Auugh, And I nearly forgot the great crippler of rear drum brakes. Before you do any of the above de-adjust the cable equalizer till the cables are slack and you can push the cables into their sheaths a bit. If the handbrake adjustment holds the shoes away from the anchor pin you'll get erratic and quick fading action.

Since you have all new shoes, I suggest also doing the major adjustment. The anchor pin at the top of the backing plate is eccentric and can be used to center up the shoes within the drums. This makes up for wear and variations. There is an elaborate procedure in the manuals that I have soundly ignored for the last 200 brake jobs or so. Here is what I do and it has worked quite well for my customers and for my own Packards:

Loosen the big 15/16th locknut a turn, and be sure the high part of the adjusting screw is generally toward the rear of the car. Tighten the starwheel til you can just hardly turn the drums. Turn the 7/16th adjusting screw back and forth til the drums turn as easily as possible--you have just centered the lining up within the drums. Sometimes the drum starts to turn so freely you have tighten up the starwheel some more clicks and try again. Then tighten up the locknut good and tight and back off the starwheel til the wheel is just free. This proceedure will assure best possible contact between the linings and drum and minimize wear-in time.

All but maybe 3% of my lifetime driving has been in cars with drum brakes and I have learned that keeping the shoes close adjusted gives long service life and better braking.

Does all this blocking and sanding mean that your car is in imminent danger of being painted?

Will get some photos of visor mount points soon.

For this car with your new interior, if you decide to paint, be sure to check out 1954 Carnation and Amethyst combination. Over the moon.

That was excellent, Steve. Thanks.

A few years ago at Warren they had the big '37 exposition and I was stunned by number of different models and bodies available. Even forgetting the custom stuff the tooling expense had to have been phenomenal. Just a few years later Packard and others could scarcely tool a full lineup--for example no Clipper convertibles and just a 2 and 4 door sedan.

A little later yet and Packard spent a huge sum of money just to rebody the clipper into the 22nd series. 11 million was it? And that with enough carryover parts that the slogan should have been "First by far with a prewar car".

I have not been able to reckon how such a drastic change in tooling and production capability happened in the space of ten years. Would love to hear some insider comments.

Looked at the photos: it is sooo a 120 engine: sheet metal water outlet, not cast, and the distributor is not in the center of the length of the block.

I am a huge fan of pulling the whole front clip. It is fairly easy to do: undo the bolts at the top and bottom of the rear edges of the fenders, along the frame rails, and the two bolts at the feet of the radiator cradle. Two husky guys can lift it off. Recommend removing the rad first.

You can then snatch the whole engine and trans at one go.

Doing it this way makes it easy to attend to the whole engine compartment; change front brake tubing, paint stuff,, change suspension bushings, etc.

Strongly recommend resealing your Ultra while it is sitting on the floor; a very small investment for the benefit it brings.

You can also easily run your new engine and trans before it goes back in the car.

I suggest you mount your brake booster and master under the floor under your feet. It would point rearward and could be activated by the stock pedal by merely welding a short arm pointing downward on the bottom of the pedal assy. It would be easy work to bolt a bracket to the inside of the frame rail to hold the booster. There is tons of space under there though the pushrod might have to be long. You would then want a remote fill.

There is a picture of something similar in the 55-56 parts book for Torsion Level cars with manual brakes.

Has to be a cap for a long neck. Napa 703-1411. Also, don't fill any higher than an inch or so below the neck or as the water expands it will force its way out regardless of the cap.

Ah yes, what were they thinking?

They were thinking that there was no place to produce a Packard engine as they could not keep the Utica plant open and no on else wanted to buy the tooling for it when it was offered.

They were thinking that big engine set very far forward as it would be in the sedan bodies would be unworkable.

They were thinking that in 56 darn few people wanted to buy a Packard even with a Packard engine.

They were thinking that they had to produce a Packard car to honor the dealer sales agreement or be sued to death.

They were thinking that the Stude 289 was a fine engine but needed to have a higher rated hp for that market and supercharging was a good way to do it.

And by 58 they were thinking that the medium priced car market was collapsing, so we'd better try the compact field next year.

Lacking any sort of government assistance they pulled off a comfortable, well built, reliable medium priced car for minimal tooling expense. Just like a--Packard Clipper.

Studebaker applied a supercharger to their 289 to make it meet whichever market they were hoping to hit. There was not a problem in 57,58 or again in 63 or 64. The engines are quite reliable and surprisingly zesty even when not supercharged.

The Packardbakers were of course based on the 56 President Classic. If you are on the east coast sometime I'll take you around the backroads in mine. Bring a change of trousers.