Packard V8,

When I first got my car on the road I put a set of the appropriate Coker WWWs on it, ordered at great expense and against the advice of my old-time (older than I am), "tire guy." On my way home from the car's first highway trip, I stopped by his shop to see if they could be made round enough to use on the highway (he has a, "trueing," machine). He advised that two of them would require more tread shaved off them than he'd personally feel comfortable with in order to true them. I bought a set of P235/75R narrow whitewalls for roughly about 1/4 of what I paid for the Cokers. Fortunately, a fellow with a mid-fifties Cadillac traler queen wanted the Cokers and didn't care whether or not they were round. He was happy, I recouped most of the price difference betwixt the prices of the two sets of tires and charged the remaining loss off to the cost of my continuing education and have been motoring, happily, for going on three years now on the radials.

Even years after school is over - it costs money for most of us to get, "smarter."

65 in March. Parents and grandparents owned Packards. Packard service garage was enroute from my grandparents home to movie theatres and drugstores in small west Texas oilfield town where born. Became nuisance there well before age of 10. Always liked cars but couldn't get enough of Packards. Company gone before I acquired first car ('39 Chevy Master Deluxe, 2 door coach w/54,000 miles). Went into service at 17 and, as someone else stated, "life got in the way," of my love-affair with Packards. Fell in with wrong crowd in early '60s in N.E. Arkansas and started hanging out at George Ray's outlaw dragstrip in Paragould, AR. Too many junk cars converted to 1/4 mile purpose to enumerate. Drivers (as best I can recall) were '39 Chevy, '58 Hillman Minx, '66 Caprice Classic (396 w/350TH), '69 Plymouth Roadrunner, '67 Caddy Fleetwood, 70 Impala, '71 Caddy Fleetwood, '73 Pylymouth Satellite Sebring +, '73 Coupe DeVille, '74 Coupe DeVille, '75 Chrysler NY Brougham, '74 (maybe '75) El Dorado, '78 Fleetwood Brougham, '82 Fleetwood Brougham, '87 Isuzu I-Mark, '92 Dodge Spirit, '93 Dodge Stealth ES, '95 Infiniti J-30, '97 Infiniti J-30, 2003 Mercury Grand Marquis and FINALLY (never having forgotten), in early 2004, a 1955 Packard Patrician. I drive it and it was undergoing (before I retired and ran out of money) what started out to be a restoration. I have since modified it a little and continue to refurbish and work on it as time, money and downtime (it is presently the only car I own) permit. With their oiling problems seen to and proper care and feeding these cars make GREAT daily drivers, both in town and on the road.

"To my memory only Chrysler Corp used LH threads on one side, so the rotation momentum would tend to tighten, not loosen them."

-Flat tire four blocks north of the International Bridge, Laredo, Texas, after having caught the 2:30 AM show at the New Shamrock Club across the river in Nuevo Laredo with a bunch of air traffic controllers from Laredo AFB. 1967 Dodge Polara station wagon. LH threads. 250 lb individual trying to turn wrong way with jack-handle lug wrench. Wrench actually bent, slipping off lug nut, throwing wrench-turner into gutter, cutting three inch gash in forehead - just as Laredo's Finest arrived on scene. One of those moments indellibly etched into my memory in stone.

Jerry's post about the Classic Auto Air unit is spot-on. I have the condenser unit (double-layer, micro-coil) mounted at an angle, at about the level of the bottom of the radiator, in the splash pan area. There's plenty of room and, as the unit has its own highly efficient condenser fan, there's plenty of airflow. These units are designed so that they can be mounted (and hidden) nearly anywhere. The only, "improvement," that I decided to make to mine was to use tar tape to seal around the open gap between the stacked coils as I noticed, during mock-up testing, that about half the airflow was being blown out from between the coils (there's about 3/4 of an inch between the two) around the open outside edges rather than being blown through the second coil layer. I am running a Sanden (R-134) compressor mounted on the stock Packard bracket that formerly held the LeHigh compressor. When I got my car the old compressor was in the trunk, frozen, and although the old condenser and dryer were still in place - someone in the distant past had butchered/removed the refrigerant lines. The unit works exceptionally wall and is more than capable of cooling the interior of a '55 Pat in city traffic during Florida summers. This coming summer will be its third in service.

Have no idea what the gizmo is but, just as a footnote on the Punitive Expedition into Mexico after Villa, you are correct in that it helped prespare the U.S. (within the anti-war, somewhat pacifist, anti-military context of the Wilson administration) for its entry into The Great War in 1917. From all that I have ever read and some personal stories remembered from my youth, the War Department was intent upon motorizing the Army. General Pershing and some of his staff were evidently of the opinion that, with a proper compliment of horse cavalry, they could've probably run down Villa. It is my understanding that there were Garford trucks broken down all over Sonora and that one of the results of the Punitive Expedition was to firmly convince the Army of the superiority of Packard trucks for operation in hostile landscapes. Although Pershing and his senior staff found the small air compliment assigned to them extremely useful, I do not believe that they were overly impressed with the trucks with which they were supplied by the War Department.

Sincere thanks from me, as well. The appearance of this site about a year into working on my car began saving the day for me almost immediately. There is, now, a vast quantity of information readily available that would've taken months (and even years) to search out before you started this. Thanks, also, to the many contributors whose information always seemed to appear just as I needed it. Growth and participation has been amazing and indicates just how badly the site was needed and how much it is appreciated by all of us who participate and benefit from it.

Mikec wrote, "having just gotten back from a nice day of springtime packarding on some back roads with steep hills, i am thoroughly impressed with the ultramatic. shifting into low and using the lockup to engine brake is so cool, plus it is very controllable.

Owen, i would have to say locked up, because there is no slippage. the tranny input shaft is locked tightly to the engine instead of being allowed to rotate with slippage."

Mikec and Owen - I, too, enjoy driving my '55 Pat for the engine braking power of the T/U when the direct drive clutch is locked up. Although the hill is not steep enough to downshift into low, there is a hill with an "S" curve at the bottom close by my house. My former car, a 2003 Mercury Grand Marquis, had to be braked if coming off of this hill in "Drive" (because, evidently it was in automatic overdrive, to maintain a safe 40 mph speed down the hill and through the curve. In the Packard I can come off the top of the hill at 40, take my foot off the accelerator and the car will maintain the 40 mph to the bottom of the hill and I can power through the "S" curve without having to use the brakes. It had been so many years, when I first got the car, since I'd been able to do this in a car equipped with an automatic tranny that I'd almost forgotten about it. The two Infinitis that I'd owned had a semblance of it while the American cars equipped with auto trannys with automatic overdrive invariably gained speed on downhill grades when left in normal "Drive." The engine braking is much more pronounced with the T/U than with even the Infinitis and I like it - having grown to adulthood being used to using engine braking as much as possible to avoid fade on the drum brakes of that day. It is one of the things that I enjoy about the T/U. Although not an important consideration when driving newer cars with anti-lock disc brakes, it brings back the heightened experience of actually having to semi-understand the machinery under you and being part of the driving experience rather than just putting the thing in gear, turning the steering wheel and using the brake and accelerator pedals.

Just another old guy reliving his youth and revelling, a little, at actually having to drive a car again.

When doing the mechanicals on my '55 Pat, I took the original to a local NAPA store and compared it to the NAPA 304. The one out of my car was a significantly larger version of the NAPA 304 and the 304 would not serve. I was about to leave town at the time and hadn't time to chase parts so telephoned Sandy Chirco at Tucson Packard, told him what I needed (a rear u-joint for a '55 Patrician) and when I returned from my business trip an identical (new, remanufactured, ??) serviceable one was waiting for me. I don't remember what it cost but it was the right one and has been functioning properly for a couple of years of daily driving. I think that the NAPA 304 is for juniors but am not certain. There's probably a cross match (from the difference in sizes between the larger one that fit and the NAPA 304, I'd tend to suspect that the cross match might be with some light truck or other) but I've never been able to find it.

Ah, yes, Gerd. Brazil's, "state," appears to be excellent. There was a day when I enjoyed such but, in six decades of personal experience, I've found Packard automobiles and old Colt and Remington firearms to provide more long lasting enjoyment, less danger and to be far less expensive in the long term.

Gerardo,

There's little doubt in anyone's mind who has ever lived overseas, anywhere, but that Fiat IS a world player and has been, lo, these many, many years. Fiat had major problems in the United States because, like Morris, Renault and many other European manufacturers of the time, they didn't appear to really understand the distances, extreme heat and sustained highway speeds inherent in driving in this country. Fiats are plentiful all over the world (as are Renaults) yet, as in a recent post by Irish Packard, Chrysler is capable of building a serviceable, reliable product for use in other parts of the world. Chrysler, for many years, was a pioneer in innovative engineering. Their downfall occurred during the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. There still wasn't anything wrong with their engineering and design efforts (to any greater extent than any other of the U.S. manufacturers) but they suffered even more unnecessary and unforgivable quality control problems than GM, Ford and AMC. After they quit building Packards, I owned several dependable Chrysler products and liked them until the trim started falling off of them, the fit and finish deteriorated and I got one (1975) that only had primer under the paint on the front half of the car.

I think that the marriage between Chrysler and Fiat could turn out to have positive advantages to all of their two sets of customers and might well be good for both companies.