Re: The Duchess Project: 1940 Super 8 Convertible Sedan

Posted by JWL On 2013/6/17 11:55:58

Joe, the good news is you enjoyed a nice meal with family and you and the Duchess got home safely.

You might want to start looking for another garage to do your work. It seems from these recent experiences that they forget to finish the jobs.

The pinging can probably be easily fixed by retarding the ignition timing a couple of degrees. If I recall correctly, your distributor mounting bracket has a way to easily do this. Packard called this feature the "Octane Adjuster". It allowed the owner to adjust the timing to take advantage of the varying gasoline qualities back in the day.

The device has a scale and pointer so that the timing can be advanced or retarded a specific amount. Check your owner's manual for instructions. If it does not have this device, just loosen the distributor and turn it in the retard direction a very small amount. Road test and adjust more if necessary.

A timing light is not needed for this job, but you may want to put a light on the damper marks just to see where the timing is. I say this because with the movement in tightening down of the distributor you may have moved it too much in the advance side.

What grade of fuel are you using? Might want to bump the grade up to the next one. Good luck.

(o{}o)