Wonderful article. Thanks for finding and posting this.

What's with this "vapor lock" jazz? Inline engines, sixes or eights, do not "vapor lock." Valve-en-bloc V-8 Cadillac/Lasalle, 288-ci Cord Lycoming, and of course Ford/Mercury engines vapor locked because the carb sat in the midst of a heat sink. Carburetors on inline engines do not so suffer.

I've known owners of all the above V-8s who've suffered vapor lock. A Cord friend, bizarre as it sounds, ended his with wooden clothespins. I kid you not.

I've driven straight eight Packards on both coasts for 47 years in all kinds of weather and never, ever experienced vapor lock. Neither has the owner of any inline Packard, Buick or for that matter, Delage D8S we've known ever suffered vapor lock, and it can get stifling here in the greater Bay Area.

Perhaps other issues are being termed "vapor lock?"

I got a NOS spring from Merritt for my '47 356 in the early '90s. Michael Grimes there is a prince, most helpful.

I got John Kepich to make a new stainless steel manifold heat control thermostat spring cover at that time, since the original tin covers typically rust.

Work graphite powder into each end the best you can with some kerosene. The kerosene will burn off, leaving the graphite.

The gents above are right. Don't use WD-40. It's good for many things, but not a universal panacea. It was originally developed for things like IBM storing complex Executive Model B/D typewriters with u n i t spacing. It was the 40th attempt, hence the name. WD-40 is a moisture dispersant, not a lube. However, an old auto/aero mechanic/machinist taught me you can sometimes use WD-40 or an extremely thin oil to "draw in" heavier oil to some bit needing lube.

These are identical shape to those sold by the national Packard repro/vendors but are for various big late model Chevrolets, SUVs, etc. Since they're urethane, I ordered a set of four "rubber" grommets from one of the above who assured me they were of the correct durometer, but they sure felt hard to me.
Anyway, I used their "correct" reproductions, but in retrospect, these pictured, at a fraction the price, would work fine.
And my two stabilizer rod brackets have long had urethane bushings, "bearings" in 1941-47 Clipper Master Parts Book parlance, and they're a-ok.
So, $20 including shipping.

Attach file:

---

  New front grommets.jpg (78.57 KB)

Thanks for this. Most cities and even big towns had trolleys, streetcars. In the upper Midwest, there were overnight interurbans with sleeping berths racing beneath the singing wires at 70-80 mph.

However, bus routes could be changed overnight. Which is why in 1949, a Chicago federal jury convicted General Motors of having criminally conspired with Standard Oil of California, Firestone Tire, and others to replace electric trolleys with Diesel buses, monopolizing the sale of buses to local transportation companies in 45 cities throughout the nation including New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, St. Louis, Baltimore and Los Angeles, imposing a sanction of $5,000 on GM,
and, for his role in dismantling the $100 million electric interurban system serving Los Angeles, San Fernando, San Bernardino and Santa Ana, fined GM's treasurer H.C. Grossman the sum of

one dollar.

Don't read too much into what FDR and other leaders rode in. Such fire trucks/parade floats were meant to impress, convey power, dignity and usually had sidemounts simply as tire technology made such prudent. That, and in the event of a double blowout, albeit unlikely, it wouldn't do to have such an imposing barouche stranded on a crowded public street while Secret Service and local cops scurried around trying to find a nearby shop stocking 7.50 x 16 or 8.25 x 16 tires.

Remember what a paltry slivver of the auto industry such outsized automobiles were.

Such white elephants went for a song on the back row of big city used car lots not just because they were too big for routine driving and slurped gas, but because there were no longer tire sources.

Off subject, but some then young greater NYC/NJ/CT junior execs enamored of these cars launched the Classic Car Club of America in 1952 hoping to attract others so smitten. No one used the term "classic" until LA car buff lawyer Robert J. Gottlieb coined the term in one of his Motor Trend columns the preceding year. Before that, car mad adolescents and others referred to such as "fine cars."

When a Duesenberg first owned by Greta Garbo became the first car sold at auction to approach $100,000 in 1972, every old car became "classic." Then the me-generation boomers wanted their Mustangs and muscle cars to bask in the fiscal trickle down, so they, as well as Coke, pizza, and soon anything out of Kelley Blue Book became "classic."

Another case of spreading semi-literacy. Cole Porter, Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, the Beatles, the Four Tops, Paul Simon and Joan Baez aren't classical music, but will survive the ages long as Vivaldi, Chopin, Brahms, Ravel, Villa-Lobos.

Further afield, but what does it tell you about the CCCA mindset that most Buick Roadmasters aren't "Classics," but the same car on a longer wheelbase with fancier interior (Limited) is? As well as the 1941-on cutrate Series 62 Cadillac, which shares every body panel with Pontiac, simply as oldsters prefer driving HydraMatic golf carts.

Why is this overview important? Because for too many years, the CCCA's arbitrary list of accepted wheels has second-tiered a field of better road cars, many of equal quality. The paucity of old sports cars underscores the CCCA lauding sheer size as much as anything.

But then some of us are catholic in our autoholia, and big tent politically, believing in democracy in all endeavors.

If your car's free of sidemounts, don't add them. Old front-engined cars left the showroom floor with a tendency to plow (understeer), so if you see your fine 120--arguably Packard's best ever product for double or triple the money-- as a road car, not a garish clown car with every bolt-on option as so many old domestic owners in recent years, skip them. The front coil springs in sidemount cars have a different part number, which should tell you something.

The above posters right. Sidemounts detract from your car's trim lines, look especially silly on the diminutive juniors, and make attending to the engine bay a nuisance. Packard's 1933 Twelve "Car of the Dome," which was a bigger hit with both judges and public alike than Cadillac's V-16 aero coupe, Duesenberg's "Twenty Grand" and Pierce's Silver Arrow sedans at the Chicago World's Fair, was free of sidemounts.

Packard continued sidemounts into 1941, a losing year other than their new Clipper, simply as some older conservative folks liked them, the sort who more than likely despised FDR.

In the late '70s, when things more lax out here in the greater CA Bay Area, i pulled the '40 120 i then owned off the freeway at one of those big rig weigh stations. The attendant was glad to let me drive across the scale, first front end, then rear. Would that i still had that receipt and could share the numbers with you.

Thanks, but Packarding 49 years, have long known about McMaster, Grainger, et al. I don't want to buy a crate of them.
Only wanted to know what, precisely, any here gathered have used, where they got them.

We're talking about rubber grommets, for cryin' aloud, not some complex Packard specific item someone had to tool to reproduce.

Posting this on General forum since both pre- and postwar part. Where do you go for such grommets? Steele has the exact grommets with a superfluous lip, because on the 9/16" thick rod, under compression at that, it's not like they're going to shift. Not paying $70 for what are otherwise four (4) simple rubber grommets.

1 1/4 inches diameter, 9/16th inch hole, about 3/8" thick, but a minimum 1/4", judging by the below pictures. Mine under the car are obviously squished a little after 76 years of compression so hard to determine original thickness.

Section 5.1504, Packard part "insulator," # 348945

Here's a link picturing the snubber:

https://www.google.com/search?q=1947+Packard+snubber&rlz=1C1UEAD_enUS970US971&oq=1947+Packard+snubber&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i60l3.8317j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#imgrc=gUt_0LC7kMvf6M

I tried to attach photo only 854 kb but am rewarded with:

"Errors Returned While Uploading file: snubber.htm
File of MIME type: text/html is not allowed"

Handsome, understated car in unusual color, Paul's '39 Su8. Free of distractions. Well done.