Happy Easter and welcome to Packard Motor Car Information! If you're new here, please register for a free account.  
Login
Username:

Password:

Remember me



Lost Password?

Register now!
FAQ's
Main Menu
Recent Forum Topics
Who is Online
146 user(s) are online (90 user(s) are browsing Forums)

Members: 0
Guests: 146

more...
Helping out...
PackardInfo is a free resource for Packard Owners that is completely supported by user donations. If you can help out, that would be great!

Donate via PayPal
Video Content
Visit PackardInfo.com YouTube Playlist

Donate via PayPal

Forum Index


Board index » All Posts (su8overdrive)




Packard vs. Amsoil by-pass filter effectiveness
Home away from home
Home away from home

su8overdrive
A long experienced Packard man tells me he's adding a modern aftermarket Amsoil by-pass oil filter to his Packards; a '38 six, '38 Eight (120), '38 Twelve and '39 Super-8 (Model 1703). The Amsoil site claims it will catch particles as small as 2 microns.
Does anyone know --and PLEASE, just the corroborated facts-- the smallest particle in microns the NAPA/Wix 1080 by-pass filter captures? We've emailed Wix, who manfacture the filter sold by NAPA as the 1080, but haven't received a reply.

We need the confirmed, hard facts, and just the facts, before deciding whether it's worthwhile replacing the Packard by-pass filter used during the '40s with the Amsoil unit.



?

Posted on: 2012/6/25 3:35
 Top 


Re: Buy or Stay away? - 55 Patrician
Home away from home
Home away from home

su8overdrive
PatGreen's sooo right about the '56 Patrician with Torsion-Level compared with the wallowing '60s Cadillac. I rode in a '55 or '56 Patrician with Torson-Level and the firm, steady, serene ride was impressive. Packard issued a promo film showing such a new Torsion-Level Patrician gliding over a railroad crossing at 35 or 40mph nonplussed, while the new Cadillac and Lincoln bottomed out, sparks coming from one of their rear bumpers as they grated on the pavement.

However, the Patrician i rode in was a low-mileage, always garaged, mint California car back in 1977, only 21 or 22 pampered years old, not a rodent infested, abandoned projectcar.

It's testament to the character of the gentlemen on this site that all the above have given Dangermiller "level" advice and not the usual clubbie rah-rah and misery loves company palaver.

Aside from the usual plating, there's a lotta anodized trim on such cars, and that can be expensive to redo, assuming you can find a shop that knows what they're doing.
And the interior's going to be expensive.

Admittedly, i'm a prewar Packard guy, and if i somehow had to have a '50s barouche, i'd domestically go with the aforementioned Chryslers or a 1951-54 Packard w/ stick & OD, or one of the Jag-ue-were Mark saloons. The latter's Borg Warner automatics aren't as readily rebuildable or troublefree as a Torqueflite or HydraMatic, but less grief than a Twin Ultramtic. Those formal Jags have their issues, but aren't quite the money pits as a Packard V-8 with Twin Ultramatic.

Packard could've avoided much Torsion-Level trouble simply by fitting a better tin cover over the control unit, but the Company's desperate plight on crowded Conner Avenue has been told many times before.

Be prepared, too, to embark on various other electro-mechanical upgrades as described in Packard Club articles, etc. over the decades. But perhaps, like my 1936-37 Cord friends, you thrive on challenges.

However, if there's something that just sings to you in a bent eight Patrician, you'll do what you do. We're all driven by
these siren songs. Just remember, even if they pay you to haul this particular car away, assuming you can find a
LOCAL Twin Ultramatic maven, you'll always be upside down in this car, not that most of us care about return on investment and all that yuppie Sports Car Market crap. Go slow,
but then, your name is DANGERMiller!

Posted on: 2012/6/22 14:00
 Top 


Re: Buy or Stay away? - 55 Patrician
Home away from home
Home away from home

su8overdrive
Cars, like women, clothing, art, architecture, cuisine, music, are a matter of personal taste, preference, and there are plenty of 1955-56 specialists here to help you. But if you want a driveable, good-looking, dependable Packard, get an 8 or Super 8 1939-47 on the standard, shorter wheelbase with overdrive.
By the '50s, Packard was an also-ran. If you want a '50s Packard, look for a Mayfair coupe with stick and overdrive. They have good ergonomics, though a Hudson Hornet has better build quality, even an Oldsmobile or any GMobile better body quality/finish. Any 1951-54 Packard with stick and overdrive is a good road car, their 288-ci and 327-ci straight 8s dependable, husky, low-stressed, and underrated engines.

But the '50s cars are, overall, also-rans. Packard had arced by then. They were following the herd, no long leading, apart and above the fray. The downsized 1953-54 Chrysler New Yorkers are better automobiles, in my 'umble opine.

Consumers Reports in 1950 rated Packard's Ultramatic the best automatic transmission on the market. But it needed and needs repair by ONLY those with the tools and knowledge.
A HydraMatic is more forgiving, takes hard acceleration better. A friend drove a '53 300 with Ultramatic and a 327 inline 8 over 130,000 troublefree miles, and the Ultramatic never had anything but fresh fluid and filter every 25,000 miles.

Ultramatic was never intended for the V-8's torque curve and was trouble in the '55 and '56s, as any here will tell
you. Packard's V-8s had some initial bugs, were okay otherwise. But a Cadillac or Chrysler were and are less trouble.

This is just my opine, but if for some reason you're dying for '50s American chrome baroque, get a Chrysler.
But then, i'm a prewar fan, when Packard was in their heyday. My '47 Super's just a warmed over '42, which suits me.

Good luck, take your time, and buy only the very best example of whatever you land on.

Posted on: 2012/6/21 19:10
 Top 


Re: Ok, I'm calling your bluff. Show me how Packards were "better".
Home away from home
Home away from home

su8overdrive
In the years i'm interested in, the late '30s, immediate prewar cars -- my '47 Super a warmed over '42 One-Sixty Clipper-- if you compare any Packard, junior or senior, with an upper echelon GMobile, the Packard has a needle or roller bearing where the Buick or Cadillac has a plain bushing. Bearings are to an automotive chassis what jewels are to a watch, so think of a Packard as a Rolex, a period Cadillac/Buick as an upscale department store timepiece.

Packards of this era were alone in offering a fifth rear shock absorber to control lateral side sway. Sadly, too many of Packard's refinements were unseen, and subtle.

Packard offered overdrive, something not seen in any GM product 'til the '55 Chevy, with its Ferrari grille, just as the '67 Camaro aped the '63 Ferrari Lusso, and the introductory '27 LaSalle was an unabashed copy of Hispano-Suiza.

GM sold sizzle, with just enough steak to seal the deal.
Toss in the sophisticated styling of the 1940 1/2 C bodies,
and HydraMatic, and Packard was in trouble. HydraMatic was a convenience option, has nothing to do with a serious road car, does nothing for performance, but when you're in the car business, you offer what people want, or think they need, or you go under.

I've no interest in anything after 1947 and agree with Tom McCahill, dean of domestic roadtesters, who raved about the '46 Clipper Deluxe 8 and previous Packards, that the '48 Packard was "a goat." By this time, the GM production men Packard started recruiting back in 1933 to teach them how to produce and market the One-Twenty, a stellar car that saved the Company, had taken over Packard
and reverted to what they knew: producing Oldsmobile/Buick-level cars.

But ALL independents died. No one could match GM/Ford tool amortization costs, afford the "necessary" 1950s annual model changes, expensive TV advertising. People who rave about other marques conveniently forget that all Cadillacs from 1936-on were junior cars, increasingly sharing components with lesser GM divisions; that Rolls-Royce's main business from 1935 on was aero engines, the cars increasingly a rationalized, tho' skillfully marketed product with bodies stamped out by the same Pressed Steel producing bodies for humdrum little Austin family sedans and half the English car biz;

that Hispano-Suiza survived/survives making pumps for nuclear power plants;

that all Lincolns from 1936-on other than a handful of outsized Model Ks through 1940 were "Ford and a halves," then FoMoCo fodder, even using HydraMatic, as Rolls-Royce/Bentley did beginning in '52, their first year for an automatic transmission.

By 1953-54, even Chrysler was down to a mere 12.9% of the domestic market, leaving just a "Big Two." Ford nearly folded in 1948, industry reporters cited Ford Motor Company's bookkeeping dept. being "....a small room filled with ancient men with receipts in shoe boxes."

Henry Ford II, only 26, knew enough to bring in the Harvard "Whiz Kids," including father of the Edsel and Vietnam War, Robert McNamara. They turned things around, but a friend's original 1950 Ford has such poor quality you can stick your smaller fingers through the cracks of the passenger side door when it's closed.

I'll leave it to others to drum up Packard's bathtub and '50s merits, but the only noteworthy things i can think of are Ultramatic's direct-drive, lock up torque convertor, which one of the gents cited above, and, and, um....uh... that's it, because Torsion Level was from Bill Allison, an outside engineer who had to sell the hell out of it to Packard's complacent management after GM and Ford turned it down. Oh yeah. Reversible seat cushions......zzzzzz....

Packard's sole production hit of the '40s, the svelte 1941 Clipper, came from outside-- Dutch Darrin, but you don't expect all that Detroit Athletic Club, Masonic, East Grand Avenue boardroom ego to admit their first big hit since the '35 120 was from a fast-track Hollywooder who chased skirts and swore like a sailor. Doesn't matter who on Packard's staff appropriated or fussed with Darrin's proposal. If you take up oils and paint "in the manner of Cezanne or Monet," whose work is it?

Look at the horrendous non-quality of the Packard Darrins
in 1940, produced in the old Auburn-Cord Connersville, Indiana plant, far from East Grand Avenue's quality control. As Darrin said, "Packard was so afraid of GM they couldn't see straight." So Packard let those beautiful Darrin victorias go to the highest-profile public, with doors flying open, front fenders flapping. Compare with the relative body quality of the 1940-41 Lincoln Continentals, despite their lackluster engines.

At the risk of invoking ire, the bathtub Packards were hideous. Look how much crisper, hipper, the '48 Cadillac looked than that year's Packard, despite the latter's refined, strong chassis, drivetrain.
John Reinhart and others wanted to retain and "sweeten" the 1941-47 Clipper, good enough for Rolls-Royce to use, razor-edged, with a modern, curved, one-piece windshield, as the 1956-65 Silver Cloud I-II-III and concurrent Bentley SI-SII-SIII.

Several auto journalists on both sides of the Atlantic dismissed '50s Packards as looking like "bigger, gaudier Fords." A Packard Mayfair coupe with stick and overdrive
was and is a good ride, but Packard was just another car, an also-ran by the '50s.

In their heyday, Packard wasn't a follower. Packard stood apart and uphill from, while competing against, not following, GM and the rest of the industry.

They weren't also-rans.

Packard didn't need buffs defending them as "nearly as good" as such and such.

They were Packards. Always thought it timely that Alvan Macauley, Packard's president 1916-39, chairman into '48, president of the Automobile Manufacturers Association 1928-45, often called "the only gentleman in the car business," left the Company in 1948.

I agree with Tim Cole above. I've seen too many semiliterate Joe Sixpaks attracted to Packards, witness Darrins, Twelves and other once lovely, understated models in resale red and other circus wagon Branson, Missouri konkours kolor. Whitewalls on everything, just like the rubes in the 1941 Cadillac Club of America, formerly known as the CCCA, and for many years, "a Packard club."

BTW, PT boats were such gas hogs they often had to be towed back to base by destroyers.

You want the best from the brass years, it wasn't Packard, or Pierce-Arrow, or Peerless. It was Lozier, Chadwick, Simplex. From the 1920s, a Stutz-- overhead cam, hydraulic brakes. A former Buick engine designer, Howard Reed, tried in the late '30s to talk Packard's increasingly hidebound management into not just overhead valves, but an overhead cam, according to Maurice Hendry. Packard's mgmt. replied that such an engine's "noise" would be unseemly in a Packard. Didn't stop Buick from trumping stablemate Cadillac during 1941-42.

Tim Cole's right as rain. Packard made some fine, fine cars. But some perspective never hurts.

PackardInfo is an equally fine site, a fitting homage to Packard. Like Dr. Cole, many here try to share what insight, tips we've accrued through the decades. But we don't walk on water, and can learn from everyone, witness both the genial level of discourse, and pictorial charm, of www.railton.org

Today, there are many people who can tell you down to the last lockwasher and cotter pin HOW a car was built,

but not WHY.

Posted on: 2012/6/19 17:20
 Top 


Re: Bugs in the Trunk
Home away from home
Home away from home

su8overdrive
Amen. Aside from being toxic, carcinogenic, mothballs smell foul. You have to wonder why anyone would have a lovely old automobile that smells like dying geezers, a funeral home. Who wants to bomb around in that?
And these are some of the same zombies who wonder why younger people don't care about old cars unless someone's dropped a Chevy V-8, tilt wheel and velour upholstery in one. Ugh. Brain dead.

Posted on: 2012/6/19 14:20
 Top 


Re: Bugs in the Trunk
Home away from home
Home away from home

su8overdrive
I agree with Packard bent eight. I use nothing but a bag filled with cedar shavings in my '47 Super. Mothballs
are toxic to us, to all life, as well as insects. Same with poison in aerosol cans. If a coupla bags full of fresh cedar shavings don't drive them out, then spray carefully as JD suggests. But then stick with just cedar to prevent them or their relatives from returning.

Cedar's also a nice, fresh, natural smell. Our '40s and newer Packards have woodgrain instead of real wood veneer,
which is the only place they come up short against R-R and Bentley, in my 'umble opine, so this is a nice bit of win-win in the healthier bargain.

Posted on: 2012/6/18 16:25
 Top 


Re: My Battery has a Fur Fetish !
Home away from home
Home away from home

su8overdrive
KTS, the gents above wisely get to the gist of your problem. But the last wet battery i had, an extra large 3EH in my case, for which i had to slightly bend the battery tray lips out to accept, did maddeningly seep at one of the terminals, despite my electrical system being in fine shape. That, and preferring the Optima's mere 18-lb. weight against the 56-lb. extra HD wet battery, and my friends reporting satisfactory starting using lone six-volt Optimas in their large-engined survivors, clinched it for me. Being in England, you get the concept behind Bentley Continentals,
Railtons and the like. Weight is the enemy in any fine road car, and your 745 be grandfather of us all.

BTW, i can now use all the empty space on my battery tray as a place to rest tools, drop light whilst fussing in the engine bay, but this added benefit moot given the location of your 745's battery.

Posted on: 2012/6/12 17:58
 Top 


Re: My Battery has a Fur Fetish !
Home away from home
Home away from home

su8overdrive
As always, BigKev and OD speak the unvarnished truth.
And some wet batteries simply leak more at the terminals than others, even battery to battery, same brand/model.
Just another reason most vintage/Classic owners in my circle have been supremely happy with the Optima six-volt battery since the 1990s.
I installed, as in previous collector cars, a brass, marine-grade master disconnect switch in my '47 Super,which was available at my local auto parts emporium. NAPA or any quality store should carry or be able to order it. Just make certain the switch you use is rated for more amps than your starter pulls.

I mounted it in the firewall, beneath the dash, keeping
my 00 gauge battery cable as short as possible. A great convenience and peace of mind, and of course, it prevents the Packard clock from draining the battery during the long periods between runs in rare, rare windows in our hellish traffic to keep the car fettled.

Posted on: 2012/6/12 17:14
 Top 


Re: New Packard Owner
Home away from home
Home away from home

su8overdrive
Stu -- Jaunty looking car. Packard used the 526 chassis as
test bed for at least one works speed car. The late Bev Ferreira, longtime Bay Area owner of Packards ('37 Twelve victoria, '41 160 sedan), and other collector cars, owned
your model albeit with the trunk elongated as it was used originally for bootlegging. Otherwise, the car looked stock as yours, all the better not to attract attention from the authorities.

Your '30 Hudson's a quality car, too. They had high nickel content blocks, like Reo Royale, and were also popular with those running hooch and those pursuing them.

ScottG's right. You're no mechanical moron if you keep a '79 Fiat Spyder alive. They're slick little cars, but adjusting their valves, as with XK Jaguar engines; that time-consuming, maddening exercise of selecting the right shims makes you wish such cars had adopted the small thumbwheel on Hispano-Suiza H6 and J12 engines; each audible click indicated a thousandth of an inch.

Nifty Packard, and nice to see one "in the white," a real
summer car.

Posted on: 2012/6/10 18:31
 Top 


Re: New Quaker State Oil
Home away from home
Home away from home

su8overdrive
Sportsfans, listen to Tim Cole. This entire ZDDP fire in a crowded theater nonsense started because a couple CCCA members with 1936-48 flathead Cadillac V-8s had their chintzy bronze timing gear go bad coincidentally after recent overhauls. Packard wisely used hardened steel, reason #8,372 why we're here.

I was wondering when the ZDDP scare would rear it's empty lil' head here, dreading the day, hoping PackardInfo would be immune.

Lotta words, bottom line: The zinc level in most major motor oils is the same as it was back in the 1970s, and we didn't hear this malarkey then. Instead, it was don't use multiweight, don't use detergent, you "hafta" use antifreeze, use only distilled water in your cooling system, never put a battery on a concrete floor.

Then it was don't use silicone brake fluid, and half the bubbas making dire predictions didn't and don't know the difference between silicon and silicone, or probably take, much less pass, high school chemistry.

Zinc levels were increased, but in the last few years, SM, SN oil ratings decreased them---back to where they were in the 1970s -- because too much zinc harms catalytic convertors.

There are always a bunch of JimBobs rebuilding their hopped up Chevy V-8s. This recent zinc curtailment gave them a new black helicopter, grassy knoll to point to.
Internet blither spreads like wildfire. Contrary to Fox "News," repeating something that sounds good doesn't make it so.
Everyone's allowed to have opines, to rant.

But we're here for, as Sgt. Joe Friday requested, "Just the facts, ma'am."

I happen to use Kendall GT1 10W-30 because it's an old, respected brand, popular on the East Coast, where i came of age; because it used to be the same deep green as Packard painted their engines through '50, because it smelled, and smells, nice.
Consumers Reports several years ago ran an exhaustive test of NYC cabs using premium conventional (not synthetic) motor oils, after 60,000 miles finding no discernible wear difference from an engine using Exxon, Chevron,
any of the major oil companies' motor oils, nor any of the
major independents including Quaker State, Pennzoil, Valvoline, Castrol. I don't recall them including Kendall
merely as it was more of a "boutique" brand marketed through speed shops.

Several other major brand motor oils have the same zinc level Kendall GT1 SN now has. I spoke at some length with
one of Conoco-Philips-Kendall's degreed tech gents, himself
a gearhead with an old car with a flat cam engine with vastly higher valve spring pressure than our ancient, low-stressed, yet refined lawnmower engines.
Earlier, i corresponded with another Kendall tech maven, who'd owned a '41 Packard.

Friends who like Chevron, Texaco, other brands have had similar discussions with their R&D and tech folk, many of whom themselves own and drive, old, some very old, collector cars.

One of the Conoco-Philips-Kendall senior techs knows one of the fellows involved with the formulation of the 15W-40 "Classic Car Motor Oil" marketed through the CCCA's Indiana Region. Regarding this fellow's endeavor and even some of Kendall Oil's current marketing promoting ZDDP, he
chuckled and said, "Any company that wants to stay in business has to give people what they want, or think they need. "

I hesitated posting this. I'd never post it on the AACA Forum's collection of barroom rants, or on the 1941 Cadillac Club of America's Forum.

But i've noted there are some bright, upbeat, helpful gentlemen on this fine site, befitting the car built by gentlemen for gentlemen, and so want to allay any fear, hysteria.

Sure now, someone who knows somebody who hears tell that so-and-so's camshaft went bad in 50 miles while using
such-and-such motor oil will chime in. So be it.

The rest of you gents, a little judicious Googling, or
even picking up the telephone and calling the motor oil of your choice's tech dept. should put this to rest.

Yeah, i've read all the downhome ol' curr magazines, too.
And through my Ferrari friends, i hear the rumors from the
box seats. Mad money does not = knowledge.

Some of us enjoy Packards as respite from the
rabble.

Posted on: 2012/6/10 3:32
 Top 



TopTop
« 1 ... 43 44 45 (46) 47 48 49 ... 56 »



Search
Recent Photos
Photo of the Day
Recent Registry
Website Comments or Questions?? Click Here Copyright 2006-2024, PackardInfo.com All Rights Reserved