Packard Motor Car Information

Re: KPack

Posted by kevinpackard On 2023/1/10 14:53:34

I finally got all the lights to work on the car. The license plate lights and dash turn indicators have never worked. I got the dash turn indicators working, but they are super dim. I'm assuming the bulbs just aren't getting enough current. I cleaned up the grounds, so that shouldn't be the issue. The license plate lights turned out had 12V bulbs in them. Swapping them out did the trick.

I've had some fender skirts I picked up from Tucson Packard sitting around waiting for me to do something with them. I decided to clean them and see if I could get them straightened out.

I removed all the old paint and what I could of the original undercoating. Both of them had some dings, while the passenger side had a large crease down half of it. I picked up a hammer and dolly set from Harbor Freight for $50 and tried my hand at straightening them out. I'll need to do more practice, but I was able to get them fairly decent.

The problem I'm going to have is that the Panama apparently had a lot of body work done around the rear wheel wells. It's a common rust spot, and it looks like the guy before me essentially had to redo both of the wheel openings. He didn't put the mounting holes back in when he did the work. And there is a lot of Bondo. In a perfect world I might strip the whole car and redo these areas, but that's just not going to happen at this point. The body work is acceptable for a driver and I don't want to get involved in that big of a project at this point.

It's going to be a struggle to see if I can get new holes drilled and line up the fender skirts. I'm not sure if he was able to get the correct shape or not. We'll see.

-Kevin

Attach file: