Packard Forum Index » Post-War (1946-54)

Chassis and underside of body look so clean, was the body off before??

Ross,

Why did you have the frame on jack stands?

I had her on jackstands for a better visual while lifting and so I could hold the body nuts still while my helper shot the bolts with the impact from inside the car.

The car was quite solid and had been hosed down with black paint underneath during some freshening up process in the past. The doors etc open just fine, and I did remove the bat and rad to lessen the stress on the front clip.Somewhere on this website is a photo of a 52 club sedan at the body drop being supported by its rockers.

I tell you I was whistling to myself as I worked on the valves standing comfortably next to the motor yesterday. This morning I pulled the axle shafts and the pumpkin for a complete reseal job on the rear axle without eye strain or bumping my head on the floor pan. Stabilizer bushings were a snap with plenty of room and vision. Same with the shocks. That mangled fuel line is not going to take long either.

Of course I have done all these jobs on complete cars many times in the past. Its all quite doable. But usually I am not whistling.

Quote:

Quite a lot of 4x4's under the roof. "See there, see there, Timotheus! Behold the cranes of Ibycus!"


[picture source: www.Mal's Packard compendium.com]

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Ross,
What is the height of the roof where your lift is?

Do you work on cars at the highest your lift can go?

I love the easy access from the body-off. I'd like a lift too: it would ease any under-body work.

Question: have you (or anyone else) tried the same method for 22nd/23rd series? Does it work as well, and are the body bolts for this series in approximately the same locations?

After learning how the 23rd series is put together, and changing the radiator shell to be removable, i gather i could remove the engine/tranny in a 23rd series in about the same amount of time now, albeit with a LOT more work than these guys did.

The PITA is really the whole front end removal, and removing the manifolds inside the car. Then, it just comes out forward.

I have a 14 foot ceiling in the shop so I can run the cars up as far as they will go. To roll the chassis out, you only need about 3' of lift tho.

I'm pretty sure the same technique would work all the way back to 41 if you took care to remove the radiator and battery so the front sheet metal was not too stressed. That sheet metal itself is actually not too heavy.

The whole purpose of this experiment was to make life easier--which it did. As mentioned above I was able comfortably to do a valve job, manifold job, tubing job, axle reseal job, and spif up the chassis with only a small amount of physical agony. This is going to happen again. Here are a couple of shots of the chassis ready to go back. One is with the valve covers off for the "hot and running" valve adjustment.

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I had two engine jobs on a 51 and a 54 to do at once. Have removed engines with and without transmissions and usually with cherrypickers. They can't hardly reach in far enough without removing the bumper, and with the l-8s the arm usually fouls the engine as one attempts to lift it high enough to clear the grill. Not to mention that when they are loaded they don't roll well.

The new system is a tubing bridge that fits into the sliders on the lift.

The radiator and front splasher are removed. and I cut out the top bar of the radiator cradle (to be welded back later). All of the usual wires and linkages are removed. I take out the six bolts that hold the rear crossmember and let that drop down til it catches in the frame. I mount my lifter slightly to the rear of the center of the engine. With the trans attached, the back hangs quite low as you lift and makes it easy to get the whole thing out without fouling the tunnel. Of course the lift only moves up and down so the car was pushed slowly backward as the lifting took place little by little. This worked astonishingly easy compared to other methods.

I greatly prefer to remove the trans with the engine as they invariably need at least a reseal job and it is tedious to unbolt them from the engine in the car. Effortless to do so on the ground.

The time saving was wonderful as there was so much less to remove. On the second install which was a 51 Patty, the engine/trans went from sitting on the floor to sitting on its mounts in the car in 15 minutes with no rushing.

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