Re: 1956 400 Ultramatic Transmission Questions

Posted by Leeedy On 2021/2/25 20:51:00

Nahh. I'm sorry but that looks like a 1955 lever arm to me. These drop-forged parts (at least the ones I had and the final-spec ones I got from Packard Dealer Frost & French years ago) were not dead straight. The 1956 arms I had were almost always painted bronze with a curve in them. The final-spec 1956 senior selector lever arms are not plentiful.

And who knows what else was mixed in when this car was changed away from Pushbuttons? 1955 and 1956 Packards (and don't forget to add in 1955 and 1956 Clippers) may look similar but there are so many changes and it can be deadly not to know these changes intimately. This may seem like a simple swap, but it just SEEMS like a simple swap.

My feeling is that It's always better to repair what you've got because usually when people start doing mix 'n match, there is wayyyy more to go wrong. AND then three times as much work to either figure out what is wrong, why and then how to fix it. OR... how to put it back. Many of these cars are "swapped over" and then put up for sale. So nobody knows the level of the swap-over until it is either a pleasant surprise or a nasty surprise.

Few out there can do these kinds of swap-overs successfully with no tears. And pity the poor subsequent owners–even the ones who have notes of what the guy before thinks he did. And in today's jargon "upgrades" often don't really mean UPGRADES, but rather customized changes that could be anything. The language of today's auto talk is FOG. One of the scariest phrases ever heard can be "re-built Ultramatic changed over from Pushbutton Shift to 'reliable manual lever!'" Uh-ohh...