Re: 1928 Front End Shimmy

Posted by DavidPackard On 2022/7/14 20:03:08

Ernie: English is such a wonderful language, is the adjective ‘old’ modifying the noun ‘car’ or the noun ‘dude’?

As for the genealogy . . . My grandfather, along with his lodge mates, commissioned a publication (circa 1920) to document the various ‘family trees’ of the lodge members. The entries for my grandfather and James & William (of the motor car company fame) read eerily the same. Their ancestors immigrated in the same time frame, and had the same debarkation and destination points as those identified for my grandfather. I just don’t remember if Samuel was a common starting point. The only difference that I can tell is my branch of the Packard clan stayed close to what is now Massachusetts, while others went west (I guess just about every place is west of MA, sorry to those in ME, NH, and VT). While I now live in Arizona I still consider myself as part of the Massachusetts clan. I remain skeptical as to being a direct relative, and rest assured, if I am related, I don’t get a family discount. By the way many versions of the family crest do not feature the retched bird.

I know from the native population perspective those damn Packards came ‘without papers’.


Gar: The motion that Ernie is suggesting you look for is transient, meaning if the spring needs more preload the lost motion only occurs until an adequate amount of spring force is achieved. The lost motion is only at the very beginning of steering wheel rotation. Most of these systems are designed such that when the steering wheel is controlling the motion one joint will be ‘hard’ (meaning the spring is not in the load path), and the wheel will be in motion as soon as the linkage moves. On the other side the joint is ‘soft’ (meaning the spring is in the load path) and the wheel motion will be delayed until the spring force can overcome the friction between the ground and the tire. Ernie is right, finding that motion on a lift will be difficult.

On to the steering box: The straight-ahead position of a steering box typically wears a bit more than anywhere else (that’s small area on the worm and sector gears when the car is traveling straight-ahead). Assuming the ’28 steering box is adjustable, the straight-ahead position is typically adjusted for the minimum ‘slop’, but as the wear increases this adjustment may create a bind at full lock (the position where there is minimum, or no wear). I would jack the car up and slowly rotate the steering wheel lock to lock trying to feel if there is gear binding at the limits of travel. If you have good straight ahead feel and binding at full lock, you might want to adjust and put a little ‘slop’ at straight-ahead, (likely the sector gear mesh adjustment) and recheck the end points. My bet is you’ll want the least amount of play straight-ahead, and if the steering wheel needs a bit of persuasion to leave the full lock position . . . so be it (that's the way I have Brand X adjusted). Steering boxes that have multiple adjustments require an iterative process, because one adjustment can affect the other. Now the question is whether the ’28 Packard steering box has service adjustments s for bearing clearance and selector gear mesh. In the ’29 service materials (available on this site) on page 231 there is a photo of the steering box, and on page 232 there is an adjustment procedure, step 1 looks like the worm bearing adjustment, step 2 looks like the sector bearing adjustment, while step 3 looks like the sector gear engagement adjustment. The photo on page 231 does not show the eccentric bushing called-out in step 3 of the procedure.

So are the ’28 & ’29 steering boxes ‘about the same’?

dp