Just left you a voice mail. Would like to order a pair of 371264 hood bumper/pivots of fresh rubber for $18 each. What Clipper owner wouldn't? Noticed you list
"Hood bumper rubber set of 18 pieces for front and sides 1941-47 Clipper, $38."

Does the latter include a pair of 371264?

Summit Racing has best prices, overnight shipping, for Optima Red Top 6-volt. (800) 230-3030. 800 cold cranking amps.
Weight is the enemy in any car. Got nearly a decade from my last Optima in my '47 Super (356-ci nine-main engine w/ gear reduction starter), know of a fellow who got 14 years in his '41 Cad, and of a Cad V-16 getting by just fine with an Optima. Some folks run two, which is ridiculous, unnecessary.

Packard didn't make batteries, so don't fathom the love affair some have for heavy, off-gassing traditional batteries, but if you're concerned and take your '28 Six to a battery show, Jim's Battery Manufacturing (800) 426-7580 can supply fakey do covers and no one will be the wiser, if judging and chasing points important to you.

Amazon also has good prices on Optima, but they are a vile organization, treat their employees like dirt:https://www.newyorker.com/tag/amazon

HH56, as always, a well-reasoned surmise.
The hideous tubs were heavy as they looked, 200 lbs. more than Clippers, which themselves were nearly 200 lbs. heavier than the lightest Packards ever--and best road cars -- the 1940 models, which unfortunately suffered a Detroit bucket mill mien abetted by those chintzy tin hood louvers aping the '38 Buick that ended Packard's three-year win of the Gallop Poll's Most Beautiful Car. Much as i otherwise liked my '40 120.

The tubs' tires were dangerously overloaded with four slim adults even without luggage, and this was long before a third of Americans were clinically morbidly obese.

To some of us, 1935-37 seniors, with their painted grille shells and painted headlight pods were jewels of understatement, made a Rolls-Royce look vulgar. Werner Gubitz with help from outsiders Alexis de Sakhnoffsky and Ray Dietrich created a chiseled, apart from the crowd distinction, the '30s senior Packards making Cadillacs, Lincolns, Pierce-Arrows look inept. Another reason, other than Packard's refinement, smoothness, dependability they were by far the leading choice of the world's embassies and five of the Supreme Court justices. Anyone know what Benjamin Nathan Cardozo, Louis Brandeis, and Harlan Stone drove?

Thank you, sir. Now all I need is to hear from any senior Clipper owner who has replaced those two hood pads, with what, and are they happy.

Dell, as mentioned, Steele does not have the pair for Clippers, but thanks for the warning. PackardDon, Merritt doesn't have any N.O.S. but even if they did, don't see the merit in replacing 76-year-old rubber with more of the same.

So, can any senior Clipper owners who've replaced theirs answer my pair of questions?

Good grief. The silence suggests i'm posing a question about biochemistry or deconstructing great literature. Or is everyone else with a senior Clipper soldiering on with their originals?

1941-47 Clipper Master Parts Book lists "Hood pads group 0.0015. Part number front 372165 Rear 373956." Which is it? Confusing, because my car, as it left Detroit, has but one (1) almost halfway down the hood from the front of the car atop each front fender. Steele does not supply. A couple Packardites have suggested Steele's 30-0092-42 for the '48-'50 tubs. But from what I can see online, they lack the original Clipper pad's roll at the outward edge which helps stabilize the hood when locked closed, prevents the long, heavy hood from shifting even incrementally. Packard included that roll for a reason.

However, i do not understand the tubs having six (6) similar pads. There is only one (1) on each side of my car as below. There is nothing else remotely like the below. Just one nearly halfway down the hood's length atop each front fender.

This is for my '47 Super Clipper. Can anyone with a 1946-47 senior Clipper who has replaced this please tell me exactly what you used? But please, no "you getcha a" projects. Thought i'd make my own out of some neoprene sheeting i have, but obviously needs the metal core to hold the recessed screws securely, that roll is there for a reason, and don't want any projects regardless how paltry.

Profound thanks.

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Good connection, HH56. It was called "Electric Hand," a Bendix pre-select shift optional in 1935-36 Hudsons, came with a plug in the floor and shift lever clipped to the firewall under the dash, just in case. 1936-37 Cord 810/812s used the same Bendix unit, albeit with four speeds, 4th an overdrive ratio.

Off subject, but oft wondered why more vintage cars didn't have an overdrive within their transmission, as Cords and the 200 1938-39 (a few titled as '40) Bentley MX. Certainly easier for most motorists to use. The extra cost might've been offset by simplified inventory, production.

1936-38 Pierce-Arrows had the usual bolt-on overdrive of the era, but at least it was standard equipment on both the 8 & 12. Had Pierce been guided since the teens by ex-Burroughs cash register and Hudson executives as Packard was, they might've had the wherewithal to launch their proposed 25,000 juniors for 1938 at their higher than One Twenty's price point of $1,200.
There was suggestion the junior Pierces would've used Pierce's existing 384-ci eight monobloc with hydraulic lifters, a better engine, if we're splitting hairs, than Packard's or Chrysler's 384 eights.
If the junior Pierce retained overdrive, what a car. Since Pierce folded, some of us with 1940-on 356s w/overdrive console ourselves we've the next best thing.

Were Packard's Brigg bodies better than the Reo Flying Cloud/Graham Cavalier Hayes bodies the junior Pierce intended to use? Briggs bodies not as finely wrought as Fisher, if strong. Skip the wood veneer and cowhide--are the Pressed Steel bodies (Cowley near Oxford, supplied much of the English auto industry per Briggs, Murray in the States) used in the postwar Rolls-Royce and Bentley better than Packard's Briggs? Anyone have hands-on comparison experience?
As mentioned, in the years preceding War II, Rolls-Royce was annually disassembling a new Buick Limited to glean the latest Detroit production tips.


Still further afield, pardon, Pierce's plant, same size as Packards, designed, built at the same time by Albert Kahn also using his brother Julius's patented Trussed Concrete Steel Company construction fully survives, repurposed.
Buffalo, like Pittsburgh, was long down at the heels, but managed the renaissance Detroit couldn't.

Back to false economy, think it was Bob Lutz who suggested it was folly not to put your best upholstery in all your lines. That's what sells cars. My '47 Super came with the same hogs hair carpet as the junior 8s (which were nonetheless terrific cars, more sensible than locomotives like mine). Many Packards were drab within to the point of looking like ordnance vehicles, or they went the other nervous extreme like the 1946-47 Custom Supers, as if that sort of nonsense would make shoppers forget the '30s seniors or that there was no HydraMatic.

Really, how much more to plate the parking brake handle in all '40s Packards? The ex-GM big B-O-Ppers recruited to cost the 120 really were running the show. Until inspired by Darrin's proposal, which he was never paid for, the best Packard could do enroute to the Clipper, their sole non-postwar sellers' market success of the '40s, was graft 1940's new narrowed grille on a Buick in their styling studio.

I've heard from those driving late '30s Cad V-16s and Packard Twelves happy with Michelin (may've bowed out), Bridgestone, Yokohama 7.50 x 16 bias sized LT radials, so you get the best of both worlds; vintage look, if not 8.25, and crisper handling.

Since these are light truck radials, they'll take higher pressure, but those of us running Michelin, Bridgestone, Yokohama 7.00 x 15 LT radials on 1941-on Century, Roadmaster, Cad 62/60S, Chrysler and Hudson 8s, Packards reason 40 psi in radials with their much more flexible sidewalls no harder on wheels and i.f.s. parts than bias plies at 30 psi.

Have heard nothing to the contrary from those running the above, including long tours, only contentment.

But if you somehow have to have 8.25, you're stuck with Lesters and the usual bias plies people in third world countries wouldn't buy.

If you must have whitewalls, which most educated professionals first owning cars like yours thought gauche, tacky, Diamond Back in South Carolina will vulcanize same for a price. However, we've seen pictures of big city (Chicago, Manhattan) Packard showrooms with cars like yours --even open models at that -- parked on Persian carpets surrounded by potted palms shod in black sneakers and with only the base bale ornament, and never fog or driving lights, typically among the bolt on Esso terica dealers offered to increase profit margin.

Thanks, Howard, as always. But my linings are good, hydraulic brakes as mentioned properly adjusted, so the above long game is too much monkey business.

Can't imagine Packard and other garages going through all that when a customer came in with an otherwise up-to-snuff car asking for the parking brake to be adjusted, snugged.

Is there a Monopoly short game?

My hydraulic brakes adjusted according to Hoyle with the correct amount of pedal free play. But even on the gentlest incline, with my parking brake lever up nearly against the bottom of the dash, the car will roll back.

Without showing off vast engineering knowledge, in simple English, can anyone tell me how to adjust the parking brake?

I'm told the '42 shop manual describes how, which i ain't got, only the 1946-50 Packard Shop Manual, which devotes a scant half page to the entire subject of parking brake, and that only a description of how it works with a ghost/cutaway illustration of a junior tub club depicting the key parts. That's absolutely it.

The only '42 manuals I see in PI's archives are owner's and tune up.

Those justifying such hideous degradation with "but the craftsmanship is good," why are you here?
This is a site devoted to the preservation, renovation of Packards, not late model Chevies garbed with Packard bodies.

This fine site is the last place to see the least approval for ignorant, low-horizon trash like this.

Again, why are you here? There are other sites like H.A.M.B. Jalopy Journal for crapola like the above nightmare. Hell, even most denizens of H.A.M.B. would shake their heads at this monstrosity.

No, no, no.

And if you're too feeble to work the silky clutch, smooth transmission lever of a torquey quality car once driven by bankers, judges, businessmen and their 5' 2" wives, time to give up driving or stick to a PT Cruiser or golf cart.

You don't decimate rolling history and get a pass from us. You don't urinate in a cathedral or modify the works in the Louvre with Magic Markers and get a pat on your empty head from us.

Glentre, the above gents give you terrific, knowing advice. Gear Vendors and others offer aftermarket overdrives with anvil strength used in monstrously powerful rods and the like long used by many with big luxe barouches of the '30s.
No one can whine about "originality" unless they've nothing better to do than crawl beneath your car looking for sin.

If you change to a taller rear axle, and/or add overdrive, remember, it is hard to "over-gear" a Packard or most vintage cars. Bear in mind they were often first sold to drivers who came of age when Dobbin was still common or principal transport, and third gear flexibility seen as the mark of refinement, and luxury.

Remember, the expression "going like 60" was still in popular use into the '40s, and the first modern, limited-access, divided highway was 1940's 160-mile Pennsylvania Turnpike.

Even in a newer Packard than yours with taller rear axle and overdrive like my '47 or its kin, with 1941-42 Buick Century/Roadmasters, the only cars available off a showroom floor in the '40s able to best the ton (100 mph), I envy your bucolic Virginia surrounds, where you have some lovely undulating two-lane "blue highways," because i prefer a leisurely pace. You rediscover your car at 40-50, or slower; what the English used to call "pottering."

Something right nice about murmuring along at 40-45. As you probably know, one of the most beautiful drives in the nation is the 469-mile Blue Ridge Parkway, with its 45-mph speed limit and not one sign or billboard allowed.

Relax and enjoy the ride. Don't let those in Kleenex cars cow you.

Your 384-ci eight is a magnificent, strong engine. I prefer it over the Twelve even as Maurice Hendry liked the Pierce 384 inline eight over their 12.
You've got as nice a Packard as East Grand ever built.