Re: hard to start 34 1103

Posted by su8overdrive On 2016/10/12 15:24:28

Monsignors Dyneto and Kanter well sum it. This "vapor lock" blame smacks of "round up the usual suspects." I've owned three Packards over the past 42 years, have driven them in all kinds of weather on both coasts--one cross country-- and never, ever had vapor lock. Friends with old L-head V-engines; Ford products, 1935-36 Cords, 1936-48 Cadillacs are the only ones who've ever mentioned vapor lock, and that because of the location of the fuel pump, lines.
On an inline six or eight, there's enough airflow in the engine bay, and our Packards even have a heat-deflecting shield on the side of the engine.
Some good news: Today's gas is vastly cleaner burning than that of yore. Count your blessings.

ZDDP/zinc is a another red herring. Today's zinc levels were "lowered" back to where they were in the '70s and before, after too much zinc hindered catalytic convertors. And we didn't hear all this zinc hysteria back then. You can trace it to a couple curmudgeons in the CCCA with flathead Cad 346-ci V-8s which use, unlike Packard's hardened steel, a chintzy bronze timing gear. They had trouble after rebuilds, so of course, it's the motor oil. Some Joe Sixpaks w/ the usual backyard hot-rodded SBC 350s had problems after their rebuilds, and also blamed the motor oil. The internet can be akin to shouting fire in a crowded theater or Fox "News."

Let's try some journalism, engineering savvy.
"Just the facts, ma'am."

A Kendall/Conoco-Phillips engineer, himself with a highly-tweaked '67 Camaro with -- like many of our Packard engines (the big '30s seniors had the quality of a roller cam, but then even Packard/R-R Merlins have flat cams)-- a flat cam engine with m u c h higher valve spring pressures -- explained that a friend of his was the one who produced the Indiana Region of the CCCA's "Classic Car Motor Oil," (advertised in Hemmings, etc.) and that even Kendall started marketing some oil with higher zinc because, he laughed,

"If you want to stay in business, you either give people what they want or think they need."

This petroleum engineer and gearhead himself uses the same off-the-shelf Kendall GT1 10W-30 i use in my '47 Super Clipper's inline eight lawnmower engine. I use Kendall because i came of age on the East Coast, liked the smell and old color (since abandoned), akin to Packard engine green, being a sucker for marketing, but an exhaustive Consumer Reports feature compared various major brand motor oils of the same weight used 60,000 miles in a fleet of NYC cabs and found little discernible difference.

What else can we end today? DOT 5 silicone brake fluid does NOT turn into a "gel" when mixed with Dot 3, 4, or 5.1 glycol fluids. It d i d manage to ooze into a few stop light switches in a few cars, and so we had more fire in the theater. A friend's had the same batch in his '40 120 conv., '40 180 Darrin vic and '42 160 conv. coupe since the early 1980s, it still looking new and never a problem. Same in my '47 alter ego. It helps to read the bloomin' instructions on the bottle.

Um, uh, you don't "need" antifreeze, unless your car will be exposed to a sustained hard freeze, or has air conditioning, in which case, even in Phoenix or LA in summer, you should have 15% antifreeze just to protect the heater core from freezing. A Chrysler engineer member writing in the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg Club Newsletter described how antifreeze breaks down and leaves a heat transfer-inhibiting film on the cooling system passages, as does soluble oil, a ridiculously outmoded practice. Just because something harks from when your car was new doesn't mean it's "okay."

Do not use distilled water in your cooling system. Mercedes-Benz issued a bulletin to their service departments in 1988 or '89 warning against distilled water, it being ion-hungry and leaching minerals, lead, solder.
Use only soft or reverse-osmosis water. Read the label. Does it say added minerals? Put it back.

Your car will run cooler with just straight soft water and a quality rust and corrosion inhibitor. Visit no-rosion.com and read their tech link for more info and no, i'm not affiliated with No Rosion but again, when i find a quality product or service that bothers catering to our dying hobby in this Chevy V8/TurboHydraMatic/retrorod world, i believe in singing their praises.

Next up: Optima batteries are not "gel" batteries. They're a spiral wound matrix. We love 'em; Cord, Packard, old (real, not midlife crisis doorstops) Ferrari owners, and know of a '41 Cad driver who got 14 years from his. I got a coupla months shy of a decade from my last one.
They weigh little, and weight is the enemy in any road car, a concept dear few old domestic auto owners seem to grasp, Packards being nose-heavy and understeering barouches to begin with. Packard did not produce batteries, brake fluid, motor oil, tires.

Had Packard somehow bucked the climate that was death knell to ALL independents and survived, i assure you your local Packard dealer's service department would've fitted your car with radial tires, better oil, batteries, et al.

Radial tires will not destroy your wheels, etc. The ONLY concern is excessive pressure being harder on your suspension. Because i carry only 42 psi in my bias sized 7.00/15 Bridgestone R230 LT radials, just 10 more than i carried in my previous Denman bias plies, and drive easily, i'm not losing much sleep.
Yes, LT means "light truck." But all these characters running 215/225/235/15 metric radials--which do NOT look right in your wheel openings, haven't the right aspect ratio -- overlook that these are SUV tires and SUVs are built on a, wait for it....truck chassis.

Anything else? Are we done with vapor lock and the rest of this malarkey, hearsay? Can we move on to interesting, novel topics?

So, what have you got? For example, over the years, i've asked if anyone unearthed SAE or other vetted papers contrasting the Cad 346/Buick 320/Packard 356;

comparing Saf-T-fleX ifs with the GM type;

the Pierce-Arrow V-12 against the Packard Twelve (i give the slight nod to the Pierce engine, while Packard had the more modern chassis, other than lacking the final generation P-A's standard overdrive);

comparing/contrasting the concurrent Chrysler/Packard/Pierce nine-main, 384-ci inline eights.

Yet never

a single,

insightful,

corroborated

word.

Let's move on, huh?