Re: Proud New Owner of a 49 Packard Club Sedan
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While waiting for the carb to come back, I tackled the vent Aire system on the passenger side. The problem here is the duct. The blower end is circular, but the other end is a trapezoid. A hose clamp does not work well on a trapezoid. I tried giant diesel truck clamps, but they are too beefy and hard to bend. They are also difficult to size and expensive.
Getting the actual correct ones are impossible. I found super long dryer vent caps at Lowe's for five buck each and cut off about a foot. This worked well for the blower end, but not the trapezoid. How to make a circular clamp for a square hole? I got several sheets of paper, taped them to a 2x4 block and made an impression of the duct. I cut away the excess paper. I then got a 1x6 and traced out the shape onto it. I put deck screws into the wood according to the shape, with several screws forming each corners, and put the clamp on it. The screws go into the wood deep enough so the heads just clear the edge of the clamp band, cause when you tighten it the clamp will tend to rise off the wood. I bent them carefully at the corners to make the rounded corner. I made sure the screw was placed at the bottom, hopefully avoiding the steely eyed stare of a judge. Getting the shape right took two or three tries. Put it on the duct and it forced the circular duct into the trapezoid shape, and worked like a charm! As for the reading lamp, on a touring sedan, the feed wire comes from the DRIVER side, along the top of the doors to the socket. On the Club Sedan, the switch wire then goes over to the passenger side and to ground. I don't want to go underneath the headliner, so I'll just have to suffer through an inoperative reading lamp. I found no evidence on the Club Sedan that the reading lamp was activated by the door switches, at least not on my Standard 8. Got the cover on, though.
Posted on: 2018/12/17 11:21
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Re: Proud New Owner of a 49 Packard Club Sedan
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Installed a new water control valve with no difficulty. I checked the reading lamp circuit at the switch- no juice. I'll look in the parts car for the wire routing.
I have solved the burning issue of the proper hose clamp question. The parts car was taken off the road in 1959 and has several clamps on it. Some are aircraft, but 4 are what I call ventilated band non Phillips. Page 51 of the body section of the manual confirms that these are factory. These lave longitudinal slots in the band and a slotted, not Phillips, screw and nut. I found them at Restoration Specialties but they have Phillips screws.
Posted on: 2018/12/15 17:35
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Re: Proud New Owner of a 49 Packard Club Sedan
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While the carb is being rebuilt, it's time to deal with some minor issues.
1. My car has a beautiful set of modern stainless steel hose clamps on every hose. Unfortunately they did not have them in 49. In researching this, I learned way too much about hose clamps, but also not enough. First, let's get the terminology straight. The shiny stainless ones from the auto parts store are aircraft clamps. The ones with towers used by Ford are called towers. The wire ones are called wires. The springy large ones that you attempt to get off with pliers are Corbin. The smaller flat ones with tabs for the pliers are spring clamps. There is one more, which are sort of like aircraft but the screw goes into a nut (like wires). So- what hose clamps were on a 23rd 2&&? 2. How on earth does the rear reading lamp lens and bezel go in? Also, is that light activated by the door switches like the under dash lights are? It's not clear in the wiring diagram, which is for a 4 door. Mine is a club sedan.
Posted on: 2018/12/14 21:32
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Re: Potential Packard 48-50 owner and the Ultramatic Transmission
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I had this exact same question when looking for mine this past summer. Finding a transmission guy who has heard of an Ultramatic is difficult, let alone someone who can work on it. If you look at the service bulletins on here for those years, as awful lot of them are about the Ultramatic. The one that really stood out in my mind is the one where the company told the dealers that they would no longer replace them without a record of herculean efforts to fix them. As a lemon lawyer, that tells me that the dealers were failing in their repair attempts and replacing them willy nilly at Packard's expense.
Another thing that was important to me was that Packards sales in 48 were about those of Cadillacs in 1948. Packard almost DOUBLED Cadillac sales in 49, the debut year of the Ultramatic, even though Caddies had a more powerful v8 AND an auto. In 50, Packard's sales returned to about the same as Cadillac's. I think this was because of the problems with the Ultras. The price was about the same, the cars were about the same. In 50, why pay for an ornery auto transmission Packard when you could buy a NON ornery transmission Caddy? And who wants an old fashioned manual when you can buy the ease of an auto? That made me run away from a Marshmallow with an auto. As to 3 speed versus 3 speed overdrive, in 1949 there were no interstates, and few 4 lane highways. If you wanted to go to another city, one took the train, not your car. 3 speeds are fine for city driving, but nowadays, you need the overdrive if you don't live in a major metropolitan area and are going to drive the car rather than trailer it. I trailer my 51 Cranbrook because it has a 3 speed and its just so darn S-L-O-W. The drawback to the overdrive is that you will (sooner or later) have to spend about %500 bucks replacing the overdrive relay and the kickdown switch. Still, that's less than persuading Bubba to work on the ornery automatic. Also, overdrive is a LOT more fun to drive than an automatic. I have a 63 Mercury Meteor with overdrive and will drive it anywhere! There is a refurbished Ultra on ebay right now for $1600. Even if the overdrive itself malfunctions, you can get it fixed for less than that. I chose overdrive.
Posted on: 2018/12/12 12:03
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Re: Proud New Owner of a 49 Packard Club Sedan
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Went out to deal with the carb last nite with a pal. Fired it up and he noticed some liquid around a spark plug so he pulled out the plug. And lost it. Of course, no old one around. Found it under the blast cabinet after a 10 minute search. Liquid was some from heater hose install. Ran it up to temp. Block was 200 degrees. Exhaust was 276. Heat riser tube was....
84. That explains the choke problem. Put a screwdriver in it and adjusted the timing a slosh. Then it would not start. No fire. Took off the cap, things look ok, still no fire. Substandard language in abundance. End of coil wire had collapsed. Replaced wire. Fired right up, still running rich. Leaned out left screw, still running rich. Leaned out right screw. Makes no difference at all. Put hand over carb cutting off 3/4 air... runs perfectly. With a bad heat tube, no working idle mixture screw, and MASSIVE AIR LEAK, removed carb, sent to be rebuilt.
Posted on: 2018/12/5 21:08
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Re: Proud New Owner of a 49 Packard Club Sedan
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Great Advice, guys, but I'm not there yet. Without having looked at it in a couple of days, it appears that the choke flapper/butterfly is about half closed when the engine is warmed up and idling. Is this what its supposed to do, and increased throttle pulls it all the way open? Or is it supposed to be all the way open? Also, when it is half closed and warmed up, its still on the fast idle cam. Am I just not letting it run long enough? By "warmed up" I mean the thermos has opened and the gauge is reading. Infrared Heat gun tells me its 180-220 degrees, depending on where I put it. Maybe the exhaust tube from the manifold to the choke housing is clogged, but it looks pretty new.
Posted on: 2018/12/3 16:36
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Re: Proud New Owner of a 49 Packard Club Sedan
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Owen_Dyneto gets the cigar! The manual says that the idle mixture screws should be about 1 turn out. They were 3-4 turns out! I screwed them in carefully, and backed them out 1 turn. I set the automatic choke as in specs at index. I hit the starter and it.... fired right up! I ran it to get it up to temp. It was still running rich, but running. Once at temp, I noticed that the automatic choke flapper was still 3/4 closed, and it was still running rich. Time to find the WDO manual! Thanks for all of your suggestions! This forum really is a great resource. Now to defornicate the carb...
Posted on: 2018/12/2 17:08
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Re: Proud New Owner of a 49 Packard Club Sedan
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Well, I did nothing, which is why I asked about the choke and rich idle setting. The engine ran decently with 2 or 3 blown cyls, ie, that were running on a fuel air water cocktail. It seems to me that since the air is whatever comes thru the carb and is therefore relatively constant,, and water does not burn, there has to be more fuel to get the cocktail to explode. This would make the non blown ones too rich, but they still fired.
It seems to me that removing the water from the cocktail by retorquing would not cause it to not start, but rather to run badly because it's too rich. Or maybe I flooded it. I put a screwdriver in the carb to hold the choke open, so that should evap all fuel from any cyl with an open intake valve. I'll check the carb manual as to the choke and idle mixture setting tonite and set them before I try to start it. It'll have a full charge then.
Posted on: 2018/12/1 21:20
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Re: Proud New Owner of a 49 Packard Club Sedan
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I seen you had a Rambler. I had a 64 that I put a new Iron Maiden in alone and spent an hour trying to get in 1 tranny crossmember bolt. I tried everything, gave up in disgust and vowed it was going to the crusher the next morning. The next morning I tried one last time... and it went in immediately! Drove that car for years. It got 29 mpg. The point is that giving up in disgust is a one day thing.
What puzzles me is that it was running, we shut it down to retorque the head, and then it would not start. It took about 5 minutes to retorque the head. I've never had a car not start after just retorquing the head. I've had several amc 1@6 ohvs, so I've retorqued some heads! Please also see next reply.
Posted on: 2018/12/1 21:07
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