Carb was rebuilt and the car was running very well, until I let it sit. I guess I should say the ethanol is a THEORY from my mechanic, given his past experience. He did send along a picture of bad part next to a new one - but again it is just a theory based on his experience.

HE LIVES!

My '55 Patrician lives, no thanks to my tom foolery - note to self, just leave the damned thing alone.

Apparently I fried up the points....and I know exactly when I did it too. Since this is my first car with points I'm going to chalk that up to a learning experience.

He's also fixed my gages - because as previously discussed my ham handed ways knocked them out....apparently I stupidly left the ignition in the on position when back there and shorted something - but they're back, and another lesson learnt.

Last but not least my mechanic thinks the ethanol in the gas ate up the rubber in the accelerator pump when I left the car to sit for nearly 3 weeks.

All in all I've learned my lesson - leave it to a professional. Next stop, the detail shop!

This Packard has been for sale for a bit - I think it's the color and location doing it in. The seller is the previous owners son, he's recently dropped the price to $5,000!!!

I was in contact with him and considered purchasing it before Fred Kanter approached me about buying his 1955 Patrician....who would have turned that down!?

Now my better half has said I don't need a second Packard, especially since I got my first one in January....but it's hard not to snap this up....someone else please buy it before I do!



https://www.facebook.com/groups/connoravenuepackards/permalink/1613464358935309/

Found another one! Actually found a few, so now I have backups in case someone else gets injured!

I'm so overprotective of this car, I think I need to unclench a bit about it lol

Well if it's not one thing it is another, the mechanic I was waiting on got injured so he won't be able to help. Too bad, too, because he was close by. He doesn't have anyone to recommend to me.

Anybody have a recommendation in the Central NJ/Bucks County PA area for a mechanic? I'd like to get this running by May. I known it's probably something simple, but it is something beyond my (very limited) knowledge base so I want to trust this to a professional rather than tinker with it and make it worse.

Thanks for the tips!

With this garbage weather, though (2 feet of snow coming) and my garage being tiny and unheated I'm gonna let this sleeping dog lie. I've got the battery tender hooked up and I'm just waiting to hear from the mechanic when he's ready.

What I'm most looking forward to is some decent weather and getting the car all polished up and shining - gonna be a stunner.

It's been easy to forget I own a Packard with it being locked up for almost a month now lol

I did not - I'll take a look at the shop manual and if it doesn't appear I run the high chance of screwing things up further I'll take a look. This is probably a good point to mention I'm expanding my mechanical knowledge, so I'm purposefully approaching things with much caution b/c I'd rather admit I don't know what I'm doing, then THINK I know what I'm doing haha

So I've got two options on mechanics: one 10 minutes down the road who can't see it for maybe 3 weeks - but all he does is cars of this vintage - and one 30 minutes away who my father uses for his MG, but could potentially see the car much sooner.

I'm leaning towards waiting the 3 weeks for the closer guy because the other guy worked on my 1994 300D and 2013 S80 and both times he made the same mistake (didn't put in enough oil). Though both times he claimed confusion over the fact that both of those cars took more oil than American cars, I'm worried what else he might miss.

Not to impugn him, he's a really nice guy and has been in business longer than I've been alive.....but that could have been a serious situation had I not checked or the cars not warned me.

No matter, though, should be right as rain for early Spring, and it'll force me to finally get to work on my brakes on my 1985 380SE!

Cap and rotor are new as well, Fred really did so much great stuff for me when I purchased the car.

It's an old car, things are gonna go wrong and that's just part of the ownership experience.

While I was hoping to fix it myself, perhaps it is for the best I have it flat bedded to a mechanic or find one that'll come to me to resolve it. Shouldn't be too hard, I'm smack in the middle of Jersey and right across the river from Bucks County, PA. The place is crawling with old cars that come out for the New Hope Car Show.

As much as I'd like to learn to do it myself, I don't want learn at the risk of screwing something up more and then pay double to get it right. Pay to get it correct once, understand what needed to be done, and in the future be able to do it myself. No big deal. A lesson learnt!

Deeper and deeper we go, I'll have to check all of that out now - and here I was hoping it was something simple lol.

There's always the possibility that my ham-fists could have bumped the back the the ignition switch, but my hand was actually opposite of it and even after that incident I has been driving it around a bit - so it would have been a delayed action.