Ian -

Welcome to THE BEST online forum for Packard owners everywhere!

My focus is on the V8s, but I can appreciate the prewar cars as a spectator. I think you have a good project car that will turn a lot of heads up there in The Great White North - and that's coming from someone who finds the most joy in working on his cars.

Your car is bound to generate a lot of discussion and attract the attention of more prewar owners. Don't be shy about asking questions. This forum, unlke others, is fully archived and searchable, and answers to your question may help another future owner. You can also document your progress (and toot your own horn) in the Project Blogs Forum.

If you haven't done so already, please add your car and to the growing Owner Registery here. Feel free to download any information in the articles section or upload whatever you have to offer - this site all about sharing experience and info to help keep these fine cars on the road.

Thanks Joel - shouldn't be but a couple days in the mail 'til it arrives.

I did get a pic, this weekend, of the material currently installed on my Hardtop, but am a litle short on time this evening. Tune in tomorrow for the rest of the story.

Keith -

I have Melling's M-22FHV pump and 22-FHVS screen kit.

I had purchased these for the '56 Pat that I intended to use as a fair weather driver, but have not yet installed them.

BH

A week or so ago, I saw that AACA Forum was supposed to be down for maintenance or upgrade June 1-7, but it was still up and running last weekend. This weekend, it not only seems to be completely inaccessible, but any links that turn up in search engines come up as dead ends.

Yet, even before this latest upgrade, I noticed that the Misc Chat section seems to be gone. What's up with that?

After all the mess they caused over the past year, what with too many changes and too much moderation in the Packard Forum (especially deleting too many posts), I can say that I don't feel too sorry if they're having trouble. Yet, I wouldn't be surprised if some sort of further "sanitizing" was involved.

Tom -

You gotta get out to "Perrsyburg" next May - especially next year, when it moves down the road to Fremont for an indoor swap meet. In spite of the threat of rain this year, there were a lot of good parts there.

Over the years, I've found just as many Packard parts for my cars at Perrysburg as I did at Hershey - with a lot less expense for travel and accomodations (free parking, too).

BigKev -

Yes, every reprint I have was fastened with brass brads. Though handy, those brads tends to chew through the paper if the manual gets much use - in spite of the little brass washers they use.

So, I found some aluminum screws and posts at the local hardware store (now I have to got o Lowe's to find 'em) and use those. Sometimes the thickness of the book is slightly less than the length of the posts and I have used a jeweler's saw (think of a mioniature hacksaw) to trim the posts down so I get a snug fit - and no more torn-out pages. For the set of manuals that I use frequently, I installed a set of pressboard report covers.

The hardcover binders for parts books for counter use are not conventional three-ring (loose-leaf) binders, but use an interesting method with two sets of three straight posts - one set slips inside of the other (which are actually hollow tubes), but with a locking system to hold it all together. These binders can accomodate parts books of various thickness and were used for decades in the biz, with variations on the basic theme.

BTW, the reprints I've seen do have the update pages, but the stock is - naturally - uniform.

Joel -

Yes, I can see why there might have been a lot of parts books leftover - after the 56th Series production stopped so short of a full year. With the ones from South Bend were shipped with beige covers, I can see why the reprints were done with that color cover stock.

Yet, I am puzzled by the one original V8 parts books I saw that had gray cover stock. IIRC, it predated the April 1, 1957 revision, but uses the same basic cover graphic/layout.

The other "original" V8 parts books that I have seen had been in some sort of hardcover binder, but the graphic was completely different than the softcover editions (and darned if I can find a sample image right now).

BigKev -

I may be wrong, but I thought the original parts books were shipped to Packard dealers as loose pages (but wrapped with a wide paper band to prevent shifting/shuffling), to be inserted into a rack binder or hardcover binder for counter use. (The hardcover binder was recycled from on year/series to the next.) The intent of using loose-leaf pages was to permit periodic update, to keep up with part number changes.

That's the way parts books were issued when I first worked in the parts department of a GM dealership, many years ago, but I also have an original set of pages that Packard issued in this manner, to update the Packard Service Manual to cover 56th Series.

However, instead of only sending update pages (perhaps also due to the wear-n-tear factor), GM reprinted parts books in their entirety - as often as quarterly, but later semi-annually, then only annually, as the covered models aged. GM did issue some glue-bound soft cover editions, but only at a point when the covered models were so old than part number changes were not very likely - except for discontinuation. For example, the catalogs that covered models 1976-81 were last reprinted in 1987.

Yet, I digress...

Seems to me that every 1955-1956 Packard parts book that I've seen in softcover form has that beige cover stock and a revision date of April 1, 1957 - same as the three reprints I have; the first purchased from Kanter, the second purchased from a club, and the third left in the trunk of the first '56 Pat that I purchased. However, I have seen one softcover edition of the 1955-56 parts book with gray cover stock that appears to be genuine factory-issue (after Detroit operations were shutdown). Therefore, I have concluded that softbound editions with beige cover stock are reprints that one of the clubs had made.

Earlier this year, I acquired an original edition of this parts book in a hard binder. As best as I can recall, all examples of the 1955-56 parts book that I've seen show the same issue date on the first page (November, 1955). However, revised pages show a revision date on the lower outboard corner. The 1955-56 parts book that I now have appears to be updated with revised pages through July 1, 1956.

Unfortunately, I am so backed up with projects at home and work (and with no time to work on my own cars) that I will not be able to scan anything until the snow flies, and several pages in the edition I have will require some cleaning (at least, digitally). If you want the 1955-56 parts book up online sooner and are willing to take on the clean-up work, I can ship the pages, sans binder and the originalindex tabs (the latter is something reprints NEVER have), to you. E-mail me if interested, with destination address, and I'll get back to you.

Joel -

None of the wheels on my Packard cars were painted on the inboard side - except for a bit of overspray that found its way through the cutouts whee the center meets the rim. The dark primer held up amazingly well on the Carib, which spent all but its first few years on the road in AZ, and one of the Pats that was found in WV, but came from southern OH. The wheels on another Pat, which spent most of its time in the Cleveland area, did not fare so well - except for the spare in the trunk.

What strikes me about the original wheels on your Four Hundred is that they were painted to match the interior color, which seems to be darker than either shade of green on the exterior. Perhaps that's another case where they were using whatever material they could find during the final weeks of production.

Seems, then, like the wheels on the majority of two-tone cars were painted to match the main body color (hood and tops of fenders) - unless it was white. Has anybody found a set of wheels on these cars that were painted white by the factory?

What's funny is that years later, the GM cars I remember from the 1960s and into the mid-1970s their had wheels painted same as body color only when they had the small (standard) hub cap, while the wheels on cars with (optional) full wheel were painted black by the factory.

I have heard that there were some chrome-plated valve covers with red paint on the embossed script - same as what was done on the silver-painted covers on 56th Series Seniors. I believe it was Randy Berger, in another forum of days-gone-by, who pointed this out to me. Perhaps he will chime in with his $0.02.

Regardless, it is a real PIA to try to paint the script unless you have someone who can cut some sort of clean stencil. I suspect that's what the factory used.

Getting paint to hold up on chrome is another PIA.