Re: BigKev's 1954 Packard Clipper Deluxe Sedan

Posted by BigKev On 2010/3/13 19:30:22

I was finally able to get my fuel tank bolted back underneath the car. I also tape wrapped the original sender wire as the fabric insulation was chaffed in a couple of places, but the vinyl core was still intact. The rubber boot that covers the connection on the sender was pretty much rotted away. So I used an right-angle spark-plug boot to replace it. Worked perfectly. Also the original sender wire came out of the grommet in the rear of the trunk floor, and then went through a small hole in the middle of the crossmember and to the sender. Not sure if this was original or not, but if so the wire contacts two sharp edges on the crossmember and this was one place were the fabric insulation was chaffed. So I rerouted the wire over the top of the crossmember where there are no sharp edges, and used a wire tie to secure the wire to the crossmember using that original hole. This keeps the wire from moving around underneath the car. I then checked the sender wire to make sure I was getting a good ground from the tank mounting. Everything looks good.

So next it was onto removing the old fuel line. I unclipped the line from frame rail and front cross-member, and removed the line clamps near the steering box, the parking drivers side parking brake cable support bracket, and on the frame right before the tank. The bolt that holds the clamp to the parking cable bracket was the worst. It is the only one that has a nut on the backside, and the nut was so rust that it simply spun in place on the bolt shaft. So I had to use a nut splitter to break the nut off the bolt. I will replace with a fresh nut and bolt.

To get the fuel line out, I had to cut the line just forward of the firewall. Then I was able to bend and work the line out from underneath the car. Since the body is not coming off the frame, I will have to replace the line with a multi-piece line similar to what I had to do with brake line. There is really no way to replace the fuel line as a single piece with the body of the frame. BTW the length of that original fuel line is almost exactly 16 feet.