Do you mind if I ask what is the VIN on the car? Just wondering if it's a late production car. The 1956 cars were generally better than the 1955s, but the late 1956 cars were the best of the V8 Packards.

Don't think I've ever seen the version with "P A C K A R D E I G H T " on the dial, but I have seen a few of the octagonal case Packard watches with standard Arabic numerals and either a white face or a black face, with the Packard radiator on it. I want to say it had a scroll at the bottom of the radiator, like Packard advertising frequently featured, and said either Ask the Man Who Owns One or Of a Distinguished Family. I have one of them with the black and gold face, something I bought over 40 years ago outside of Lansing MI. Not sure if these were given to buyers of new Packards by some dealers, or whether they were available through the dealers' parts and accessories division.

Sadly, the Perrysburg meet is long gone, as is the original host hotel. The Holiday Inn Holidome “French Quarter” in Perrysburg has been leveled and re-developed.

The Packard Proving Grounds holds an annual open house event in October. The PPG runs that event, not Motor City Packards, although you will definitely see lots of MCP members volunteering and displaying their cars that day.

So sorry to hear of this news. Seems that every new day claims another of our grand old Packard Club members that were there when I first joined the club in 1972.

I bought a dual four barrel carburetor set up from Pete back in 1976 or 1977 when I was still in college. I may still have the correspondence somewhere.

Rest in peace, Pete.

They look like they could be a gasket or seal that fits to the bottom of the Senior V8 tail light housings.

Can start a new version? A "Part Deux?" I always thought that thread was great entertainment.

I don't specifically see the language "DOT Approved" on the Holley website. The closest I can find is "Compliant - No-glare beam pattern meets or exceeds SAE and DOT Requirements." Conversely, there is also zero mention of "Off-Road Use Only." So, there's that...

Hi all. This question is specifically about the 12 volt, positive ground system in my 1955 Packard, but I'm guessing the general principles would apply to any positive ground Packard (or other car or truck), 6 volt or 12 volt, using a single sealed beam headlamp on each front fender.

I had to replace the crusty headlamp wiring harness in my car, as the cloth wire wrapping was flaking off and it was shorting out against the radiator support. While I was in there, I decided to try Holley's new RetroBright LED 7" headlamps. They fit just fine into the 1955's buckets, with zero modification needed. The reproduction headlamp harness connected right to the lamp, and all I needed to do was to attach the wires per the wiring diagram to the new junction blocks I got from Dwight Heinmuller.

Unfortunately, the headlamps wouldn't light. I had power from the battery and I had all my interior and exterior lighting illuminated when the headlight switch was pulled out to the first position. However, pulling the switch out to the Headlamps position resulted in no forward lighting whatsoever. The dash lights and side running lights and tail lamps were still lit, the parking lights turned off just like they should, but the headlamps remained dark.

I tried exchanging the positions of the BR-Brown and LT.G-Light Green wires from the headlamp harness on the junction block in case there was an issue of polarity inside the LEDs, something I'd run into before with a 2001 Camaro SS, but that also did not work.

Finally it was time to call in the big guns, and I appealed for help from one of my friends who is an electrical engineer. He spent a few minutes with it, swapped the ground wire and the low beam wire on the junction block, and the headlight came on! The bad news is that this arrangement would only allow me to use the low beams.

My question to our group is -- has anyone else used the Holly RetroBight on your positive ground car? What did you have to do to get both beams operational? Or are you getting by just with the low beams? It seems to be an issue of needing two ground wires instead of one, so that I would have a ground wire to also swap with the high beam wire on the junction block. I would then end up with the BR-Brown and LT.G-Light Green wires fastened to the fender splasher with a screw where the black ground wire used to be.

Admittedly, I don't see myself driving my car anywhere that late at night and needing the use of high beams, but I'm one of those OCD guys who thinks everything should operate properly as designed! Any help and advice would be welcomed!

Attached is an excerpt of the 1955 wiring diagram, edited to focus just on the forward lighting.

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Packard had capability to do the smaller stampings like radiator splash shields and core supports, etc., but starting with the 1941 Clipper program, they let all body stampings go to Briggs. The last body stampings they did on East Grand were for the traditional non-Clipper bodies. When those models were not brought back after the war, Packard had de facto exited the body stamping and building business.

It might be discussed in the new Heinmueller book, but part of the problem with trying to move body stamping and production out of the Connor Briggs plant after 1954 was the size of the presses. There were almost insurmountable issues with trying to move the presses to East Grand from Connor, so Nance's people ultimately recommended that they move to the sort-of one story configuration of the Connor facility. According to Robert J. Neal, there were hardly any operations in the existing Packard buildings south of East Grand in 1954, so it wasn't an issue of floor space. They felt that the efficiency of the one story layout was the way to go. It ultimately may have been, but the problem is that they needed a lot more sales (and a lot more car output) to make money. I don't even know that Connor would have been capable of the kind of output Packard needed. Maybe an all-new plant at Utica would have been the ultimate answer?

I haven't had a chance to dig into these volumes as much as I would like to yet, but when I first got them, I did a cursory once-over and was blown away by all the new photos and source materials we had not seen previously. Dwight has been writing about and researching Packards since before I was even in the hobby! If you are a PAC member and read his articles in the publications, or you have read his contributions to the Packard history edited by Automobile Quarterly, then you already know that this is going to be a scholarly and outstanding work. I'm really looking forward to being able to immerse myself in these books!

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