I just installed a set in the Balboa's 327. Fired it for the first time this evening, as a matter of fact. After about 3 minutes of clatter all was quiet on the western front. Big smiles in Parkton this evening.

I used to painstakingly clean those darn lifters and pressure test them with a rig I built, but more often than I care to recall would still have one tap at a hot slow idle. The $275 seems quite the bargain.

Interesting factoid about those lifters: if you have an engine with a valve stuck down and ram it open with the starter or even by hand, that lifter will be ruined. That's because the barrels of those lifters are quite thin and will actually expand from the hydraulic pressure within as it attempts to lift the stuck valve. Sometimes it expands enough that its hard to get the lifter to come out of the tappet. That's a dead giveaway as to its health. Once the barrel is big it will never hold quiet at an idle--on a running engine look for a stream of oil coming around the top of the lifter. That's another giveaway.

One thing for sure, engine "detailing" was a lot less important to the folks at Packard, epecially in the junior and postwar eras, than it is to us. I agree, the colors were all over the map, and many parts got hardly more than a vapor of paint on them--with no primer. This was just standard industrial practice. My customers would be irritated if I detailed their engine compartments EXACTLY as original. Would save a lot of paint and materials tho.

Fantastic progress! Really makes me want to run out and strip something.

The bottom and side moldings on the windshield and on the rear window come off with nuts on the inside. The top of the rear window is set in the rubber, and I can't remember about the top of the windshield.

I've never encountered an early style Ultra being terminally stuck in park--but there is a first time for everything. What I rather think has happened is that the detent plunger has ridden somehow off the end of the cam.

I suggest unscrewing the detent housing out of the side of the trans, extract its spring and plunger, and see if you can get things to move. That would be the approx 1-1/8 hex fitting that is mounted just above the shift lever on the trans, the one without the wires.

If the shifter still won't move, try unscrewing the neutral safety switch. Perchance its guts have somehow popped out.

In any event, at some point you will have to methodically go through your linkage from the column right through to inside the pan to check the adjustments.

On third thought, after reading the beginning of the post, I wonder if the car was put away with a bit of water or other nasty stuff in the trans. What's the dipstick look like when you pull it out?

I have had a car rollbacked here with the trans filled with rancid brake fluid. That was special

Shorten link #2, the 1st and rev link in the diagram above, slightly. This will insure that the trans is all the way out of first and into neutral before the column mechanism makes its transition into the 2nd and 3d leg of the H.

What you are experiencing is that the column shifter and the transmission are not finding neutral at the same time.

iirc, the Moraine unit used in the 53 Buick got its own chapter in Nader's book "Unsafe at any speed". Anybody have a copy?

Of course anythings Nader dislikes tends to awaken warm and tender affection in me.

Enough griping, and no (airport) groping. Load the mountain bikes in the Packup and roar thru the backroads of unspeakably lovely Center County Pennsylvania. It was an almost 400 mile weekend--not counting the 15 or so on the bikes. Null problemo and the as-usual 17 something mpg from the 126K Clipper Super. I will be issuing the 20,000 mile field service report in the near future. Go drive them thangs. Who are you saving it for?

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Looks terrific. Makes you want to take a long drive, doesn't it? Time spent on instrument clusters is some of the most satisfying--its almost like making jewelry.

Whenever I redo a 51-54 cluster I repaint them gloss white inside with a spray bomb, and even blow a little white down behind those baffles.

Maybe someone already metnioned it, but did you check that the bulbs are #55s? Could be someone stuck a bunch of 12 volts in there. Generally I have not found illumination of those clusters to be a problem. Now, even road testers at the time complained that the hands did not show up well, but I've had very good success with flat white model paint on those. On long drives a night I usually have to dim the dash lights in my 51.

Pumps, turbines, and other high class rotating machinery that don't have space for a labyrinth seal often use a face seal like Packard used on the straight eights. This gives a static seal on the shaft itself, and a hydrodynamic seal on the housing. The seal rotates with the shaft and is spring loaded against the housing.

The only problem I encounter with the Packard system is that most of the new cork sealing rings that come with gasket sets fit too snugly on the hub of the damper and won't slide forward under the available spring pressure to contact the timing chain cover. A couple minutes with some rolled-up sandpaper takes care of this. I then glue the ring to the old holder, grease it up and install.

I've installed several dozen with no problem.

A mixture of components from pre and post 51 cam drives, ie wide and narrow timing chain components might leave the seal hanging in midair, but you can look in and see that before the damper is slid on.