Re: 53 Packard Clipper engine won't turn over

Posted by kens53clip On 2009/7/1 17:57:11

Excellent question, Rusty
When I bought the car in 2008 it had a new 12 volt battery negative ground in it and I assumed, incorrectly, that some things had been done to convert it to 12 volt. It did not help that neither the starter nor the generator had any metal tag indicating the maker, model number, or voltage. I originally owned this same model (but a different car)as my first car in 1973 when I was 18 so I knew it originally came with 6 volt positive ground. After investigation I decided that the only thing about the car that was 12 volt was the battery so I replaced the battery with a six volt battery and the car ran fine with the six volt until recently. So, although it had a 12 volt battery when I bought it, and I ran it with a 12 volt battery for a while until I figured out what had been done, it is now and was last running as a 6 volt vehicle. I figured since everything in the car was apparently 6 volt, why should I go to all this expense if the car would run as a six volt with little additional expense. The polarity had been switched to negative on the coil and I went ahead and kept it as negative ground since the 6 volt voltage regulator I bought (thought the original one was messed up by the 12 volt battery since breaker points were burning) worked with both negative and positive ground. With my first Packard I had bad experiences with ignorant battery installers reversing polarity and messing up voltage regulators. Also, I did not know of anything that would be hurt by the polarity switch, the radio not working anyway.
Ken Dunning
kens53clip