Re: 55 Electrics

Posted by John On 2008/3/2 14:13:30

(you have thrown it out there that you aren't concerned about originality)
It's not so much that I'm not concerned with originality as it is that a lot of the parts for this car are missing and since I want to build a "driver", I'm more interested in the creature comforts.

(What's wrong with the wiring harness? '55-'56 Packards have a plastic insulation wiring harness and I've yet to see one on a functional car (not a junkyard car or left outdoors for 40 years to rot) that had a bad wiring harness.)
My harness has hardened and a number of the circuits show high resistance when measured with a VOM. This would lead to reduced power to the circuit and would ultimately cause long term problems.

(The torsion level compensator box will have to be gutted and fitted with new relays so that the box sends out a hot (+)12V when leveling is called for)
I spent a few minutes looking over the wiring diagram for the torsion system and it appears that the conversion should be pretty straightforward. Unless I'm wrong, the relays should not care if it is positive or negative ground since they only rely on a completed circuit to activate the coils, so they could just be wired in the opposite direction. Same with the limit switches. My concern would be the compensator motor since I'm not sure what happens to make it run in a reverse direction. If it just applies a reverse polarity to the same windings, then reversing the wiring on the motor should take care of that as well.


(You are pretty much going to have to use a stock starter, I don't know of any replacements in the Summit catalog. The '56 starter is negative ground, so it sounds like you had a happy accident with that.)
Agreed. It is big and heavy though!! ;^)

If you are able to clear up the issue regarding the TL motor reversing, I would be very appreciative.

Thanks,
John