Re: Mike P 1955 400 Slow Resto Thread!

Posted by kevinpackard On 2022/6/12 23:35:10

Congrats!! Car looks GREAT! I'm amazed at how good the interior is. The seats, headliner, and door panels are exceptional. A little cleaning here and there, and eventually replace the carpet. But you won't have to do much to the inside at all. So nice.

Going to your plan of attack:
1.) I never rebuilt a carb until I did it on my Packard. It's not as hard as I thought. It's intimidating, but I just took pictures of everything as I disassembled it, and labeled and bagged all the parts. I also picked up a Motors manual of Ebay that covers my year, and the information in there was very helpful in setting the carb back up when I rebuilt it. I highly recommend getting a manual for your year. Rebuilding the carb will teach you a ton about the car and give you much more confidence in it.

2.) Classic Exhaust makes complete replacement systems for our cars. I purchased my system through Kanter, who gets it from Classic Exhaust. The whole thing was about $400. I had a local shop install it for $150 and it's fantastic. Alternatively you could have an exhaust shop look at what you have now and see if they can patch up what you have. Obviously you'll need to get the car running first.

3.) If you can get the car on jack stands, I would drain the trans fluid first, then drop the pan and inspect/clean it out. You'll need a new gasket when you reinstall. Olson's gaskets is a good place, or any of the Packard distributors will have it. I'm not sure on the 55's, but the Ultramatics before that use Type F trans fluid.

A note about the glass. The side glass shouldn't be too bad to replace and is readily available from multiple sources. My driver's window is cracked, but I drive 99% of the time with my windows down so I haven't bothered to replace it. The Service Manual for 55-56 does a great job at showing the whole process for glass replacement including the windshield. The windshield will be a bit tougher to find, but should be much more common than what I had to deal with. It is a pain replacing it, especially with putting the trim back in. You'll need a new gasket for that as well. Steele has them (get it through Max Merritt), plan on about $300 for the gasket. I recommend getting in with a local car club. You'll probably find a guy there that has experience with replacing curved glass like this. Have him come over and give you a hand when the time comes. Honestly, I would just drive it like it is right, even with the cracked glass. Eventually you'll want that windshield replaced, but don't let that keep you from getting the car up and running.

You have a fantastic car to start with. And with an interior like that you'll be saving $15-20K by not having to replace it.

-Kevin


***BTW, this thread would be best located in the Project Blogs area of the forum. It'll get lost in the V-8 section. Maybe BigKev can move it?