I haven't been on the forum in awhile and was surprised today to see a picture of my 400 from the Fall 2014 Old Dominion Packard Club meet. Really nice picture of the front end. Thanks for posting it MrBumble.

What I did was entirely by accident. When I bought my car it didn't have a front license plate holder. I ordered one from Tucson Packard and put it on. It bolts behind the front bumper and is a sort of an s-shaped bracket. I don't know if I installed it backwards, upside down or if it's the wrong bracket, but it sticks out in front of the bumper.

I also wanted to put some club badges on my car and figured the license plate bracket sticking out in front was an obvious solution. I bought a grill bar from Triple-C Auto Accessories and mounted it between the license plate and the bracket. The grill bar has adjustable brackets so it was easy.

I've never checked the bracket on other cars so I don't know if I have the correct bracket or not. But it fit the curve of the bumper perfectly and the bolt holes lined up perfectly. It just sticks out.

Hope this helps.

James,

Thanks for the info. From your post it looks like the upper and lower control arm bushings were part of the kit I bought. So I can only conclude that the shop I used 12 years ago when I lived in Alabama didn't install the bushings that came with the kit. Too bad. Maybe I wouldn't have had these recent issues with the T-L system.

Jed

Nope, that's parts only. The entire bill with labor will be well over $2K.

Randy,

I haven't seen the invoice from Max Merrit but my shop quoted approximately $600 for all the parts to do the control arm bushings.

Jed

Finally, success!

The shop replaced the front control arm bushings and that seems to have fixed the problem. They also report that the bushings were in very bad condition and look like they've never been replaced.

So, either I mistakenly thought the kit I bought from Kanter 10 or 12 yars ago included the control arm bushings or the shop never installed them. I haven't found the paperwork on the kit yet but I don't think the kit included those bushings. The control arm bushings alone were much more expensive than the entire front end kit I bought from Kanter.

The good news is that I have a completely new or rebuilt T-L system, and every part I replaced needed replacing. The bad news is it wasn't cheap! Oh well, it needed to be done.

Thanks for everyone's advice on this problem. And for everyone with a T-L system, if it's see-sawing on you and there's no resistance in the system, check those control arm bushings!

Thanks guys. We'll do these checks to see if we can narrow it down. I do think it's mechanical problem and so do the guys at the shop.

Just to be clear, should the compensator hold the car at level? If we can turn the adjusting bars by hand (when they're only connected to the compensator) is that a problem? If we drop the electric motor from the compensator and can turn the worm gear in the compensator with your finger, is that normal?

Well the new shocks made no difference at all. There's still no resistance in the suspension system to hold the car at level. Even moving it around the parking lot causes it to go out of level.

I know some folks with T-L systems that say they can turn the system off and drive the car without it losing level. Other guys' T-L systems only compensates for changes in weight like luggage or gas. Mine won't hold level at all!

I don't know what to try next. Anyone have any ideas? I'm starting to wonder if I got a bad NOS compensator.

I agree, the car should stay level when the T-L system is turned off. My problem is there's no resistance in the system to keep the car level.

If I use the brakes it pitches down in the front. If I turn the T-L system off, it settles down in the back. The T-L system won't keep it level because it over shoots level because there's no resistance. I'm hoping new shocks will make a difference.

A-arm bushings were replaced less than 10k miles ago. Rear bushings were replaced last week.

Brian,

We wondered about that too. The unit is an NOS unit that we just installed. It purrs like a kitten when it operates. No noises or clunks at all.