That's good to know. I'm very new in the Packard world so I still have a lot to learn. So, what was the last year that an Ultramatic was manufactured?

When Steve approached me with this, I failed miserably in getting info. That's one reason I'm posting this thread now, maybe by weeks end, I'll have a good list of questions for him.

Well, to be fair, I would say developement never stopped until Studebaker went out of business.

In the FAQ it states that the Ultramatic was developed completely in house. I beg to differ.

Last Friday I drove my '54 Clipper to work and that prompted my friend, Steve, to come up to talk to me about it. During our conversation he told me he was doing his apprenticeship at a place in Oconto(?), WI and that they were working on the Ultramatic. He told me the guy's name that he was working for but I was lazy and didn't write it down. :facepalm:

Another tidbit he said was that this company he was working for went out of business before his apprenticeship was over so he lost out there. And that the guy he was working for ended up working for GM.

I'll try to get as many details as I can when I see him this Friday.

Interesting. I'm fairly new to Packards so I didn't know that. GM made a huge deal out of putting aluminum pistons in the Corvette in '53 so I assumed that most cars had cast iron until about that era.

Color me wrong.

Are these aluminum or cast iron pistons?

The wristpin offset is only there for noise reduction at cold start up. Putting the pin away from the cam side will be quieter, moving closer to the cam will give you a better angle to the crankshaft and give you more horsepower.

Pull it/not pull it was answered for me back in high School. My brother and I inherited our Grandmothers '69 Impala that developed a leaky rear main. We had a couple of weeks of discussions about dropping the pan or pulling the engine. I won with pulling the engine. With the two of us we had it out in an hour. IMHO, that saved us six hours of cussing while crawling under that damn thing and having oil drip down our necks.

I wasn't too many years later I made an engine tilter to keep them balanced and we decided the transmission should always come with it. After a few times, the job really isn't that hard, if you have the right tools.

I've had a lot of motors out of a lot of cars, but this is my first Packard ('54 Clipper). For me, I would pull the engine/tranny and put it on a stand to work on it. Unless of course, there is something different that I'm not seeing.

This also give you the opportunity to work on some other little nagging things that you might be letting go.

I wish I was kidding about them twisting the wires and taping them. And it seems like someone felt the need to work on everything at some point.

Yes, I will be soldering the joints and ends and then sealing them.

I wish they would have used crimp connectors. Twisting the wires and wraping them loosely with electrical tape is not a long term solution

Does any know offhand if any of those harnesses are made for a 12v conversion with a GM alternator?

There has been 57 years of different "mechanics" working on it.


I'm going to end up rewiring this whole car.