Re: Proud New Owner of a 49 Packard Club Sedan

Posted by 50 2382 On 2018/9/4 19:01:03

Congrats on the new car!
I have some answers but others will also help correct me!

1. It seems to run awfully hot. Its not losing coolant, but after about 5 miles the temp gauge is all the way over. Radiator has been recored, and block has been flushed. I'm afraid to drive it further for fear of warping the head or otherwise damaging the engine. I have not eyebaled the thermostat to see if there is one there, or if it is correct.
Several things can cause it to run hot...
1. Thermostat (replace it, a cheap insurance policy)
2. Bad water pump, could be spinning the pulley and not the impeller. (a long shot).
3. Timing to far advanced.
4. Water distribution tube plugged/decayed.


2. The overdrive is not functional. It appears to be fully wired, but will not engage. The knob was all the way in. I (unfortunately) decided to mess with the knob. It got it out about half an inch, but no further. I could then hear the overdrive solenoid clicking, so I removed the fuse from the OD relay. This stopped the clicking, but something was still going on, as the battery kept draining and was dead overnight.

The fuse is only part of the OD circuit, it protects the solinoid in the overdrive. The relay should not close when the iginition is off. Which OD do you have R-9 or R-11? I jsut got through working on mine. My cable was bent and I had another one made from a shop in CA. There is a switch in the cable you have and it supplies power from the ignition switch (battery) to the OD relay. The cable I had made didn't have a switch and so I wired a toggle switch in place of the one embedded in the cable you have. (I made a new bracket to hold the cable and the switch.)

I disconnected the ignition side of the overdrive lockout switch, and the battery no longer drains. Could the lockout switch be bad, or stuck in an on position?

This depends on where they took the power for your firewall relay.

Perhaps it is connected backwards? How do I tell if its connected backwards?

The switch cant be connected backwards and it is in series with the downstream relay.

Shouldn't the knob be able to come further out?

Yes.

There is a lot of great information on the OD in Section 7 of the manuals in this website.

3. Where does the ground wire for the heater motor attach? I can't find anything obvious within it s reach.

Don't know sorry, mine works.


4. What is the foglight wiring? Is there a relay somewhere?

I haven't found one but considering the current draw there should be.

5. Can someone explain the oil pressure sending unit? Mine seems to have a rubber tube coming off of it that goes nowhere.


5a. The oil filter is not plumbed. Where does the return line go, and does the oil pressure sending unit have an aperture for the "in" to the oil filter? Its a 288; no hydraulic lifters.

The oil filter is fed from a tee at the bottom center of the block on the drivers side. (This is also where the oil pressure sender goes (the other side of the tee). Directly above this tee there is another fitting for the return oil from the filter.
See Section 5 Engine in the manuals section.




6. What is the deal with the radio? What is a "Control Head?"

Radio for 49-50 was a self contained unit. In other early cars the actual radio looked like a heater mounted inside of the firewall and there were flexible cables from the unit in the dash "control head" that operated the firewall unit. Yours should be a single unit.

7. What's the deal with the starter button? I understand that the gas pedal starter was a nightmare so they went with a dash mounted button. However, the 49 Club Sedan has a dash button, but my 49 parts car does not, and I see no gas pedal starter.

The gas pedal starter was a switch on the engine side of the firewall connected to the starter solenoid through a vacuum switch in the carburetor. Look at the carb on your parts car for wires connected to a small black thingy. These didn't work too well and so a lot of our cars did away with them. (I have a starter button).

I wasn't shouting I was using bold letters to make this easier to read....