I know this is old, but if you still need a 288, I'm pretty sure I have one. Shipping is going to suck, but I'd be happy to be rid of it for $100, if you pay shipping or arrange for it to disappear.

The bad news is it would be a residential liftgate pickup, because I don't have a vehicle yet that'll hold it. The good news is I have a pallet ready to go.

I'll play the devil's advocate side then.

My wife has a 1967 Triumph GT6. Thoroughly rebuilt, carbs rebuilt, engine rebuilt, heads converted to run on unleaded gas. It's had two electric fuel pumps and two rebuilt mechanical fuel pumps. It's spent three months with a specialist that has multiple published articles restoring British cars.

On any given day, it might start, and if it does, it might drive okay, and if it does, it might die when it comes to a stop, or when you turn the key off, and it might or might not start up until the engine has cooled for a few hours.

It's a beautiful car, and always gets comments. By anyone who's lucky enough to see it. She doesn't want to drive it because she'll get stranded about 80% of the time, if she drives farther than the end of the street. If she DOES stay on the street, she'll STILL get stranded about 25% of the time. When she DOES want to drive it, I sometimes ask her NOT to, because I'm busy with something and don't have time to go rescue the car and limp it home if it DOES break down.

For the last 5 years though, the main car for us was a Chevy Volt and then a Tesla Model S. The speed is incredible, the fuel savings is wonderful, you get in and it goes, effortlessly. The Triumph, a tiny car with a 2.0L engine gets about 12 mpg. The Tesla, which weighs about 4x as much, gets the equivalent of 100mpg (assuming fuel is $2.00 a gallon. As fuel prices go up, the equivalent mpg goes up as well.) And you know, it always works. There are 3 moving parts in the drivetrain. I've never had to wait to fill it up in the heat or cold, it's always full when I get in it to go somewhere.

Imagine that you had all the style of a classic car, and it effortlessly just went wherever you wanted to go. Just unplug, hop in and turn the key?

That's one reason I'm converting a 1955 GMC Pickup to electric right now. From all appearances, it'll be a normal pickup. Just with some equipment behind the seat where the fueltank would be, and a 130hp AC motor under the hood instead of the 110 hp cast iron 6 cylinder. The whole conversion so far is cheaper than converting to a Chevy v8 crate motor.

I love old cars, but finding parts that ACTUALLY WORK is harder and harder, finding people who know how to fix them is harder and harder, and when I have the rare time to go enjoy them, I want to enjoy them, not wonder why it's not starting THIS time, or having to pump all the gas out because it's been a year since I moved it last time.

After living with a Tesla for years, I'll never go back to gas for a regular car. I enjoy the mechanical engineering of the old cars, and it's not like I'll just junk the old motors. Restore it to perfect running order, maybe even set it up to run on a test stand to show it off. But imagine if you could just jump into a car that's a century old, and drive it effortlessly to the grocery store.

Going to start working on this again soon- after the move, went ahead and rushed into building a new 1200 sq ft garage workshop so I can store everything AND have room to work, and doing the work myself has taken most of my time. :P

Just won a nice VS60 on eBay though, so the 'hot rod' Packard will remain Packard powered, and now I'm more excited about getting them out and going down the road again.

In case this is the first I've mentioned the 'hot rod' Packard, the 2nd Packard Caribbean I picked up as a parts car is in a lot better shape, and nearly complete, so it will get as factory a restoration as I can manage.

The second Caribbean is going to be too expensive most likely, to repair perfectly, but without ruining it, I think I will make an amazing, rare hotrod car. Basically as much Caribbean stuff as I can find, but more focused on driving than originality. I was playing with the idea of putting some exotic engine in it, but finally landed on keeping the Packard 327, but adding a Studebaker VS60 supercharger. This would be the 666 car. :D

Have been trying to sell our house, so not a lot of time to play with the car, but I finally got sick of waiting for showings, doing nothing, so I went out and put the car in the air.

A few weeks ago I took the time, blew out the fuel line and replumbed it through the fuel pump, and now I'm able to start the car and keep it running on fuel from the fuel tank, which is a plus over my mocked up 1 gallon gas can.

With that sorted, I remembered I had a full set of brake lines, so I went to go check out how they ran under the car - and the factory brake lines actually don't look too bad

So I had to come inside and figure out how to add brake fluid for the treadlevac - turns out it was bone dry and crystallized. So that's the mystery of the brakes solved.

I did a minor adjustment and all 4 wheels seem pretty good. One of the rear corners could probably stand to have the drum turned, but it's not too bad. You can just feel it grabbing a bit more in one spot when fiddling with the adjuster.

Adjusted the parking brake as well, to tighten that up, so hopefully when we get ready to move it we don't end up in the flower bed again. :D

I added some fluid to the treadlevac and wasn't able to get the brakes to apply, so probably at the very least need to blow out those lines as well. At some point they'll get replaced, but hopefully that can wait until we get the lift to the new house, so I can get underneath it easier. Right now there's a car on it and half a house worth of boxes under it.

While I had it in the air though, I thought I'd give it a shot and put it in gear, and sure enough, the rear wheels turn - so as soon as I get the brakes working, I could potentially take it for a drive.

Maybe this weekend I'll take the time and disconnect the treadlevac and check it out - I know I have a spare of that somewhere as well.

Sorry I missed this thread, the Caribbean in the picture is one of mine. :)

The cuts to open up the rear wheel wells were very rough, like what one might do themselves with a sawzall if they were being careful - the chrome trim covers the edge, so they didn't seem to waste a lot of time making it nice.

The inside wheel well was just flattened on the top to accomodate the convertible top sitting on it - I can't imagine it being any different than the '53 Convertibles were, but I don't have one to look at for comparison anymore. I also had cut out those wheel wells and replaced them with the curved ones off a Clipper, but I have another Caribbean with better ones that I can look at, if you need it.

I was going to ask the same thing - it doesn't seem to be from the 1953 Service Manual, and blowing the picture up doesn't seem to make the text readable. I can figure out the gist based on the Service Manual and the info from the Chevy site though.

Yes! This is exactly what I was looking for. Thank ya sir!

Thanks for the tips, I'll have to check those areas out for sure. Surprisingly though, while there's some significant floor pan rust on the driver's side, the car itself is a lot more solid than it looks - the areas where the body attaches to the floor seem very solid, compared to almost completely missing on the other car (which has almost perfect door shuts, oddly enough.)

My suspicion is that the previous owner had the body off at some point maybe, and didn't get the shims in the right place going back on the car. I'll check the service manual to see if it has any info that can guide me, but I managed to find a 55-57 Chevy guide that explained where to take away and add shims to fix various door gap issues for the convertibles, that will definitely help if I can't find something more Packard specific.

It's here:

Danchuk Volume Eleven, Issue 2 Body Mount Adjustments

Today was a looong day, but a good Packard day. A friend came over to see the new car, and he's worked on muscle cars for a long time, so I begged his assistance in trying to start up the new Caribbean.

Checked the radiator, and it's topped up, green, and clean - and even let out a bit of a hiss when I popped the cap, so it's holding pressure. The oil was just over the 7qt line, and new honey gold. New plug wires, new coil and new battery already on it - I had it on the battery tender for a few days, because it was a bit discharged, but the battery tender showed it ready for action now.

Battery cable was good, so we ran a cable to the top post on the starter solenoid and gave it a bump, and she turned over and puffed pretty strong - so definitely had some compression. Added the coil wire, tweaked and messed around - it wanted to catch on starter fluid, but not for more than a second or so - turns out we weren't able to get any gas from the fuel tank - not clear whether clogged or just totally empty at this point, but the previous owner seemed to know what they were doing so far.

Took a one gallon gas can, tapped it at the bottom and ran the hose directly from the gas can to the carb, and held it up to use gravity to feed the carbs, a little starter fluid, and a couple of attempts and it started right up. We ran it for a minute or 3, and everything sounds pretty good, other than what sounds like a little lifter noise.

But you be the judge:

53 Packard Caribbean Running

We turned it off pretty shortly, because the coil and starter were hot-wired, but right now the instruments are disconnected, so even though it sounded good, we don't know anything about oil pressure or temperature yet.


Also, yesterday I hit some of the bare metal areas with some red oxide rustoleum, just to give it some sort of protection. They had stripped the hood, trunk and driver's door, and there were a few other areas that needed it too. Now it's looking a lot better, too, and my 3 year old daughter keeps asking if we can take the 'brown car' when we have to go somewhere. :D

Also from our fun little drama of the delivery of the thing, today I managed to pull the window sill in my office, replace the drywall and mud it in today, tomorrow will texture and paint. No damage to anything structural, the tires behind the delivery ramps seemed to arrest most of the momentum. I got the brick window ledge pushed back out and the window is square again, just have to find some sorta-matching bricks to redo the sill. All told, a few hours and maybe $80 worth of paint, bricks and mortar, so that's a load off.

I did notice also that there's a substantial door gap on the driver's side top, and too much on the passenger side as well. On the Drivers side, the door had been disassembled for trim, etc, so I assumed they had taken the latch out as well, but it turns out that it's just flexed so far that the latch doesn't connect with the striker. So very, very soon, it looks like I'll be adjusting some body shims, and praying, hopefully can get it to tighten back up. Have to peek through the service manual and see if they have any good tips on which positions to start with - my guess would be to start adding shims toward the rear, and that should close it up, but technically doing it at the front would probably do the same.

Also, started to take apart the front hubs to investigate why the brakes didn't stop the car, but after pulling the wheel and cap, I found wonderfully packed fresh new grease, so I aborted for now. I'll start with the lines and move on to the master cylinder. Have to make it stop before I can make it go, as my window ledge can attest to. :D

Wow, sorry - it's been a long time between updates, but life happens.

I managed to order the front reproduction pieces, and they're beautiful - I haven't test fitted them yet, but now I've got the opportunity.

A month or two ago, I managed to install the sectioned floor under the Caribbean body, and get it tacked back together - very square and fit is good, just need to start filling in between the spot welds, and the floor is already so solid I can stand on it, all the way back through the trunk.

Biggest news, is just yesterday I received another '53 Caribbean that I bought on eBay - and it's in much better shape than the one I had, but definitely needs a floor. Luckily I have one of those.

So now the plan is to use the floor from the Caribbean I have and restore this new one, because it's a lot more complete and in a lot better shape. I feel like the old one could have been restored (eventually, after a ton of work), but this one is probably 3 years closer to being done, and maybe only months away from being a running driving car.

Now I just have to get it out of my flowerbed, where it rests after escaping the not-so-careful attentions of the delivery driver.

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