While you've got it apart, I'd clean everything as well as you can with gasoline or carb cleaner and a toothbrush - there's a lot of carbon buildup there that can interfere with sealing.

It's hard to tell from pictures, but looking at the headgasket, it looks like the first and last cylinder going out has more buildup than the rest, which might point to a leak. It could just be the picture though - the rest of them look pretty good.

Looking at the head, (not well versed in Packard yet so I can't tell if it's the first or last cylinder) but see how the one cylinder is quite a bit nastier than the others? That points to some sort of leak or issue as well. The spots that I see there, are those metal, or something else?

Were it me, I'd clean everything as well as I could, with gasoline or B12 chemtool, get the valves and piston tops as clean as possible, see if you can get the headgasket clean again as well. Ideally you'd use a new one (not sure who the best choice for that is, I hear Kanter and Max Merritt a lot, but I'm new to Packards) but there's a real chance that you'll end up needing to replace it a second time.

So new headgasket or sparkling older gasket, clean up the surfaces where it goes on with a razorblade carefully - you don't want any nicks or gouges (which should be pretty difficult to do with cast iron head and block, but still, be careful.) After getting off the worst of the carbon, I like to give it a quick wipe with 220 grit or so sandpaper on a block or paint stir (to keep it as flat as possible). Bolt it back together and see what you have.

If you're real determined, you can turn the engine over and look around the pistons - you should see the piston rings contacting the cylinder walls all the way around.

If it's any comfort though, I don't see anything yet that I'd be very concerned about.

You can borrow a tester from O'Reilly/Autozone for a small deposit, bring it back within two days and they'll refund it. They both have that loan-a-tool program.

Then test your compression - generally I give it 3 pulses and then see what I get (write it all down). If you find out a couple of the cylinders are down, squirt a bit of ATF in the top, give it a minute or two and then test again - if the compression number improves notably, then it's piston rings - if it doesn't, probably valve sealing issues or head gasket issues.

If it's piston rings, then give it a good dose of ATF and then let it sit for a few days. The ATF may help to free it up. If you can get it to run, even with stuck rings, they may come back with a few heat cycles.

That works for me, painted is definitely easier for me than chrome!

If the firewalls were black, what about the inner fenders? I had heard that because they were shipped with the engines in, inner fenders and firewalls were both black primer because MH wasn't going to disassemble the entire engine bay to paint them?

Beautiful car and beautiful pictures - I'm out in Arizona a lot (actually will be there Monday, leaving Thursday this week), but so far my travels are limited Phoenix mostly, with a drive back to Dallas, TX up through Flagstaff and across Interstate 40 (parts of Route 66, I found out later, which means I didn't get the chance to enjoy them as much) and the trip back down I-20 and I-10, just once, because of a silly rule so that I needed to bring the car back to my home county to get it registered and inspected.

But those were speed runs, mostly interested in getting to Dallas to get the car inspected and then back again in as little time as possible.

Beautiful countryside even from the Interstate though - would have been nice to have a casual tour in a car, like the Packard, that was built for sightseeing, vs just getting on the Interstate, setting the cruise at 80mph and watching the shoulder for cars that shouldn't be there.

Nothing that I can tell, behind the driver's door latch there was only a piece of whitish fabric type stuff and behind that, nothing telling.

There are areas inside some of the body cavities, like inside the quarters that MAY be light blue, or may be just the same gray primer, unevenly applied.

The dashboard it turns out was repainted in the black, so maybe not the original color.

The big problem is that the car was not only media blasted, but also had been repainted before. I might get lucky though, but I figured my only hope was maybe pulling the windshield glass and seals out.

Something that had occurred to me today. I had been intending, in absence of any evidence of the original colors or codes, to paint her in Matador Maroon when I got the bodywork done.

But I noticed today that the dashboard is black, and doesn't appear to have been media blasted with the car. Could that be a clue to the original color of the car, if its authentic? I cant imagine a red or green car with a black factory dash, maybe gray?

If it turned out this pointed to being one of the factory black special order cars, that'd change my plans a bit.

Also, picked up some pieces at the Pate auction, so getting closer!

Good info! From what I've been able to find, the '53 Caribbeans didn't have Caribbean script at all, but some people have added script from the '54s.

Also, it's possible that the preproduction cars had it.

I just read the post you mentioned, and will probably start reading through the whole thread (and much of the v8 section) tomorrow.

Your posts have such tremendous information in them, I wish there was a way to subscribe to a user so that I'd be notified whenever you make a new post.

Awesome info! I haven't made it through the V8 Packard posts yet, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time.

Thanks for sharing it with us again!