LED bulbs have polarity, so my first thought is that the bulb you bought is meant for a negative ground ("negative earth" in British parlance), and might illuminate if you could reverse the orientation of the bulb in the socket. Off the top of my head, I don't recall whether the small locating lugs on the side of the brass base of an 1158 are at the same height and can easily be flipped, or whether those are offset at different depths like the bulbs used in my 1955. This was intended to enforce a specific orientation of the bulb inside the bulb socket. Of course, if you have a polarity issue, these offset lugs will also prevent you from doing a simple 180 degree flip.

The Motor City Packard region of The Packard Club is running a project to locate and resell the proper LED bulbs for 6V positive ground Packards (as well as many other cars). You can go tomotorcitypackards.org/shop/ and scroll about two-thirds of the way down where you'll find the LED bulb section. Click on the link for either the Excel ordering sheet or the PDF version to check out the availability and pricing,

Also keep in mind that the loads on your electrical system will now be a lot different from the incandescent bulbs, and it will throw off the normal operation of your flasher unit, as well as your turn signals. The CEC company makes some great LED compatible flashers. I was able to buy what I needed off of Amazon.

In my case, because my 1955 is such an odd beast (12V, but still positive ground -- Packard didn't move to negative ground until 1956), I ended up sourcing 12V, positive ground LED bulbs from a classic car parts supplier in the UK. That installation project is still underway, but the LED front turn signals that I finished first are a true revelation.

I'm sure that you will love your new LED bulbs when they are finally installed!

I'm still not sure what to think. What the PackardInfo community has posted here makes perfect sense, but it bugs me that the photo of the 1955 Caribbean above is an unmolested car. The original owner drove it hard like a daily driver (which it was) until it was sold in 1979, at which point it went right into storage. The second owner never disturbed the car, and I didn't own it long enough to tear into it at all, not even to clean it. Maybe the folks on the line didn't build enough convertibles to remember exactly what the placement was supposed to be?

I was out at the Packard Proving Grounds tonight and they had Russ Murphy's former 1954 Caribbean on display. I went over to take a look at it, and then I noticed that this car also had the bracket on the outside of the side trim panel.

My current 1955 Caribbean has been reupholstered and the brackets are missing. I think when I go to replace them, I'll mount them so they are on the back of the trim panel, but it's just weird that there are original cars and carefully restored cars with the brackets on the exposed face of the side trim panels.

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That car was owned by the Kamters at one time. Maybe this is a dealer who's liquidating their collection? There is an article in one of the old issues of the PAC/Packard Club publications that does a short article on this car. Leeedy would know much more about this car since it has Creative Industries heritage.

I don’t know if this thread is the catch-all for system issues, but I was trying to add a dealership today and once I got to the end and hit the “add to dealer list” button, I received a message that “a problem has occurred on our server, page is currently unavailable.” Error – exception – stream could not be parsed as XML. this happened on both my iMac Pro running Sonoma OS 14.3, and on my iPhone 15 Pro Max.

Check out the factory photo of a 1955 Caribbean rear compartment here, maybe it will help shed some light:
packardinfo.com/xoops/html/modules/myalbum/photo.php?lid=2762

Also here are some photos of a well-worn but all-original 1955 Caribbean, showing the chrome footman loop strap retainers on both the inside and the outside of the quarter trim panel. I think the leather footman loops with buckles were mounted on the inside chrome retainer, and then once the straps were wrapped around the lowered top side rails, the end of the strap would be slipped into the chrome retainer on the outside of the quarter panel trim. There were also retainers on the top side rails themselves to pass the leather straps through for tightening the stack down.

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For what it’s worth, I had a similar headlamp cut out happen to me in my 1955 Caribbean on the way home from a parade and post party.

I found that the root cause was the headlamp harness that goes from the junction blocks on the fender splasher, passes through the radiator core support, and then through a hole in the fender, splasher, so that it can connect to the back of the headlamp.

The rest of the wiring in our cars is plastic coated, but Packard chose to reuse the same cloth covered harness whose part number goes back to the 1941 Clipper. The problem is that the cloth becomes brittle and fragile as it ages, a condition that is not helped by the fact that the forward part of the harness is not protected by an inner fender or wheelhouse liner. Further, this harness passes over several raw sheet metal edges that can wear away at the old and weakened fabric.

I found that my headlamp harnesses were shorting out against these sheet metal edges under certain conditions. The fix was to purchase reproduction harnesses from Max Merritt.parts123.com/parts123/yb.dll?parta~dyndetail~Z5Z5Z50000022e~Z5Z5Z54101~P65.00~~~~S6RA0MCWGG18514199966b~Z5Z5Z5~Z5Z5Z50000022E

My headlamp switch and breaker had been functioning as designed, I just needed to address the root cause that was making them trip.

Hope this helps!

I did some searching on this forum a couple years ago to determine the best oil for my 1955 Caribbean 352, and recommendation from Jack Vines at that time was to get 20w50. I ended up getting the NAPA High Mileage version of 20w50 and it's worked great so far.

Here is the original thread discussion:packardinfo.com/xoops/html/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?post_id=8555

Do you mind if I ask what is the VIN on the car? Just wondering if it's a late production car. The 1956 cars were generally better than the 1955s, but the late 1956 cars were the best of the V8 Packards.

Don't think I've ever seen the version with "P A C K A R D E I G H T " on the dial, but I have seen a few of the octagonal case Packard watches with standard Arabic numerals and either a white face or a black face, with the Packard radiator on it. I want to say it had a scroll at the bottom of the radiator, like Packard advertising frequently featured, and said either Ask the Man Who Owns One or Of a Distinguished Family. I have one of them with the black and gold face, something I bought over 40 years ago outside of Lansing MI. Not sure if these were given to buyers of new Packards by some dealers, or whether they were available through the dealers' parts and accessories division.

Sadly, the Perrysburg meet is long gone, as is the original host hotel. The Holiday Inn Holidome “French Quarter” in Perrysburg has been leveled and re-developed.

The Packard Proving Grounds holds an annual open house event in October. The PPG runs that event, not Motor City Packards, although you will definitely see lots of MCP members volunteering and displaying their cars that day.