well, I now replace those! There was insulation melted from the wires going to the finger-plates. I potted the exposed section of wire in rubber, that is visable on photo #16. The wire that was exposed on the top portion of the rubber sealing block could be a big problem, so I pot those in new rubber compound, as illustrated in phot #16. I cleaned his connector terminals, which were going green. the captions on the other photos describe everything else. I'll be posting videos of this unit on youtube, maybe tonight, and will give y'all the links when I do.

Attach file:

---

  (36.22 KB)


  (31.02 KB)


  (33.45 KB)


  (25.47 KB)


  (40.68 KB)


  (39.51 KB)


  (58.07 KB)


  (44.93 KB)


  (39.15 KB)


  (57.36 KB)


  (49.45 KB)


  (26.50 KB)


  (7.41 KB)


  (25.91 KB)


  (8.47 KB)


  (32.13 KB)


  (15.54 KB)

Dan, sounds like you are having pushbutton troubles, amongst others. What is the system not doing? is it stuck in a particular gear? You did the two-lite test. What side lit and what side didn't (either term. 4=or/bk or term. 6=pink)
OK-re: pushbutton trouble

easy things:
check the breaker for system power and the ign. feed via the yellow wire

check the connector under the dash, make sure the two connector halves are pushed all the way together, make sure all individual brass connectors are pushed all the way into the plastic connector body.

check for power coming out of the pressure switch with the key on and the engine off

If it's not any of these, $20 says it's inside the actuator in the fingers. If so, follow the directions in the auto-lite manual for removal, but don't remove the unit, just get to where you can see/fix the fingers.


hint: it's always the fingers

Coot, whare'd you set them sprangs? I kant finem nowheres

Attach file:

---

  (16.12 KB)

PV-8, I have cleaned those ceramic fuel filter elements by blowing compressed air in the opposite direction of the fuel flow (from the inside out) and gotten them quite clean. I used to work at an electronics manufacturing company that had an ultrasonic parts cleaner, for removing flux from circuit boards. I used to clean my ceramic filter element in that cleaner and they came out looking like new!
At that time I had a situation on my hands where my gas tank was quite rusty inside. I was getting a lot of fine rust particles in the pores of the filter element, which was doing its job nicely. What I didn't know was that my lower chamber of my fuel pump was filling up with the BIG rust particles, so much so that one day I couldn't get the car to go more than a mile without conking for lack of fuel. I took the fuel pump apart and the bottom chamber of the pump was filled with brown rust chunks, it looked just like the basket of a coffee maker before you dump it out. I took this to mean that I also had to do something with the tank. After having the tank re-nu process everything got better in a hurry, no more conking out and I didn't have to clean the filter elements as often.