Et Al: The Ulrich v-belt arrived in the mail today. Excellent service from John. IT FITS!!! For those who are curious, the dimensions are: 1" wide and 53 1/4" o.d., and it is of a notched design.

The belt rides slightly above the water pump pulley. Any belt with less than this o.d. will not fit. It was somewhat difficult to install. I moved the generator up against the engine; looped the belt over the vibration damper (front pulley) and generator pulley; then, with a long screw driver between two of the fan bolts, rotated the water pump pulley so the belt would slide in. The generator tightening adjustment is about the center of the strap. Just right. I don't know how I will get it off, probably reverse the installation steps. The pulley groves are deep and the belt is wide which make it hard to install. All's well that ends well.

One more thing: Kevin, the parts cross reference for the v-belt application needs to be deleted. It is wrong.

I think this thread has taken up enough bandwidth. Good bye, and thanks to all who tried to help.

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I'll still pay my own way.

clipper47, let me know if you need a "polish boy" to keep the car wiped down when you display it at Meadowbrook and Pebble Beach. I'll pay my own expenses.

clipper47, thanks. I made a bracket extension so I could fit the Gates TR30537 v-belt, but decided not to give in to the dark side (at least not just yet), and see if Ulrich's belt will solve the problem.

Owen_Dyneto: Well, maybe I'm just an uncommon man, not giving into common knowledge. I ordered a 351106 reproduction v-belt from John Ulrich this afternoon. We shall see, we shall see...

clipper47: Do you really have two of the bracket extensions? This would really add stangeness to the situation.

Et Al: To continue the v-belt saga.

The Gates TR30506 v-belt (15/16" x 51") just received from O'Rilley's is too short.

The Gates TR30537 (15/16" x 54 3/8") is too long, but can be made to work with a bracket extension.

The NAPA 28522 (3/4" x 52 3/4") is a length that fits, but it is too narrow.

Going back to basics and using information supplied by "dallas" and "JDinKC" I believe the answer is a repro belt (as suggested by "Ownen_Dyneto"). The belt dimensions for a proper v-belt are 1" x 52 3/4" x 42 deg. which is shorter than the TR30537 and longer than the TR30506, and should be just right.

I am going to order a 351106 belt from John Ulrich. Ulrich's price is about $50 the other belts cost about $35. So much for tying to source them locally. This all makes me tired. Thanks to all. I let you know how this all turns out.

Oh yes, my generator is mounted just like the one pictured from "BigKev".

The Compensator was a feature Packard had so that owners could accurately advance or retard the ignition timing on their engines to compensate for gasoline quality.

The Compensator Index and the distributor can be moved separately. The two cap screws securing the Compensator Index to the engine, the thumb screw securing the two moving parts of the Index, and the screw clamp on the distributor all need to be tightened after setting the timing.

Consult your owner's manual or look in the Packard Literature and Manuals section on this site for more information on this feature and the procedures to be used.

Good luck.

This looks like a battery hold down bracket than can be fit to different sized batteries. The loops for the hold down bolts look, to me, to be incorrect in that they are facing in toward the battery instead of outward facing. You can probably find a universal bracket and bolts at your local parts store, and adapt them to fit. That is what I did for my 1937 Six.

Question: Eric, On the 1955 Four Hundreds, is the vacuum connection made at a port directly into the intake manifold, or is it taken from a port in the carburetor? With the first connection, there would be full manifold vacuum all the time. With the second connection, there would be a variable vacuum amount depending on the throttle butterfly valve position. Different sources would affect how vacuum advance behaves. If I recall correctly from the past, some engines used intake manifold as a source and others used ported carburetor as a source. Does the Edelbrock offer both? Just curious. Thanks.

55clippercustom - Progress. I don't know how you determined that the voltage regulator is functioning, but pleased to hear you made the discovery. The procedure I outlined would only tell you the condition of the generator. In this procedure you could have a double fault, both a bad generator and a bad regulator, but you will not be able to determine this until you get a functioning generator. Good luck and thanks for keeping us informed of you progress.