29 Pack Guy -- Was the amp gauge problem causing what you initially thought was vapor locking?

29 Pack Guy -- Was the amp gauge problem causing what you initially thought was vapor locking?

Mike at KM Lifestyle fixed my coil/ignition lock, as well as rebuilt my voltage regulator. He does good work.

29 Guy -- I saw your video on Youtube and noticed you have engine splashers installed. Would removing them help dissipate the heat? I realize heat rises, but perhaps opening that up will help with keeping things a little cooler?

I think ballast resistors aren't necessary for a 6V system, but I might be mistaken. I have a Napa 6V coil in my 31 and it runs fine, no problems.

Assuming you have a positive ground car, the negative side of the coil (power) should connect to the ignition switch, and the positive side of the coil should connect to the distributor.

29 Guy - I seem to recall you had an issue with your shutterstat failing -- are your shutters opened when you've noticed the problem? If your shutters are closed, then that's your culprit. But, if they're opened at operating temperature then take your IR thermometer, and take the temp of the upper radiator neck, the lower neck, then shoot across the water jacket from front to back and report the results. The upper neck should be the hottest, the lower should be the coolest, then the water jacket should be fairly consistent with lower neck temperature.

The way I would start to diagnose a vapor lock issue is to determine where and how much the gasoline is being exposed to heat. Take a IR surface thermometer and, and create a chart of surface temps of the fuel pump, the fuel line from the pump to the carburetor, the fuel bowl of the carb, the venturi of the carb, and then various places on the intake manifold. I would take the temps, and write them down every two minutes or so until you achieve your suspected vapor lock conditions. Isolate where the problem is.

Just some immediate thoughts: 1. Try non-ethanol gasoline to see if that helps. 2. Check your fuel mixture, perhaps its too lean. 3. Wrap the exhaust downpipe with a wrap to shield the pump/carb from heat absorption. Also 180 sounds hot to me; my 31 Standard only gets to 150 at the upper radiator neck. Perhaps you have a cooling issue like a clogged radiator, poor water pump or rusted out water jacket and block scale that is resulting in too much engine heat for things to run optimally?

What you bought will probably work just fine, you'll just need to either find or make the linkage bits to straighten everything out. There are very few problems money can't solve in the world of Packard....ask that man that owns one.

It looks like someone put a 29 manifold on the car. Check out the photos in:

https://www.hemmings.com/classifieds/dealer/packard/640/2509422.html

It looks like the exhaust manifold currently on the car is wrong, and at some point the linkage has been bastardized to work. To see how it should look, see:

https://rmsothebys.com/en/auctions/hf21/hershey/lots/r0059-1930-packard-745-deluxe-eight-roadster/1165494

On my 31, the linkage attaches to the underside of the point you've noted on intake manifold. Take a overall picture of the carburetor side of the engine bay to show everyone what you're working with.