I'd recommend getting a carburetor kit from Daytona Parts in Florida. The kits for Carter WCFBs are pretty universal and if you ask for Tim, he can help you determine which carburetor you actually have on the car. Daytona is TOPS in this area.

I can't quite see from your picture what happened to the choke stove heat pipe, but the tube that runs to the carburetor chokes is just a slide fit into another tube that is swedged into the intake manifold, so repair may not require removing the intake manifold to replace the choke stove (the tube that's swedged into the manifold). You may be able to just carefully drill out the broken inner tube without damaging the outer sleeve, and then just make a new tube to the choke housing. Even if you had to remove the intake manifold and replace the choke stove, it's easy to do.

How curious that the first and only person to criticize me for buying an American car is PackardV12fan. If I wasn't fully prepared to ignore his comments before, I sure am now.

IIRC, the MKZ is about 75% US-sourced components, though it is assembled in Mexico at I believe a Mazda facility (partly owned by Ford, isn't it?).

American industry famously takes a very short-term view of the future, most often the view isn't much beyond the next 2 quarters financials. When longer range plans are made, it's rare that companies have the will power to stick it out for the longer haul. This, plus the well deserved reputation of not that many years back that American cars are poorer quality has lead to an ingrained belief among many that only foreign cars offer quality and I don't think Ford, GM and least of all Chrysler have the will or the assets to embark on what would be a very long program to win back reputations of quality. Now that doesn't mean there aren't some really quality U.S. cars out there, my 2008 Lincoln MKZ is I believe a really fine car more than competitive with many of it's peers.

I'm approaching 70 and am normally very conservative in investing, though I'll admit to making some nice bucks in trading common stocks in the last 10 days. And the time to buy in is when others don't want to, but you've also got to be able to see light at the end of the tunnel. I'm too risk-adverse to consider GM, Ford, or for that matter an airline stock or bond these days and I wonder it what form they'll survive the next decade. GM as a foreign-owned maker of pickup trucks and Corvette? Ford gone? Jeep a Nissan label?

Hank, your picture isn't as clear as one would hope, but it sure looks like a "D" to me as well. FYI, the lowest BDN I know of for a 1956 car is D11812, a 1956 Patrician #137. The latest I know of is D33933, a 1956 Caribbean convertible, and I have data on perhaps 50 1956 cars all falling in between those.

Guess we'll have to get data for more 1955 cars (yours is the only 1955 data point I have) and see what emerges. Right now it's another little mystery. Ah, the joys of collecting and analyzing data.

I hope I didn't imply they stored 16,000 bodies, of course improbable beyond belief. The discrepancy is just another bit of a mystery among so many others about Packard that we'll probably never know the real answers to. Your assumption that the numbers were stamped as the cowl was stamped before assembly into a body shell is almost a certainty I'd say.

I'm told there are some small fragments of Packards records remaining in private hands that correlate bits and pieces of VN with BPNs; I believe these were called Packard Vehicle Unit Production Records. Hopefully someday these will find their way to one of the Packard museums and some historian can evaluate them. I understand there are some folks within PAC who have been working on this data for some years. Depending on what eras the surviving data might cover, it could prove unpleasant to those who have bought cars like Twelve convertible coupes and victorias only to find our their cars were originally Eights and perhaps Super Eights, and even closed cars. God knows, there are plenty of those bogus cars around which have changed hands for bigtime $. Enough to make you wonder everytime you see a big dollar Packard classic with a repro patent plate.

Thanks for the data guys. HH56, I only have 2 1947 seniors in the database and the other has a Briggs # just a single number higher than yours, yet the BDN is 16,000 lower! I've thus far have attributed it to the chaos of restarting production after the war, and of course it's possible that some of the bodies might well be left over from 1946, and remotely possible from 1942. When you get into the 48-50 run, it's a bit unusual to find a Briggs # that matches the VN sequence number, but they rarely differ by more than 20 or so which no doubt is related to how the bodies were shipped in small batches to the assembly line and how they were stored and retrieved for use. But the 1947 and I assume the 1946 numbers are really as random as could be.

Cli55er, please take another VERY close look at that first letter, you BDN puts you square in the last third of 1956 production.

From time to time there are questions about the large embosssed numbers which at various times Packard called Body Serial Numbers, Body Dash Numbers, and Thief-Proof numbers. I've been keeping a small database of these for some years and assuming there is some interest, I'll just give you a bit of what I know and/or have concluded over the years. Just to save excess typing, I'll call them BDN's for Body Dash Numbers.

I believe the practice of using BDNs started with the 6th series. They have always been six digits or an alpha character (A thru D) followed by 5 digits. I'm not really certain if they started at 000001 or 000010 or 000100 but the earliest BDN I'm aware of is 000126. They just continued to number sequentially as the years progressed. For all years except for some of the junior bodies in 1936 and perhaps 1935 the numbers were enclosed by triangles at each end like bookends; lacking that character on the keyboard we usually record them as <123456>. At some point in the 18th series, in the 500,000 range, they were not embossed onto the cowls, though the two triangles were still present. I have no proof of this but have always thought it might have been related to the impending transfer of the dies from Packard to Briggs.

When they reached 999999 they substituted "A" for the first digit, followed by 5 integers. This occurred during the 23rd series (1950 production). By the time production ended in 1956 the prefix was "D" and I believe the change from "C" to "D" may have occurred very late in 1955 production, though some data from you guys that own 1955 models would be helpful for me to fill in that gap. Also the very earliest numbers with the prefix "A' would help me fill that in as well. What I'd like of course is the VN number, the BDN of course, and where it has one, the Briggs body number. But please, not data from cars without their original factory Patent Plate (VN plate).

The number G415571 cited on the title sounds like the "Thief Proof" number stamped into metal firewall. It is quite large so you shouldn't miss seeing it.

It is definately NOT a thief-proof or body serial number as the highest alpha character prefix used was a "D" in 1956. But G415571 does correspond to an engine number for a 22nd series (1948, early 1949) 2202, 2222, or 2232 chassis (Super Eight).