You may be the first person on the entire planet to ever do so, but it should go. If your 48 is straight 3 spd it will have a 3.9 rear which they also often ran with the early Ultras, so that will be OK. If your 48 had overdrive it can have 4.1, 4.3, or even 4.56 which is really too much for even moderate cruising. But it is very small potatoes to swap the whole rear and you may even need to change flanges to use the Ultra. driveshaft.

If you can choose, a 3.54 works quite well.

PM me about an extremely affordable distributor.

Hi Garret, and welcome. Glad you are saving that car. I bought my first Packard at 14--and still have it uh, some years later.

Anyway, those 200s are great driving cars and you can have a lot of fun and good service with it.

It may really be much easier to make it run than you think. My own current 200 driver was a $500 junkyard beauty and was coughing and snorting to life about 2 hours after I got it home.

As several folks have mentioned, I agree you will be bucks ahead and sooner driving if you stick with the Packard engine. Plus, it is infinitely cooler. I'm sure none of your friend are running engines with 3 foot-long cylinder heads.

Stick or automatic? Post a few photos.

In stop and go I'd say maybe 10. Open road, 17.

The overdrive is part and parcel of the transmission and for really major work they come out together. That said, most everything that ever needs to be done mechanically to an overdrive can be done with the transmission still in the car by removing the overdrive case and having at it.

Its not time consuming and there is no need to think that the car will be down for the summer for the sake of a one afternoon job.

I'd really like to hear in some detail what is broken as the story is not making sense up to now. Somehow I'm not clear--is the car drivable? Goes forward and reverse?

If your distributor is in the standard position, number one is at the 6:30 position on the dist cap. The order, going counterclockwise is 1 6 2 5 8 3 7 4 .

If that does not solve the problem real quick, then it is possible that your dist. is in a non standard position. You will have to crank the engine over with #1 plug out. Lay a penny over the plug hole. Bump the engine with the starter a little at a time til the penny lifts. You are now on #1 compression stroke. By hand bring the engine to the 6 degree mark on the vibration damper. Your points should just be opening, and the rotor will be pointing to number one.

Just for reference the factory installed position is with the vac advance pointing out to the left and the axis just about horizontal. # 1 is then at 6:30. But many of these cars have been diddled so # 1 could be anywhere.

These engines respond nicely to porting, that is cleaning all the extra lumps, ridges, and nascent stalagtites out of the ports and intake runners. The sharp edges of the little pockets the valves sit in on the block can be knocked off also. You already have a head that gives 8:1 compression, I'd probably leave that alone lest the engine get fussy.

My experience with 2 bbl vs 4 bbl is that the 2bbl has a more dramatic tip in feel, tho the 4 bbl will give you more at the top end and generally better mileage. Try to find a 54 camshaft driven gear to get the 54 valve timing or have your shop make a step key for your existing gear to bump the cam forward to the 54 spec.

Be sure to have the valve guides carefully checked. These engines almost always need exhaust guides. Have your distributor checked over; it almost certainly needs to be rebushed.

In general cars with Ultramatic need to have good low speed torque to feel responsive on takeoff. Engines with weak rings and a lot of blowby have lost a lot of that low speed torque and can feel really doggy.

A 46 282 is a couple of inches shorter than the later 288s and 327s, so it will go in the hole, but you would have to fuss with the mounts.

The problem will come when you go to install your Ultramatic to it. The bellhousing may very well bolt on, but the nose of the convertor will not pilot into the crank by a long shot. You would have to machine the hole much larger, and I also don't know if the flex plate would bolt up. Too much trouble!

Geezer: when I was young and the cars were only 25 years old the fuel lines were always good. Now that they are close to sixty, I find I almost always have to replace the fuel line from front to back because they have pinholed under the hold-down clips. The tiniest air leak will keep the pump from priming. Had it just last week on a car that was OK when put up last fall.

If it turn out that your pickup tube is plugged I've had great success with chucking an 18 inch piece of old speedo cable in my drill for a roto-rooter. Run the drill ccw so the cable does not unwind.

A significant number of those engines cracked between the valve seats and the cylinders. According to oldtimers I talked with it was quite a plague even when the cars were relatively young. Bob Aller maintained that blocks cast in molds 1 and 2 were problematic and those cast in molds 3 and 4 were OK. This number can be seen as a single digit right next to the date cast on the lower skirt of the block on the drivers side. I have personally sent two of those blocks off to Packard Purgatory.

That being said, the ones that have not cracked by now are probably not going to crack.


For real high speed work for your speedster I recommend a five main engine. This is for reduced friction, but I believe the cranks are more torsionally rigid. I observe that all of the nine mainers after the demise of the 356 used huge vibration dampers compared to their lesser bretheren. And the 359 has the least amount of overlap of all with its extra long stroke. Not good if you're going to rev it high as you likely will with the supercharger.

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