Sage advice John, I will do that.

Kev--take those new wheel cylinders apart and clean all of the anticorrosion goo off of the parts inside. Use lacquer thinner on the metal parts, denatured alcohol on the rubber parts. I like to hit the raw wheel cylinder casings with a rattle can of gray or silver paint(or black if thats all that's handy), masking off the inner bore. Put the cylinders back together by coating all of the parts with the fluid that you intend to run the system on--dot 5,4,3 whatever.

John, with regard to the Daimler, the built in jacking system consisted originally of 3 hand operated scissor type jacks attached to the chassis. I have one of the three jacks and am soaking it in diesel at the moment to free it up. I don't have any info on the Freestone and Webb body building company. I am not very impressed with the body as they have used ply under some of the main timber bearers. It has started to delaminate and it would have been much better to have used a suitable solid timber.
Daimler also had the habit of encasing their wiring looms in metal. Unfortunately they used a type of aircraft industry wiring which falls apart when it gets involved in too much water. When I got the car there were a number of wiring issues ( cross -feeds and shorting inside the metal conduits). It came to a head when I went to the April 2007 Packard National Tour in Toowoomba. The Daimler was in the driveway at the office. Daimler had also run the main Positive battery lead beside the fuel line, inside the chassis rail. The battery lead shorted on the fuel line, burnt through the line and fused the 10 mm ( three- eighth inch) battery lead. There was 20 imperial gallons of fuel in the boot and fortunately the car was pointing uphill at the time. I have had a fair bit of rewiring to do as it toasted the main loom ( inside the chassis- of course). The Daimler was easily the cost of a Packard 12 when new, but is a very different kettle of fish in terms of driveability and maintenance. Peter

G'Day Mal, I have not seen the pump so I am not sure what it's pedigree is. It is supposed to a single rotor, 100cc capacity. I shall let you know when I pick it up. BTW I have a very limited knowledge of Rotary development, including how much development companies such as NSU, Mazda, Norton, Suzuki, etc, put into the basic WANKEL engine. We have a few NSU rotary cars in our local club, but this is definitely not from an NSU. I have a Suzuki RE5 Rotary Motorbike as well, which I understand is closer to an NSU than a Mazda in design development. I wouldn't feel embarrassed about demonstrating a lack of knowledge, as I do it all the time, and am probably doing so right now. There are some very clever people on this site and someone who knows better usually corrects me and I learn from it. Peter

Last little anecdote from the Swap Meet day, I promise.

Packard53 - John, this may be of interest to you.

While Peter was collecting the exhaust pipe, hose connectors and clips necessary for the apparatus, we were walking and talking about cars(funny) and it came up that some years ago he had a Rotary and it had run 10.7/10.9 in the quarter mile(can't remember the time exactly). His son is also interested in these types of cars and when he arrived about half way through the procedure Peter mentioned to him that he'd bought the rotary engine that was at the swap meet for AUD40, about USD35 at current exchange rates.

The following exchange then occurred:

Me - Oh, What RX is it from?

Peter - It's a Wankel.

Me - Oh, So then it's from an NSU?

Peter - No, it's a Wankel which was used to power a pump!

So, after I picked my bruised ego up, I kept my mouth shut on things remotely mechanical so as not to expose my obviously limited knowledge again!

The floorpans are still in route to me, but once I get them i should be able to tell really quickly if they are good or the are crap.

I hope they will work, but I have heard mix results with other aftermarket Packard replacement sheet metal.

I may have to ask Albert Skinner about the gaskets for the '54. Alot of stuff is 1 year only on that series, and he must have had to find a replacement seals for his own fleet of '54s by now.

Not much knowledge of 54 and Clipper seals rtc. always seem to be different part numbers. I hope you are satisfied with the floor pans. I thought that all four-door products used the same floor pans??

Eric, you guys can feel free to arrange any times you want. No problems there!

*BUMP*

Any ideas for replacement parts on these gaskets????

I like that quote "All impossible things can be made possible save the bringing of the fool's mind to the point of truth."--Shankaracharya but my favorite quote is by Gabriel Voisin, the aerodynamcist and car and airplane builder, from his 1935 Paris auto show catalogue: To paraphrase from the French...

"There IS something that travels faster than the speed of light; the thoughts of an imbicile"...


My car has the shift for the trans on the column; it's not a push button. The radio is one with the seak/scan bar on top and pushbuttons. I have only driven the car about 30 miles so far. No problems getting it home. Haven't had time to go through it yet. The nose seems to droop a little, so it might be the load leveler suspension isn't working qute right..

Thanks,
Stu