Re: 1952 250 Mayfar 327 ci

Posted by Rusty O\'Toole On 2008/8/11 10:14:06

B&M is a famous maker of high performance and racing transmissions. They have been in business since the 1950s.

They make 2 fluids, a regular and a synthetic. The regular is better for your Ultramatic. All this is from a thread that ran last week, you should be able to find the original thread.

Packard recommended "Type A" fluid. This was the same fluid General Motors used. It was replaced by "Dexron" about 20 years after Packard went out of business.

I remember ML, MM, MS designations. The difference in price was pennies a quart so I always used the good stuff without going into details.

So let's see what would have happened when the new owner of your 52 Packard went back to the dealer for its first oil changed.

The dealer may have recommended Uniflow multigrade oil, the latest thing out at the time. If the customer thought that was too "avant garde" he would have got 20W20, detergent, heavy duty oil as the factory recommended. Unless it was summertime in the desert, over 90 degrees, in which case he would have got SAE30. Or winter in the north, well below freezing, and he would have got SAE10.

I know if he brought the car to any garage in the 60s he would have automatically got 10W30 unless he specifically requested 20W20. A few old timers did, maybe one customer out of 20.

No one got good ol' straight #30. The people who bought that stuff didn't change their oil.

What I am saying is pretty much any postwar car has used nothing but detergent oil or multigrade oil for the last 50 years. There is no reason to change to an inferior oil at this time.