Re: How bad WERE the '55 Packards?

Posted by Charles Neuhaus On 2008/12/26 16:56:32

I don't know how long the automotive industry kept up the practice of aging or "pickling" cast iron blocks, but I know it continued for a time after WWII. As an anecdoital story about this process, a friend of mine in Seattle in the early 60's had a 1946 Chrysler New Yorker with the 323.5 cu.in. straight eight. In the late fifties he had the engine rebuilt and the machine shop complained that the block was so hard it was destroying his boring equipment. Their guess was that the block was cast before the war and (since Chrysler did not use the eight in any military applications) that it had aged for four or five years rather than the usual one and had become much harder than normal. Therefore there may be something to this process after all.