Re: Stewart's 1955 Packard 400

Posted by HH56 On 2014/9/1 13:20:32

There is something else that caught my attention from Henry's blog. In post 173 & 174 he mentions that
"the manual is backwards on how to take the tension off the small torsion bars so you can take the torsion motor out of the frame there is no weight on the frame, so it is opposite. the shop manual was written for a car in the shop that has the body/engine etc...all on top of it. so instead of 1/2" towards the center of the car, it now becomes 1/2" off vertical towards the outside of the car".


IIRC, on seniors with heavier bars and body off, the link may want to go farther than Hank mentions and will try to tuck into the frame to the point the drag link socket and ratchet may not fit onto the end of the bar. You might need to be prepared for that contingency. Maybe yours will co-ooperate but I had to use a block of wood to prevent the bar from moving into the frame. That provided wrench room and held the bars so I could relieve tension enough to remove the plugs. The plugs just fought too much with pressure on them. Hopefully yours will not have excessive staking of the plugs to the transverse bar either.

Once the plugs are out you can remove the wood by manually turning the mechanism to re-tension the link slightly so wood falls out and just rely on the hole in the bar to keep the ball captured. Once wood is out you can turn the mechanism so tension is completely off and bars can be removed.