Re: Peterson's 1940 Packard
Posted by West Peterson On 2014/11/20 8:22:35
At the end of my Antique Automobile column in the July issue I declared, after having four cars sitting on jack stands at the same time, that I was going to Oconomowoc, Wisconsin to show either my son's Mazda RX-7 or my 1940 Packard ... "come hell or high water." I was fed up with all my other tasks taking precedence over doing even the simplest maintenance or repairs on the household's daily drivers, let alone a pair of antiques that had been gathering cobwebs. AACA Past President and current Director Tom Cox and I had made plans to drive together for a 1,000-mile road trip in the Packard. It was getting down to the wire, and all I needed to do was either complete the installation of a replacement axle in the RX-7 or finish installing a multitude of parts on the Packard ... preferably both.
After a whirlwind of effort, both cars were lowered off of their perches in time. "The road trip is on," I matter-of-factly told Tom as he was already halfway to my house. We literally threw together whatever we could see that we thought we might need on the off chance an emergency repair was needed. No replacement parts, but we had a good selection of tools.
Our goal was to get off of the freeway as soon as we could so we could enjoy a semi-casual drive through America's heartland while avoiding the pain of having to drive through Chicago. A nice thing about the Packard ... equipped with the most powerful production engine available in 1940 and mated to a perfectly working Borg-Warner overdrive, it can cruise effortlessly well above posted freeway speed limits.
After almost four hours of being on the road and with roughly 238 miles behind us, we finally found a two-lane route that didn't look like it was too far out of the way. Illinois SR47 went straight north and skirted the west side of Chicago. Perfect ... except that Chicago spreads out a little further than I had calculated.
Some 80 miles later and after crossing the Illinois River, stop-and-go stoplight traffic had quickly gotten the best of us so we decided to follow the GPS thinking it would take us west to I-39, which also went straight north toward cheese country. Evidently I still had the GPS programmed for the shortest route, because while Tom and I were busy discussing world events, the next thing we knew we were on the Tri-State Tollway going around Chicago. Naturally we were heading out of town, on a Friday afternoon, during rush hour. Having driven through Chicago a multitude of times in my lifetime, it was exactly what I was trying to avoid. Driving like the true taxi driver that I surely must have been in a previous life, and having total confidence in the Packard, I wasn't the least bit concerned. I think Tom was.
It would not seem at all odd that, since it was the middle of summer and we were in a car that rarely gets driven in the winter, the heater valve at the cylinder head was turned off. It is a nice option, but surely not needed ... unless one is driving through a true frog-strangling thunderstorm ... which we were. The ingenious engineering of the heater in my car is that it also doubles as a windshield defogger. The fan just spins the opposite direction. Fat lot of good it does without any boiling hot water running through the core.
While Tom is nervously wiping off the inside of the windshield, I'm squinting to navigate the SS Packard through the I-294 canal that we apparently had slipped into. That's when the sound of rain pounding on the roof of our vessel began to reach decibel levels akin to a rock concert. Now what? [b]Hail?[/b] I immediately thought of my final decree in my July column. God must think of me as a true southerner, because when I said "come hell or high water, I'm going to Oconomowoc," he thought I said "hail or high water," and provided both. Ironically, Oconomowoc is Potawatomi for waterfall!
We made the trip there and back unharmed. On the way home, we realized that we could get on Route 66 for a short while, discovering a couple of restored gas stations and a wonderful Pontiac museum in Pontiac, Illinois. The only mechanical incidents were a Shrader valve in a back tire coming loose on the way to Wisconsin, and the generator failing on the return trip.
We were on a mission from God.
Attach file:
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After a whirlwind of effort, both cars were lowered off of their perches in time. "The road trip is on," I matter-of-factly told Tom as he was already halfway to my house. We literally threw together whatever we could see that we thought we might need on the off chance an emergency repair was needed. No replacement parts, but we had a good selection of tools.
Our goal was to get off of the freeway as soon as we could so we could enjoy a semi-casual drive through America's heartland while avoiding the pain of having to drive through Chicago. A nice thing about the Packard ... equipped with the most powerful production engine available in 1940 and mated to a perfectly working Borg-Warner overdrive, it can cruise effortlessly well above posted freeway speed limits.
After almost four hours of being on the road and with roughly 238 miles behind us, we finally found a two-lane route that didn't look like it was too far out of the way. Illinois SR47 went straight north and skirted the west side of Chicago. Perfect ... except that Chicago spreads out a little further than I had calculated.
Some 80 miles later and after crossing the Illinois River, stop-and-go stoplight traffic had quickly gotten the best of us so we decided to follow the GPS thinking it would take us west to I-39, which also went straight north toward cheese country. Evidently I still had the GPS programmed for the shortest route, because while Tom and I were busy discussing world events, the next thing we knew we were on the Tri-State Tollway going around Chicago. Naturally we were heading out of town, on a Friday afternoon, during rush hour. Having driven through Chicago a multitude of times in my lifetime, it was exactly what I was trying to avoid. Driving like the true taxi driver that I surely must have been in a previous life, and having total confidence in the Packard, I wasn't the least bit concerned. I think Tom was.
It would not seem at all odd that, since it was the middle of summer and we were in a car that rarely gets driven in the winter, the heater valve at the cylinder head was turned off. It is a nice option, but surely not needed ... unless one is driving through a true frog-strangling thunderstorm ... which we were. The ingenious engineering of the heater in my car is that it also doubles as a windshield defogger. The fan just spins the opposite direction. Fat lot of good it does without any boiling hot water running through the core.
While Tom is nervously wiping off the inside of the windshield, I'm squinting to navigate the SS Packard through the I-294 canal that we apparently had slipped into. That's when the sound of rain pounding on the roof of our vessel began to reach decibel levels akin to a rock concert. Now what? [b]Hail?[/b] I immediately thought of my final decree in my July column. God must think of me as a true southerner, because when I said "come hell or high water, I'm going to Oconomowoc," he thought I said "hail or high water," and provided both. Ironically, Oconomowoc is Potawatomi for waterfall!
We made the trip there and back unharmed. On the way home, we realized that we could get on Route 66 for a short while, discovering a couple of restored gas stations and a wonderful Pontiac museum in Pontiac, Illinois. The only mechanical incidents were a Shrader valve in a back tire coming loose on the way to Wisconsin, and the generator failing on the return trip.
We were on a mission from God.
Attach file:
(124.74 KB)
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