The seat looks great Howard, and the vents will probably be hard to spot once the seat is installed. Very nice job all around.

I know what you mean about the blue & tan. I remember one morning as a kid when I put on blue socks with brown shoes. My mother took one look at me and said brown and blue do NOT go together. That is about what I'm looking at in my '51 Patrician and while I'll probably stick with the color scheme, it wouldn't be what I would have specified had I been in the market for a new Patrician in 1951. If it weren't for the fact that the blue panels in the doors and in the front seat back are in good condition I'd go with the Taupe interior. I thought about dying them but as I'd be going from a darker color to a lighter one I am doubtful that it would work very well and I'd have ruined the panels in the process.

I'm fascinated by your work on the the A/C indeed on the whole car. It will be lovely when you've finished.

As for A/C and originality, I can't help but think that if a valued customer came in on a day in 1947 and said he'd buy a new Custom IF it could have A/C I'm sure someone would at least have made a call to the company that was the pre-war supplier of the units for Packard and if one was available, they'd order and install it to make the sale. The price might be over the moon, but I bet it could have happened.

Beautiful job and inspirational for my own blue Packard.

As far as the engine it's self goes, I've been carefully turning it through it's four cycles by hand regularly with no signs of problems. Also, even better, the valves are all opening and closing as per design and the valves themselves have no wobble or tilt in the cycle and when open there is no side to side movement which I hope means that the guides are still in good shape.

Next comes the opening of the valve cover for a look at the lifters. While I don't see any problems as per above, I still want to give them a good cleaning as well as the area while things are wide open. I'm also going to take a good look at the timing chain plus with all the oil on the outside of the engine, I think I've got some seals that need some attention.

After that, I'll order gaskets along with fuel pump and carb kits.

One thing the clean(er) engine shows is that the grey for the head is wrong in both color and gloss. There are large sections of the block still wearing the original color so while I knew the gloss was wrong, I'm glad to have the correct color to compare things to.

After the engine comes cleaning the exposed frame, steering and suspension, replacing the front end bushings plus the swapping in of the Power Steering Assembly. Once that's done I'll re-attach the front sheet metal while installing the wiring harness. With the car largely back together, I can have a good chunk of my garage back plus room to work on the interior pieces..

More later -

Here are some more of the other side.

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Well, it has been a very long time since my last posting on this project but I haven't been totally inactive. As weather temperature and the usual suspects permit, I've been cleaning down through an incredible amount of crud bit by bit. Here are some pictures showing the before and after...

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If the photo is any example, you are going to have a beautiful interior, not to mention a beautiful car. Your adventures with your Custom has been providing inspiration for my '51 Patrician project.

If the movie stayed true to the book, it would be a 1938 Packard Super Eight convertible sedan. I enjoyed the book. Didn't know they made a movie out of it, but I'd love to see it.

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Howard, I believe you nailed it with the T-L "On-Off" switch. I checked everything else you and Ross and O_D suggested but found nothing until I came to the switch. I noticed that the "toggle" seemed a little loose and sloppy. Fortunately, when I first bought this car, there was an eBay auction for a NOS T-L Switch ( I believe it was also used as the Heater Blower Switch on the 51-54 models). Comparing the two, I could see that the NOS switch toggle was much more positive in it's action. So I replaced it. That was two weeks ago, that the Courtesy Lights still work as designed so I cautiously say that the mystery is solved. I tested the old switch with an Ohm Meter and at times got a reading that seemed to indicate a "leak".

My thanks to Howard, O_D, Ross and others who helped me through this. It's taken a long time, but I think I can cross this one off. At least for a while.

Hi Dave and congratulations on your choice of cars! Of coursed I'm a little prejudiced.

The support here is fantastic and I'm confident in saying that any problem that may arise from your Patrician can and will be answered here.

Beautiful car, by the way.

Michael was originally from the Philadelphia area so it makes sense that he'd know about that.

Larry, I saw those pictures on your blog and let me add my congrats on a beautiful job. As far as your interior vs. a Patrician interior goes, I've been wondering the same thing. As a matter of fact, I sent off to SMS for samples of the cloth used in the 200 Deluxe and received a swatch for both fabrics used - what appears to be an excellent match for the cloth you used in yours as well as my 200 Deluxe - allowing for "a few years" of fading.

I took the blue swatch out to the Patrician and it appears to be a lighter blue, though not by much, of the color used in the Patrician. More importantly though, the sample seems to be close to the same weight as the Patrician fabric.

The description you give of the color of your dash seems very close to the color of the dash in my Patrician which is more silver than grey. Interestingly the dash of the interior of my running 200 Deluxe is a light tan while the "parts car" dash is a darker grey.

Thank you Larry, for your help in this and for the paint formula you gave me for Matador Maroon a while back. At some point I'll be using it to bring the 200 Deluxe back to it's beautiful original color.