Rebuilding a Packard oil pump by using Cadillac gears

Posted by Jack Vines On 2013/11/9 20:40:26

Some time back, I bought a pallet of Packard V8 parts from a shop known for rebuilding Packard V8 pumps.

There were three boxes of used pumps and several boxes of Melling oil pump rebuild kits. Since most these days choose the Oldsmobile pump conversion, I don't build many Packard pumps; thus I didn't really inventory the oil pump parts.

One of our members here wanted to keep his vacuum pump and asked me to build a Packard pump with my extended bearing.
Wanting to give him the best I could, I pulled out the rebuild kits.

The gears were externally identical to the Packard V8 gears, but the shaft was shorter, a forked end and slightly larger in diameter.

Since the P/N, K58, was on the Melling boxes, I pulled out an old catalog and found the kits were for a '56-58 Cadillac 365" engine.

In the boxes were four Packard V8 pump bodies which had a short bronze bushing and a new larger diameter Packard V8 shaft.

So what he was doing was buying the Cad rebuild kit, having a custom driveshaft made up, boring the driveshaft hole for a bronze bushing and reaming it for the Cad diameter, driving out the idler shaft, reaming the hole for the Cad shaft and pressing it in.

I can say is his method works, but it is really a lot of work. If he'd have made the bronze bushing extend to the top of the steel sleeve in the body, I'd have said he'd done it as well as it can be done.

I might consider springing for the three reamers required to use the Cad parts, but finding someone to make the custom driveshafts is the challenge. Maybe my CNC guy would do a few, but is there likely to be any demand? The Packard pump would have new gears, new shafts, new bearings and would keep the vacuum pump.

jack vines