I appreciate your humor. Just think, now we drive 150,000 miles and maybe do nothing at all except oil changes. Back in the day, it was every 1000 miles to the local garage for a grease job, tune up every 12,000 valve job every 40,000, etc.

Use motor oil, just a few drops on the felt wick. Don't over-oil. If your felt wick is missing, it's just a round plug of felt over the top of the clip that hold the cam on, and below the rotor. If missing, cut up one of grandpa's old hats, or a piece of carpet jute underlayment works OK too.

Good question. First remember the distributor rotates at half-crankshaft speed, so only about 200+ rpm at idle. And indeed I guess it could affect idle but I think (and sometimes that's a mistake) that the weight has to move and put tension on the spring and anchor pin to do its job. One last point on routine distributor servicing that many folks miss - in addition to the grease cup or oiler on the shaft, the small felt beneath the rotor needs a few drops of oil - that's what lubricates the slip shaft to enable the centrigugal to work.

YES, Dyna-Flyte, noy Dyna-Plate -- thanks for jogging my memory. Maybe at this age I should be thrilled just to get it half-right. Our Hudson was a stock car set up for the 1/4 mile, a 54 Hornet cpe. Max rpm was about 4600 rpm, I don't recall the exact improvement with the dual points, but iy wasn't much.

Since the centrifugal advance doesn't come into play at idle RPMs, it's wouldn't be responsible for idle issues, look elsewhere for that problem. However you'll want it to function properly for good road performance. There are literally thousands of springs for all the different advance curves on so many engines that, if you don't have a distributer test machine like a Sun, you could search and fiddle for a lifetime to get good results. Thus I'd say get a SUN machine and start making (and discarding) springs, or bite the bullet and go for a specialist.

Dual point conversion kits were pretty popular items some decades back for "hopping" up performance; one tradename I recall is "DynaPlate" which we installed in our 54 Hudson and a number of Packards. Was there an improvement in performance - yes but slight. But to my knowledge the last Packard that had factory dual points was the 1939 Twelve. Eights and Super Eights used dual points, in 33-34 with dual coils, and with single coils thru 1936 and perhaps a year or two later. I'm sure the distributor you have was modified with a conversion kit at some point.

The dual point setup with dual coils (33-34) worked entirely different that the later dual point "hop up" kits; in these cases you also had a double-ended rotor and each set of points controlled only 4 cylinders with the firing order alternating back and forth across the distributor cap as alternate ends of the rotor fired sequentially. The later setups like Chrysler in the 60s etc. is "conventional" dual point setup and used the second set of points to allow the coils to energize almost immediately after discharging by closing the primary to the coil with the second set, thus not having to wait for the first set to close. Thus only one set was actually responsible for ignition and timing, and the other provided an increase in dwell. In the case of the 33-34, both sets needed to be timed individually, and thus synchronized.

Last time I bought lug bolts was about 10 years ago, for my 1934 Eight, and they were an on-the-shelf item at NAPA.

Check it again, the only way the distributor shaft could rotate the wrong way is if the engine rotates the wrong way. The gear on the base of the distributor mates with a gear which is cast or forged intergrally with the camshaft so incorrect rotation is simply impossible.

BigKev's got it right, clearly from the last picture it's a 180 Formal Sedan, chassis 1807 - 138 inch wheelbase, and the 106th of that body style built. Not a Rollson or Derham but a factory body built by Packard (for 1941 they outsourced Packard body production to Briggs). Not a body style for everyone, but a very classy full bona-fide Classic Packard, and a lovely road car with the new-for-1940 356 engine. Engine# should be between CC500001 and CC507697

Six, Eight, Super Eight, or Twelve? I don't know if they were all the same but it would help to know which chassis is in question. I've not taken note of these on late prewar cars, but later the lower flexible sections were simple rubber sheeting which you can buy from any industrial supply house in any one of dozens of compositions, finishes and thicknesses. In the few I've taken note of, the rubber was stapled to the steel panel, though I can't guarantee that is how they left Detroit.

Others may dissagree but I've always considered the Packard V8, though large and powerful, to be a very conservative design without any particular innovations beyond what others had already done, so I'd not think there was any "prowess" for others to take advantage of.

There weren't many engines that went on to careers with subsequent manufacturers or in other appliations; the three that come to mind are the Pierce-Arrow 8 & V12 and the Lycoming V12 that went on to very long careers powering fire engines of Seagrave and American LaFrance (?), and though not the same engine, some of the design elements of the Franklin engines that were modified for a small number of Tuckers, and for a very large number of Korean war helicopters.

Surplus Packard V8s were sold for years after Packard ceased by J. C. Whitney; one frequent application was for conversion to marine applications and quite a few of these still exist. And the selling prices back then were CHEAP.