Re: Dad's 5677A

Posted by HH56 On 2020/12/6 10:39:17
I can sympathize why the person who did your changes tried to come up with a workaround. The original 3 terminal brake switches were somewhat hard to find after Stude went away and even more so after the 70s when it seems like the mention of buying any low production orphan car part was a bad word -- basically until the days of online search and internet vendors came along. The switches were expensive then and even more so now that supply of originals is all but extinct so it is understandable why some kludgy attempts to replace them were made.

Honestly, until Packardinfo came along service literature and wiring diagrams were not plentiful to even know how the TL system worked. There were a few offering hard copy reprints of various quality of the more general literature items but unless you were a member of a club even that availability was not well known. Packard parts in general were harder to find because auto parts stores never carried that many Packard aftermarket items anyway and there were only a few vendors selling the NOS parts they had the foresight to buy up from defunct dealers. It was word of mouth thru clubs or an occasional ad seen in an old car auto publication to even know where to look for those people.

I don't know who came up with the first cross to the VW switch. I first heard thru the Packards International Club that there was a switch made by Wells that many used (maybe that was the VW cross) but then reports came along that those turned out to be problematic for some reason and there were many negative comments about using them -- maybe due to the silicon fluid which was being heavily promoted by some clubs in those days for use in cars that did a lot of sitting. The mechanical switch conversion was an effort to both eliminate silicon problems and the difficulty in finding a 3 terminal switch. That might have come from PI also because in the 70 and 80s they were a very active club in coming up with mods to keep Packards on the road. No idea who came up with the 2 terminal and relay conversion either but I think those are relatively recent with promotion and availability of the kits only starting a few years ago.

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