Re: '48 Custom with minor issues and bad gearbox

Posted by kanadanmajava On 2013/7/21 18:12:49

I have been terribly busy with my work, short summer vacation and fixing my Packard. Today I had enough time and courage to check the gearbox. I took the top cover away and thought that I had found the reason for the noises. The 2/3 gear shifting fork had really worn "contact pads". There was a lot of metal missing from the places that are contacting the "dog clutches" when 3rd gear is engaged. Still I couldn't figure out what might be causing the noise.

I rotated the shafts and found the real reason. The upper gear of the 2nd gear was missing half of one tooth. I guess I will need new gearbox.

One spare gear might be cheap way to solve the problem as the other gears were still quite ok. It still requires a lot of work and the end results won't be a very reliable gearbox.

I took photos of the problems but forgot them in workshop's camera. I'll try to upload them in tomorrow.

Before solving the annoying noise I have done other things with the car.

I got most of the lights operational and took the car to registration inspection. Nasty inspection guy could have found really long list of things to fix but my friendly inspection guy only asked me to fix front right brake. When brake pedal was pushed toward the floor the right front wheel suddenly locked. The total brake effect before that was also quite weak.

I suspected that brake shoe was misaligned and acted a bit weirdly. After dis-assembly I found that brake hose was almost completely blocked and second brake piston was stuck. I took the brake cylinder apart and cleaned the parts. Dust boots were in bad condition but I put the cylinder back together with old parts.

The car came with one new uninstalled brake hose that was quite useful. At this point I was quite sure that I needed to maintain the left front brake too and after test run this became clear.

The left one had newer brake cylinder (again with a stuck piston) but it had newish brake hose. This time the dust boots were ok. Now the brakes are pretty good but I guess the horribly old brake fluid has probably ruined the rear brakes too.

I didn't have suitable tool to pull away the rear drums so I'll handle the rear brakes later on. I did order new rubbers from eBay (LNF Brakes).

I noticed that my car has had Electromatic clutch but almost everything has been removed. Only push button, red pedal and complex accelerator linkage are still there. I can live without it but I guess I should remove the last of the parts from the car. I have fog lights but the switch is missing from the dashboard. The chromed button is there but without a switch.

Btw. I had really short summer vacation in UK where I visited really awesome Goodwood Festival of Speed. There wasn't any Packards but instead there was an incredible display of straight eight power. Even one Bugatti T41 Royale was there but unfortunately they didn't start it. It was my second but not last time there.

This was a long post but I had a long brake...