Re: "Waking Sleeping Beauty" .... The Blog!

Posted by Jim L. in OR On 2011/1/28 13:39:48

Well boys and girls, when we last left our story.....

First I want to thank Howard, Owen and PackardV8 for their help with thread suggestions and alternative gas tanks.

Yesterday I rinsed out the gas tank and after pouring the water out of it I stuck the nozzle of my Shop Vac through the sending unit opening and sucked out a lot of really disgusting "stuff". However, I did uncover a bit of (hopefully) good news. It became clear to me that there were two fairly big "dings" in the tank at some point, probably after the first ding, someone had "coated" the inside of the tank. After some time had passed, the tank took its' second hit - which cracked or shattered a portion of the coating. Gas got underneath and more fell/dissolved to the bottom of the tank. The upshot is that after vacuuming out most of the crap, the inside of the tank that I could see didn't really look that bad. In fact, some of it is actually fairly shinney! There is a leak at one of the corners at the seam but that is the only obvious place.

I called Able Radiator (Portlandon coming through yet again) and had a good chat with Tom, the owner. After I told him what I had he said that while he was pretty much out of the gas tank business (no money in it) since it was from a Packard, he'd take it on as he is a fan. After a while he also mentioned that in the past he has built gas tanks for customers that were too far gone - a Jaguar XK-120 for one.
I told him I'd keep that in mind but I imagine that a "one-off" tank would be pretty spendy but still....

He said that since the tank had been coated, I'd have to take it to a place to have the remains of the coating removed. I called them this morning and assuming the inside is dry by Monday I'll drop it off and they will bake the tank and then use a Sulfuric Acid bath to strip it to bare metal.

Then it's back to Tom at Able Radiator for the final cleaning and coating. Tom quoted a price of around $175 for all his work and said the bake and acid bath would probably run about $200 at the other place. I saw that there was a NEW gas tank on e-Bay for my 1960 Imperial for $310 so a new tank would actually be cheaper but - I checked - they don't do Packards.

Yesterday I also bought a fresh 5 gallon plastic "Jerry Can" and as Sunday is my Birthday and I hope to celebrate it by hooking a hose from the "Jerry Can" to the fuel pump and see, after and oil and filter change, taking the plugs out and turning the engine over enough to pump up oil pressure, installing new plugs, points, cap, rotor and condenser, if Sleeping Beauty will favor me by running - weather permitting. I'll need to check and make sure the starter solenoid is diverting power to the distributor while cranking but if it does, I really feel that she'll start.

So far I've found a serious problem with every element an engine needs to run: A messed up ignition switch; Bad Ballast Resistor and a Tank so full of crap that when I tried to empty the water from the rinse out through the filler pipe I got just a trickle instead of a torrent!
Which reminds me to check the fuel pump output Sunday as well as well as the Fuel Bowl Element.

I've said it before but I'm not surprised this car died on the freeway! I'm amazed that it actually got that far.

I took some pictures of the remains of the Sending Unit and the truly VILE mess at the bottom of my Shop Vac and will post them as soon as I can.

If anyone should think of anything else I should do before Sunday, feel free to jump in with it!

Stay tuned!