Greg B's 1951 200

Posted by gregb(peoria, il) On 2014/10/13 21:16:11

Hi everyone. I just purchased my first Packard at an auction recently. It was kind of a spur of the moment thing. There were several 50s era Packards as well as some Henry J's there with this one being in the best condition of the lot. None were even bringing close to junk price and were being bought up by scrappers. This car has some rust on it, mainly the rear quarters, but the floor pans, trunk and frame are solid. It has a 288 with Ultramatic transmission. What caught my attention is how straight the car is. There is hardly a ding on it anywhere. It is in original condition and is complete, with no missing parts. The odometer is showing 61,000. I just didn't want to see this car go to the crusher. Anyway, I bought it for practically nothing, and hauled it home. The paperwork with the car indicates it has not been licensed since 1970. The first thing my dad and I did after getting it home was check to see if the engine was free. It wasn't locked up, but it wasn't free either, so off came the head. All of the pistons were free, but all the valves but one were stuck solid. So we took off the valve covers and sprayed everything down with lube top and bottom every day for a week. Long story short, with a lot of sweat and elbow grease, we finally got all the valves out. I ground all the valves on my dad's valve grinder (they all needed just a little touch up), and that's as far as we've gotten so far. The starter does work and will turn the motor over. This weekend I'm hoping to clean up the valve seats, put everything back together and see if it will fire. This is going to be a pretty big project I think just to get her roadworthy. Pretty much every wire has been rotted off or chewed off the car, so I know its going to need complete rewiring at somepoint, but for now I just like to see if the motor and transmission are good. I'll keep posting as I go along!

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