Re: Ultramatic blade upgrade?

Posted by Ross On 2014/5/13 5:44:54

You mean aftermarket for Packard?--then no. Never enough interest to make that worth anyone's while.

Ultramatic, like Dynaflow, was planned with the convertor being the only source of torque multiplication unless low was selected. To fit that parameter, the convertors were designed to provide a high degree of torque multiplication about 2.4:1 in the earliest, and rising to about 2.7 in the 56s. That was the result of finessing the blade designs and was quite a good figure.

Just to contrast, the excellent Borg Warner transmission supplied to Studebaker in 1950 was designed to use gear reduction in addition to the convertor to start the car rolling. To fit that design philosophy, the convertor was designed with only a 1.4:1 torque multiplication. (All these figures are coming somewhere out of the back of my brain. I can't even remember where to look to verify them.)

Anyway, given the parameters it was to fulfill, the Packard convertor was quite a slick piece of work. Later ones even better than the earlier.