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I have read alot of great info on the threads here and want to add a little info on brakes that I have not seen in the prior 2 or3 threads but may have been stated before in threads over the years. It may help some of the hobbyists, back yard warriors and retired mechanics alike. Road test vehicle before disassembly if possible. I cannot emphasize enough, if there is any question as to the condition of the brake "hard lines" (steel brake pipes) replace them all. Use new steel (not stainless) unless you can buy pre flared stainless as the stainless is much more difficult to double flare with out splitting. Do not cut tubing with a pipe or tubing cutter as the wheel rolls and hardens the tube. cut with cutoff wheel and square off with same or a file and clean and flush and DEBUR inside and outter lips and you will see how professional, consistant and leak free they will be. Dont forget to put the fitting on first! Replace the brake hoses always- always in pairs if they are not brand new. Rebuild, have rebuilt or replace all wheel cylinders,master,calipers etc. Shake down entire front end for loose or worn parts and replace as necessary and check tire condition and tire pressure.
Besides all the other good info stated prior on shoes and backing plates such as axle seals,brake fluid contamination,parking brake cable adj, shoe material etc, I would like to bring to light a few other issues I have come across and the problems they may cause. Always disassemble the threaded star adj and lube the socket end and the threaded collar end with wht high temp lubriplate/lith grease and inspect backing plates for rust,grooves,gouges in the contact pads and lube with same. I have seen antisieze dry,harden slightly, and get stickey over time in high heat situations so i use it on bolt threads,not brake parts. It was stated here to not cut drums each time. I agree if they are not scored, heat checked, and there was no pulsation on the initial test drive, dont cut. I have seen thin drums cause warping and pulsation when hot due to the inability to dissipate heat. I have experienced thin drums cause a spongy pedal feel at low speeds to stop and a pulsation while driving due to drum flex. Drums should be measured for discard diameter but before a trip to the part store/machine shop or buying the drum caliper on ebay, visually check the lip of the drum for thickness and the remnants of the lead in chamfer. Then, take the new primary shoe and lay it in the drum with the new lining in contact with the drum. If it is hitting on a small spot in the middle of the shoe and can be rocked dramatically from end to end ie the arc of shoe way off from arc of drum this is an indication the drum has had too many cuts, This can cause shoe chatter, noise,squeal, hard pedal/reduced braking with cut drums, or grabbing/lock up at low speeds with bedded drums before the shoes are broken in. It can cause the shoe lining to crack or separate from the core on hard brake apply before they are bedded in and worn to the drum. If this is the case replace drums with new if available or take a new shoe with you and lay it in a drum if purchasing used. Adjust and bed in new brake jobs properly. Inspect and repl if nec all springs and hardware. It will be valuable if we have any new replacement drums and hardware and misc brake parts in the xref. I have had brand new drums out of the box warp after the first few heat cycles so I believe seasoned parts if not cut past spec are the best but if new are necessary this is not an area to skimp on. Shoes used to be ground to index to the drums however in this area I do not know of anyone who will do it for the last 10 years or more.I would hate to be in that shop breathing the air. Even on your cloths if wearing a respirator! In contrast to other opinions, I was informed to perform several medium to hard stops from 45 to almost 0 safety permitting of course followed by driving time above 25 sufficient to cool then repeated again if nec until bedded and good pedal feel. You do not want to overheat new brakes as this may cause the binding resins and glues to separate and migrate to the surface causing issues.and lets not forget wheel bearing adj and grease seals.

Thanks for a great detailed report on what to do and not to do for good brakes. I see bits and pieces of good info in various posts so it is good to have most of what's needed in a single summary.

The adjusters all are RH thread and as far as I can tell, were interchangeble. As I mentioned, was wondering if they could be installed reversed or not. Looks like that is possible. I am sure I got that right anyhow.

In some ways I wish that my car came as a driver and not in pieces because a test drive to check brakes / tranny and a dozen other things would surely have helped me. So now when I take my first drive in it who knows what problems might show up. There are a few 'unknowns' with the brake recon I did. I had a lot of drums from maybe three different cars (- all 1951 /52 juniors so the same) so I picked what appeared to be the best drums / shoes. None of them had been cut as far as I could tell. The first drive will tell me whether I got it right! Most of he hardware was renewed (- all cylinders / hoses / lines) so thinking that it should only be drum to shoe fit that could possibly give me grief.

The pictures look great. keep up the good work! good luck with the project and get the family members involved too if there are any interested lads. winter down under so i hope the garage is heated.
dan

Thanks Dan for the good wishes. We are coping with the cold down here - not too bad - only gets to about minus 3degrees C at night where we live, so a bit below freezing. Nothing like the kind of cold you get in the US!

Well, the seat springs and frames were much in need of a good clean-up and some paint. There was a little rust here and there but nothing very serious. The reddish colour seems to be the glue colour as far as I can tell . . . it just scrapes off and is very powdery.

There is a lot of work to replicate the way the seats were done originally. The upholsterer reckons he can do everything the same as it was, including using the large plastic squares from the back of the front seat squabs, that were a feature. These seem to be in very good condition and are plastic, not vinyl. He reckons vinyl would not have lasted 60 years but the plastic has done well and is still ok to use.

I stripped all gunk and surface rust off (stripper disks) and then treated the whole frames with phosphoric acid. Didn't prime the springs, just painted them, but primed the frames and used black zinc coating (gloss paint) rattle can on everything. Was assured the paint has lots of zinc in it despite it being black(?). Can't figure out why it isn't gray or silver if it contains zinc . . . .

Took the frames and springs to the upholsterer over a week ago and just got the first pieces back from him.

Below also are first pics of my reupholstered seats, but not all of them.

The upholsterer ran out of the gray broadcloth so I've just ordered more from SMS Fabrics. I thought I had enough of the gray because I ordered an extra yard, but am a yard short. Guess it was a bad estimate.

Very pleased with the job, and the dark blue and light gray combo (- which is exactly as original) go well together IMO. There is nothing fancy, like pleating etc but by being plain and basic it kinda looks like a true 1951 car interior I think.

Front seat frame of fold forward seat



Frame with remains of the glue used way back when



Springs just needed a touch-up with black zinc spraypaint



Primed, ready for the cloth



The first of the reupholstered bits to be done.



Another view

The seat looks pretty decent. Along with the door panels that will be one nice car.

There is a lot of work to replicate the way the seats were done originally.

I guess there must be some truth to my upholsters comment that Packards method of doing upholstery was different.

My guy said the same thing about the work involved when he did the 54 some years back. Said that car had multiple layers of underlaying structural fabric on the bias and criss-crossed to prevent the outer show fabric from bunching or shifting. He had not seen that done to the extent Packard took it on any other car.

I have asked him to come over and look at the 47 to give me an estimate of how much fabric to order. Said he would gladly do that much but when it came to Packards, he had learned his lesson on giving an estimate for labor in advance the first time.

Thanks Howard for comments. Let's hope my fabric behaves itself for many years to come! I'm a bit of a Scrooge, always looking for the best deal, but since starting on the '51 I've had to just grin and accept that cost blowouts are the norm.

I consider whether to get a quote, or just let work proceed and foot the bill. I worry about quotes for labour-intensive jobs like upholstery. Seems to me if the company is determined to make a profit they could hurry the work / take shortcuts and you get a poor quality result. Especially with a job on a car that is different, like ours.

Anyway, you would rarely restore a Packard expecting to eventually make money! (Unless of course it was a rare one).

The engine has been fitted for a few months now and started a dozen times, but just with the basic hook-up of battery to coil and starter etc. The '00'-gauge battery lead was renewed, and the original earth lead ( still in good condition) cleaned up. Pleased to have the original cut-off switch (isolator) which works aok. I'll keep that bit of original stuff seeing it is in working order.

So after the wiring harness had gone in (with the dashboard) and been routed around the engine bay and all the other places, and connected up, I was keen to see if the charging circuit was working OK. The generator had been overhauled and tested (- using the 'motor method', where I connected 6volts to it and it ran).

The condition of the generator was a surprise when it was dismantled for inspection. Apart from the usual build-up of dirt (mainly dust) every internal part looked very good. Brushes were not very worn, bearings good, commutator was excellent and armature good also. Checked for burns / rubs and shorts , cleaned everything, reassembled it and painted the body black. Plus I used my blackening kit to chemically blacken the brush cover so it now looks like it is new (or close enough to new).

I cleaned up the best one of the three Delco regulators I have but did no adjustments to contacts etc.

So it was really pleasing to find that the charging circuit was working OK, putting around 7.8volts into the battery. I'll adjust the output of the regulator to the prescribed 7.2 - 7.4volts next time I run the engine. And maybe touch up the reg contacts as well if they need it.

While the engine was running I tried all the lights / indicators and discovered a couple of interesting 'faults' if you could call them that.

Firstly (before starting the car) it was puzzling to see a constant drain of around 200mA from the battery when I had nothing at all switched on. Spent a long time double and triple checking every part of the new harness for a partial (high resistance) ground or whatever. No problems at all, and despite isolating as much of the wiring as I could the drain was always there. Well - by chance, when I was laying under the dash checking again I put my hand on the metal dash near the cigar lighter, and presto!! The whole area was slightly warm. There was a high resistance short from the lighter battery feed. Cleaned up the lighter and case, which had a lot of carbon built up from fags. That fixed the problem. One for the books I reckon.

The only other problem is the LH flasher is not flashing and is super-bright. A lengthy check of the circuit hasn't shown any wiring fault so I'm going to wait until I get the front guards fitted, and the front indicators wired in final configuration with proper earthing etc. Then I have a feeling the fault will be righted, as it is looking like an alternate path is bypassing the flasher unit somehow just on that indicator. Other one works ok. My wiring is ok as far as I can tell, so will get on with other things and fix it later.

Altogether a real milestone I reckon, getting the electrics all connected and working.

That's a big progress point Larry, congrats! I think you're right about the turn signals, once you get all the connections made (and the grounds are the most important, maybe consider adding dedicated ground wires to the housings) they'll all work correctly.

That sounds like a good idea Hans, I already have added a dedicated earth wire to the fuel tank sender as per someone's suggestion.

Had a very productive day fitting the floor plate that slips over the brake pedal. I did a 'test fit' and just wasn't happy about the way the plate sat, with quite a few gaps between it and the floor area. There was about 1/4inch of space at the worst point and it seems there was no way to reduce that gap without bending the floor plate.

Thought maybe that I had a plate off another car but after thinking it through decided it was just the way the plate was, right from the Packard factory.

I used a few strips of 3M Strip-Caulk ("dum-dum") which is a great product. Laid it around the outer edge of the plate plus around the screw holes, and when the five securing screws were tightened down there was a nice bead of Strip-Caulk pressed out all around the panel and no gaps present.

The boots that fit on the brake pedal and over the accelerator rod have needed to be modified / siliconed or glued to the floor because they just plain do not fit properly, but should now be water-tight. (I have previously had a say about Steele Rubber parts that don't have the same shape and fit as the original ones, so won't go on about that again).

Other thing that has been renovated is the firewall panel. That was looking a bit sad but ok to use after a layer of fiberglass matt was placed right over it, and then glued a layer of DynaMat to the back of it for heat and sound insulation. Great to have the original piece to use, with the shape that fits the contour of the firewall properly. I glued the dark blue vinyl onto it and fitted it to the firewall using large washers with a layer of the same blue vinyl on them. Not exactly how it was new but a big improvement over the original ugly brown colour it used to be.

There was a large hole where the dipswitch had been relocated closer to the brake pedal. Covered that hole and mounted the switch back where it was originally, up on the transmission hump. It's not the ideal place but I want things to be how they were originally.

Showing foot plate and also the firewall panel. Rubber boot had to be glued to the floor around the throttle lever.