Packard Forum Index » Pre-War (1899-1942)

Hello everyone,

I took the excellent advice of this forum and had a local machinist do the re-tooling of the water pump for my 1929 senior car. I have a question that can probably be easily answered by several folks on this site. I have attached a picture of the copper bushing that the shaft runs though in the housing on my water pump. There are two holes in the housing. One is for the "dog" that holds the bushing in place. The second hole is threaded and goes through the housing and aligns with a hole in the bushing. In other words, it goes right down to the shaft. My suspicion is that this hole is for an alemite grease fitting, but I dont recall an alemite fitting that has a quarter inch outer diameter. Does anyone know what goes in this threaded hole?

As usual, any help would be greatly appreciated.

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There is no such hole on the similar water pumps on our 126 or 740. looks like a later modification.

It's been nearly a week, so hopefully you have this sorted, but I'll add another data point anyway... I checked the pump on my 5-26 this evening (which appears identical to your pictures), and as with DavidM's vehicles, no such hole is present on mine either.

Thanks for your response. In my search for parts, I looked at two castings for 1928 cars and neither of them has the mystery hole either. However, in defense of it probably not being an aftermarket modification, I will say that when I was scavenging pieces to assemble one complete water pump, I came across two separate bushings with the same hole. The first being the pump that was on the car, and another from a shaft and bushing I purchased from Art Brummer some 30 years ago. The odds of Art and my grandfather colluding to place a hole in factory stamped bushings is probably nil...seeing as how I believe they never met. I digress.

I know for a fact that this water pump was problematic. My father relates how it was the water pump that failed as he was driving my car across the Nevada desert in 1956, when the shaft overheated and broke, sending the fan into the radiator. I wonder if Packard was aware of this design problem and made a "factory floor level" decision to add the hole, and presumably a grease fitting in 1929. Could it have been added simply as a heat sink to dissipate heat from the shaft? I would welcome any thoughts, comments or aspersions on my sanity.

On a separate note, I would agree with your post on the unjustified disparity in perceived value of the closed cars to their open top counterparts. Of course, I own a closed car and being that it has been in the family since 1930, it is an heirloom...and I am biased.