42 CLIPPER STREET ROD
Although I personally am a purist/authenticity nut, I cant help but admire the superior work described here.

This is going to be one magnificent automobile. I can see enough from the photos to determine this is a combination of the highest quality work & craftsmanship, coupled with use of high quality parts, combined with brilliant thought in terms of the technical / engineer aspects.

BRAVO !

But here's my question - let me suggest a background for that question.

More and more car shows that were once quite rigid in what they would accept, are now open to "street rods".

For example, here in Southern California each year in June, we have an outstanding event at Lacy Park in San Marino, which is fast becoming "Pebble Beach South". Each year a larger and larger per-centage of the cars exhibited fall into the "street rod / custom" category. From what I can see, this '42 CLIPPER is going to be the "best of the best".

So here's my question. Why call it a "Packard"? You are entitled to take credit for your outstanding work - why not name it what it is - YOUR creation - using YOUR name and/or facility. You obviously know how to get emblems made; why not make one up so the public will know who you are and where to find you should they want to partake of your extraordinary talent !

I suspect that the fathers of most of today's car buffs were not yet born when the Packard Motor Car Company closed down.

How many of us who own "real" Packards have been asked at car shows "what IS a Packard"....! Most folks today have no clue what the word PACKARD is, or meant, and could care less.

As best as I am able to determine, what you have is some of the exterior sheet metal of a Packard Clipper, which will be covering a superb job of modern quality work, materials, and engineering.

Would I be correct in saying virtually NONE of the finished product's parts would fit a real Packard Clipper?

The bottom line of my question - is quite simple and obvious. Get some proper descriptive emblems for what you have done. TOOT YOUR OWN HORN....YOU DESERVE IT !

Side note - if I had the money and knew where to find this guy, durn right I have some ideas for my '51 "250" convertible !

you are "rebuilding" a Packard Eight ?

and you want an "exploded" view?

There are so many places where you can find "elevation drawings" from both the front and sides of that motor I hesitate listing them all here for fear of taking up too much space and boring our "post-war" crowd! I do not recall seeing "exploded" views however.

Can you tell us a little more so we can advise you more completely & more accurately ?

Exactly what are you proposing to do ? Are you doing this yourself, or having it done by a competent engine rebuilder?

Most people have a "smart" cell phone these days that takes excellent hi resolution - good color saturation photos. Perhaps you have one & can you post photos of the areas you have questions about?

You folks should not feel embarrassed about your lack of knowledge of gasoline-powered cabin heaters. It isn't an area many car buffs are familiar with, or even need to know about.

They continue to be in regular use in aircraft, where they have demonstrated they are both safe, reliable, and very effective. Durn right it is pretty slick to have lots of heat, almost instantly, in a cold aircraft.

They are a good and safe answer for applications where there is not an ample supply of hot water (where a ordinary fan blowing over an ordinary radiator core of some kind can supply ample cabin heat). As in air-cooled motors.

The three major types in use today are the Janitrol, Stewart Warner, and C & D ( recently bought up by Hartzell).

With the kind of modern controls used in aircraft today, they are delightful in their ability to hold steady any cabin temp. the operator wishes. No more of the "roast or freeze" phenomena of the pre-war types!

As another poster noted, once we had hi temp antifreezes, they faded from use in water-cooled surface transport.

The simple answer is cost. The gasoline-fired cabin heater is are far far more expensive to produce & maintain than the ordinary "fan over hot radiator" systems in use in automotive practice today.

And they are more complex to maintain. To obtain the reliability and safety of the modern gasoline-fired furnaces, expensive and complicated controls are necessary.

Even in the earlier models seen in automotive use, there had to be some way of protecting the user with redundancy, from any number of malfunctions. Maintaining those systems can be costly and labor - intensive.

My recommendation - forget about the gasoline-fired furnace concept for any water-cooled automobile or truck today.

If your car has one, remove it and install a modern "hot water" system. They are relatively inexpensive, and totally reliable.

True, you will have to wait about three to possibly as much as five minutes of normal driving to get really toasty, but the alternative is simply not worth the cost and effort.

Hi Fred:

To give you a historical perspective, I trust you are aware there were no Interstate-style highways when your car was designed - normal driving speeds were so much lower than they are these days.

There were some places where you could go fast, really fast for a while (until a slower moving car or truck held everyone up, on those typical two-lane intercity highways).

True, you wont hurt that relatively modern "lower end" design of your car's motor by driving it at a steady 50 or even faster, but I agree - with the motor screaming away at the higher speeds, it isn't pleasant. And of course it is harder on everything - generator, water pump, etc. to be worked that hard (you'd have to drive a modern car well over 100 mph to get the same effect on its drive-line).

Reflecting the higher speeds as the roads improved during the 1930's, you will find some cars having two-speed rear axles or overdrives.

Elsewhere in this site you will find people suggesting that the smaller-engine Packards do not do well with a "higher" (numerically lower) rear axle ratio - not enough torque to give satisfactory performance. That is why you will find folks suggesting overdrives.

Packard did start offering overdrives as an option, as the thirties became the 1940's, but finding all the parts to convert your car to use that option would be unlikely. And even if you could convert, the Borg - Warner overdrives, while reliable in service when properly maintained, can be a "bar" to get set up properly when you are "starting from scratch".

My initial recommendation is you accept the limits of what your car is, enjoy it for what it is. It is a piece of history - trying to adopt it into a world that was inconceivable at the time it was engineered, will be expensive.

If you MUST drive faster for long periods - yes, an overdrive would be the answer.

But you are looking at a price range of around two grand for the unit, plus who knows what to hang it in your car between your existing transmission and your rear axle housing.

I personally recommend the HONE overdrive if you want a more pleasant-driving car at speed.

On level ground you will find driving your car at speed will be so much more pleasant. With the HONE overdrive's electric switch, you can easily "drop down" to direct drive to "pull" the grades you may encounter.

Can you post some photos of your car from various angles?

Packard was obsessed with making certain their cooling systems were more than adequate for the task.

The problem is what time does to radiator internals.

Yes - "rodding" does help a little. The real problem is the inevitable "build-up" on the inside walls of the radiator cooling tubes. No "rodding" or chemical cleaning process can resolve what time and chemistry does to those tubes.

By the World War One years, Packard had a well-deserved reputation for delivering a superior product. Getting that superiority back means recognizing the basics of chemistry and physics.

Bottom line - if the radiator is more than 30 years old, remove it and send it to a competent radiator shop. They will order you a suitable modern "core", put your old "top" and "bottom" tanks on it; then and only then will your car deliver the cooling performance it did when in service as a new car.

I presume you already know about cleaning out the left side of the engine block - easily accessible by removing that long "cover-plate".

relax - folks - unless I missed something, he is apparently not, before starting his trip, going to replace ALL the fuel lines (both rubber and steel all the way from the gas tank to the carb) and is not planning on removing the gas tank for a professional cleaning by a radiator shop.

So there you are - bet you dollars to donuts he wont get far enough to find out why he should have also replaced every rubber part in the brake system, from the "cups" in the wheel cylinders, rubber hydraulic lines, re-rubbered the master cylinder.

So everyone just relax.