Quote: A good point and I wonder how many failures can be attributed to that.

If you ever run across him at a meet, maybe you'd be willing to ask if there is any differences between the Packard V8 units that seem to fail and the other cars that apparently don't.

It did. I confirmed that after Eric's post.

I cut this one away now because it has to go back in. It really needs to be done and, IMHO, the vendors should make a point of mentioning it. Turning the cap around, am not sure would work well. In the position most have it closer to the fender it's half covered by steering column. Reversed might be a worse pain to remove and you couldn't really see in well. Of course in cars with fact AC, you can't see much anyway..

Interesting find today. While doing my AC conversion, needed to take the BTV out but Surprise! (or not), found reservoir was half empty! Was going to take it out anyway to see if I could come up with another way to mount a modern unit but this kind of forces the issue.

This car is a garage queen with very few miles on it since a full body off several years ago and vendor supplied (rebuilt) BTV. No sign of external leaks. The leakage is approx 7ml in the cup and appears the leather piston seal has also got some on it.

Incidentally, the full stroke fluid output is just over 20ml. Of course, in normal operation it will never go full stroke on purpose so probably average pedal application to cylinders would be half that.

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There is a plug at the end of wire coming from PBs at steering column. Those have been known to cause problems so would check that and make sure all the contacts are well inserted in the housings. The usual poor contact or burned fingers at the sector could also be causing the problems. Possibly heated up with the driving and breaking contact until cooled down again.

No explanation for the starting in reverse but one possibility on the no shift at all is at the automatic park relay---if yours has it and has the revision that eliminated the control relay. When the key is on, the park relay functions as a tie point to provide power to the wires going to pushbuttons. One directly to L,H,D and other via the pressure switch to P,N,R. Those are fed directly from ign switch by yellow or white wire tied at the ballast resistor. A bad or loose connection at one of those places could cause the symptoms.

If you still have the control relay, the same basic path to pushbuttons apply except ign switch closes the relay and an intermittent bad contact in the relay could cause problem.

Isn't it tapered? Maybe they just used an average.

Mr Pushbutton should be along shortly and am sure he will have some suggestions. In the meantime, if you would like more information on the system here is a service article by the manufacturer of the unit. It contains much more information and troubleshooting than will be found in Motors.https://www.packardinfo.com/xoops/html/downloads/AutoLite_ServiceManual.pdf

This is a 54 senior. It sounds like the bushing or gears is still a bit dry and magnet can't spin freely.

Would suggest you remove from cluster and clean & lube all worm gears and lightly oil the gear train as far as odometer. You may have to work oil down into bushing from both sides of the cable drive shaft where oil hole is as well. Important there is free and very smooth spinning of the magnet and pole shoe. They are attached so essentially one piece and set up an eddy current in cup suspended between them -- Important no dirt or any touching between the magnet & cup. Try and not get any lube on the cup either and also make sure it is secure--no wobbles.

There have been a couple of failures on the forum where the shaft right at the front bushing before the point needle attaches has broken off.

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The only machine stamp appears to be the CE denoting what was inside. I would surmise they had general service engines available at the warehouse in each size and ordered appropriately from those until stock ran out. There was an instruction on putting a postwar engine into pre 17th series so probably no pre war engines were available. They were probably un-numbered with production serial on paper only. Year of mfg was apparently not important as long as cust was OK and size was close.

There is a Stude bulletin to that point on the V8 engines stating they had a number of 55 production 320 and 352 service engines suitable for use in all 55 and 56 that were available at a discount if the dealer and customer wanted to take advantage of the reduced price. There was another later bulletin saying that a new batch of service S8s were made available but the previous 4 engine choices had been reduced to 2. From that, I would bet that the letter and even size was not that important in a replacement engine.

Logically, until proven otherwise, to me the N is for new and CAL is for Calif where the dealership was since that was the abbreviation used then. The number is probably what was on the production paperwork. If the car was registered under the motor number, I am sure there would have been some detailed instructions & procedures. Too bad we don't seem to have any old timers left who might remember procedures but guess remembering that stuff would not be very important to a 90 or 100 year old.

That's the one. I spotted it half a block away as he was driving up the street pointing out the different sights. The owners of these cars really don't mind being noticed.

I'll admit, there are worse out there and these colors are somewhat dignified. There was an episode of Bob Vila's TV show filmed in Miami with a 58 parked in front of an art deco hotel. The brightest lavender and something car you ever wanted to see.