Wheel Addict

It's an old car, winter's coming if you live up north. You'll want to drive it in the spring. Unless you are rock certain of the car's maintenance history, ( recent invoices from vendors you trust) you need to do complete maintenance

Replace all fluids and filters, belts and hoses
Complete tune up with plug wires and valve timing
Check and replace parts as need in brakes. Absolute minimum would be to pull drums. adjust and replace fluid. A complete brake kit from the most obvious vendor may be the best bet
Grease wheel bearings
Double check wiring and install some sort of cut off switch unless the car is to be driven once a week all year long

Flush and fill cooling system

It's an old car and projects are continuous. It's the zen part of the hobby. The real benefit of this is that you get to know your car really well. Many people don't understand what they have.

It may be a lot of money, but look at what the government spends money on. You're ahead of the game

Regards


John Harley

Don

The Harlow car was at the Centennial.It is also featured in Packard, the Pride by Julie Fenster. The later history of the car is interesting. I believe it has traveled something like 300,00 miles by this time. One of the owners pulled a house trailer with it for many years.

The color scheme is different now, a dark tan with black fenders and molding.
It was a thrill to see it in person.


The Cadillac reminds of just one of the reasons I sold the '48 I had and bought a Packard...

Regards

John Harley

49 Custom 8


The Custom 8 Club Sedans are made of Unobtanium. There are about 12 or 13 survivors and none were art the Centennial in '99. At one point there were actually two in Eastern Packard Club in Connecticut that would attend events together but I think that act has split up.

Lovely cars if you can find one. A good Custom Eight is one of the best kept secrets of American automobile engineering and is worth seeking out

Regards


John Harley

who had one slip away

Mike

Sometimes the Chey guys are impressed with my very original '50 Eight when I hang around the car with the hood open. After 5 or 10 minutes of "what's that and what's that" they get quiet and start thinking. I then tell them it's been on a number of very long trips. That's when I start the engine ( 2 revolutions on 6 volts to get running) and then they see how smooth it is.

You can see the see the light bulb go on

Regards

John Harley

Guys

You're missing the boat.

Packard Straight 8 in a "57 Chevy



Regards


John Harley

Friends

Just as I finished my last post, I remembered the story of Buick and Packard in the early 20's, around 1924. Buick had taken to building cars with radiator shells obviously imitating Packard. Other makes did it too , but Buick was the only marque any one heard of.

Packard, a much smaller company, got GM to stop. I've seen speculation about letters from lawyers and such. Don't know about that.

What Packard did do was to run a series of ads "Only Packard can build a Packard".

The Buicks changed in appearance pretty quickly

"Nuff said

Regards


John Harley

Mike

One of the reasons we like Packards is that they never were forced to stoop to make cars with opera lights, half vinyl tops, red crushed velour upholstery, emission controls or digital clocks.

There is a saying in the classical music business-"Better to stop 5 years too early than 5 minutes too late"

Regards


John Harley

Bill


The screws should allow a just a little wiggle so you can easily sound the horn. It's easy enough to take it apart so that you can experiment- you'll figure it out in two or three tries. You'll want to make sure to disconnect the battery every time you remove the horn button.....

Your neighbors might appreciate your stuffing rags into the bells of the horns if you spend much time playing with them....

Regards

John Harley

Snapey

I was negligent in not mentioning that this is covered in the excellent book, Packards at Speed, by Robert Neal, who is a member of this list


Regards


John Harley

Snapey


Packard's factory auto racing days, such as they were ended in the early 1920's after a less than lackluster showing at Indianapolis-1922 or 1923. Jesse Vincent had developed interests in airplanes and speedboats by this time. Packard did considerable business in aviation and marine engines for a number of years. This was a bigger market than performance cars in this country at the juncture, so Packard's somewhat limited resources were spent on the planes and boats. Jesse Vincent did have one speedster built but it lived on the Proving Grounds. There was a limited run of Speedster derived cars built in 1929 and 1930, but they were not even advertised.

Competition was left to the specialists in the 20's-Miller and Duesenberg. Races where held on closed dirt and wood tracks, so the cars were specialized and not suitable for road work. Roads in most places will still marginal to nonexistent. European roads were less primitive and had less traffic to run into with a fast car. When a Duesenberg won the French Grand Prix in 1921 the French were so incensed that they did not play the American anthem for the winners and barely spoke to them.


The advent of the Depression killed the Millers and Duesenbergs and led to the "junk" formula, modification of production cars. Fords, Buicks and Studebakers seemed to be the preferred platforms. Road racing and such waited until after the war in this country,

So, no Super 8 hot rods or Bentley eaters....Alvan Macauley would have been aghast anyway.

Regards

John Harley