Re: Got my Packard up and running!

Posted by HH56 On 2015/9/13 10:11:25

Congratulations on seeing a light thru the tunnel.

On driving with the Ultra, since it appears you have the conventional Ultra and not the gear start (no small dot on the quadrant to the left of H?) the procedure was to do everything in H. As you have found, that provides smooth but leisurely acceleration.

Many people didn't like the slow take off from stop lights so got in the habit of starting in low and shifting to high. The transmission was not designed for this and because there is no synchronization between low band release and high range clutch plate lockup the transmission could bog down or engine race while the two things happened in the trans. Not good for life expectancy to clutch and bands.

Packard did realize people were doing this and made some attempts to alleviate the issue. Yours being a 54 may have the improved timing kit installed which helped a bit but if you do the manual shift it is still a good idea to get in a habit of taking off in low and when the car gets going, letting off the gas while you shift to high and let the transmission do its thing with no power applied and then proceeding in high.

Once the trans reaches approx 20-40 mph depending on throttle position it will go into direct drive. Below approx 50 you can force a downshift into converter by flooring the accelerator. Above 50 or so it will stay in direct drive so don't be alarmed if you try to pass a car, floor the accelerator, and the trans does not want to shift down as modern cars do. As far as shifting from H to L it is not a good idea to do this above a moderate speed. The same thing with no sync in the trans plus, since there is only the two gear ratios, a huge added strain as it tries to get everything slowed and rotating at the same speed . Packard suggested low for steep inclines and if you needed to rock the car to free from mud or sand it was permissible to shift from L to H back and forth to rock the car -- but that was at no to low speed. Packard suggested not using low or dropping into low at anything over approx 25 mph.

The gear start introduced toward the end of 54 production did the low to high to direct automatically but before that it was one speed plus direct drive.