Re: Jeff's 48 Custom 8 Victoria Project

Posted by bigmoparjeff On 2013/11/18 2:40:07

Hi Dell, I'm happy to report that shimming the relief valve did the trick. I added five thin little washers behind the spring, and it brought the pressure up to 47 psi at speed and it will drop down to about 30 after it idles for a while. The bad news is that the oil leak isn't getting any better with time, so it looks like I'm still going to have to pull the timing cover off.

The big news of the day is that the Packard made it's first trip under it's own power in about 25 years. I decided to make a video of the momentous event. I was a bit disappointed at how bad the video mode on my camera works in low light. It almost looks like it was totally dark out, when it was actually the latter part of dusk. I decided to post it anyway, since you can only make a maiden voyage once. If you have an adjustable monitor, tuning the brightness way up helps, otherwise it's best to fast forward to near the end. Some notes on the video: Yes, it's a pain in the butt to get out of my shop with a big car with manual steering. There's presently no latch on the driver's door, and that's why it tries to open every time I turn to the right. The floor section over the transmission is still off the car, and that's why the trans seems so loud, especially when I grind reverse a few times. When I turned around in the street, I realized that I had forgotten to release the parking brake.

The car runs great, but still needs some fine tuning of the carburetor, as it's got a flat spot right off idle. The shifter linkage could use some minor adjusting too.

Jeff

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