Have never seen that failure, but it is certainly easy to check for--lever must return to center when released.

Certainly the most common failure is dirty contacts. I think second in line would be the fine wire that heats the timer contact. That wire was glued on and here 56 years later the joint is failing. I have been able to solder those little devils down by gently abrading the wire to get a little insulation off. Its kind of like watchmaking.

My suggestion to T-L car owners is to leave the system on at all times unless the car is being hoisted. There is not the faintest chance of wearing the system out, but many perish from infrequent use. That is usually when ill-informed repairs are undertaken and a host of demons are released.

Yes indeedy, just as well you don't have the rear drums as they have been ruined by removing them from the hub. You will have to pull those rear hubs off and start from the axle up. Will happily sell you a 55 senior rear, drum to drum, please PM me if interested.

But don't throw those hubs away, They can be converted into a puller for other Packard drums.

Can't wait to see the clear coat on that--it will be over the moon.

Just remove your rope seals and do a trial fit up without them. That will tell the tale in a hurry if the crank is damaged. Judging by what I can see in the photos, the rope seal is not compressed anywhere near enough and is clamping the crank.

The whole purpose of this experiment was to make life easier--which it did. As mentioned above I was able comfortably to do a valve job, manifold job, tubing job, axle reseal job, and spif up the chassis with only a small amount of physical agony. This is going to happen again. Here are a couple of shots of the chassis ready to go back. One is with the valve covers off for the "hot and running" valve adjustment.

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I have a 14 foot ceiling in the shop so I can run the cars up as far as they will go. To roll the chassis out, you only need about 3' of lift tho.

I'm pretty sure the same technique would work all the way back to 41 if you took care to remove the radiator and battery so the front sheet metal was not too stressed. That sheet metal itself is actually not too heavy.

When working on 51-54 engines I hold them from the driver's side using the rear two bolt holes from the engine mount, the unused tapped hole that is just below the dipstick tube, and the hole directly below that that would hold the clutch return spring on stick shift cars. Keeps the engine nice and close to the post. I have drilled the plate on my stand to match those holes so that I so not have to use any of the swing arms.

In plumbing terms it would be a 1/8 inch pipe nipple, ie a very short piece of pipe with 1/8 pipe thread on each end and if you are lucky a hex in the middle. It would screw directly into the carburetor and directly into the filter with no other fittings. Should be brass and not even a whole inch long.

56 400 rear window is that model only, and the Caribbean hardtop. I have one, tinted, but here in Maryland!

And Packard beat them all by offsetting the cylinder bore relative to the crank. Believe you will find there is no offset in at least the 1940-54 3.5 and 3.56"pistons as they took care of that question in the block. Have not measured (indeed, can not) but hear it was 1/16".