Due to family health problems, I've not been active in the forum for quite sometime, but I continue to lurk in from time to time. I've been following this thread with great interest as I have one 56 Patrician that has a badly rusted (though not leaking) tank, and I have to put my $0.02 in on this matter.
I was elated to see someone finally take on reproduction of the 51-56 fuel tank. The repro looked good enough from the few pix I'd seen online that I even wondered about replacing the tanks in my other two V8s. However, I was disappointed to learn about this 'notch'. IMHO, it was a bad decision to include this feature in lieu of a properly vented cap.
A vented gas cap - at least in this period of automotive history - is NOT simply a cap with a hole in it. The properly vented cap has a two-way valve. In fact, a hobby vendor went to the trouble of reproducing such a cap for another brand of this period:
https://www.danchuk.com/ItemForm.aspx?Item=140 Dad parked the 56 Exec, which he purchased brand-new, in our attached two-car garage and we NEVER smelled gas or had any kind of gas puddle or stain on the floor.
The alleged notch in the OE filler tube shown above on a 52 Packard looks more like a split in the metal that resulted from the forming process - perhaps unintentionally. I concur with Howard that it looks like some kind of insert.
Although I'm relieved to hear that the fill tube mounting (downstream) follows the original intent, I would rather not buy a tank with such a notch for my V8s. Left with no other choice but to purchase one of these tanks, I would try to apply heat and undo the notch and/or apply solder (not JB Weld). Yet, I think it's a bit unreasonable to expect anyone to buy a new reproduction tank and then have to rework it.
This Post was from: https://packardinfo.com/xoops/html/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?post_id=181135