CONGRATULATIONS!!!!

The first time you hear an engine come to life after a long sleep is a great, great feeling. My '55 Patrician sat for 28 years. Having that moment of fear just before you try (did I leave anything off, did I give it oil) being replaced with joy, pride and not a little relief is a feeling that is matched only by very few others.

You should be proud of yourself and the guys who put it together on East Grand Blvd all these many years ago.

Enjoy!

Owen,Fish n' Jim, Howard, Tim, '55 Packard Guy, Packard Illiterati - I'm sorry for having apparently tossed this out and left everyone hanging. Not to mention not acknowledging the help that was offered by you all. In my defense, we had a pretty good blow in Portland Saturday afternoon - even a tornado touching down in the area. While keeping the lights on, I lost my Comcast line thus ending my TV, Phone AND Internet Service. Comcast "forgot" one appointment but finally got out here today - service restored just 15 minutes ago.

Having no TV, phone or Internet meant that I had a lot of time on my hands uninterrupted. Except for being cut off from this website after asking a question, it was kind of nice.

But, back to the Packard. The only thing that was disturbed during the valve job was the head and valve train. Didn't open or fiddle with anything else. During reassembly I did notice that the left side accelerator linkage bracket was loosed at it's joint so I did switch the bracket from the parts car so Howard's suggestion of a linkage problem could be part of it, I found that I could, with a little effort move the carb linkage forward over a little "hump" to a more fully closed position thus bringing down the RPMs close to normal. The thing is that the car ran very well - noisy, but well before my "Valve Experience". When I disconnect the linkage from the carb, the linkage moves freely with no binding anywhere so I don't think the linkage is a problem and I was careful to note which part of the linkage on the passenger side went where when I was taking it apart Plus I had the parts car to guide me - at least in the beginning.

There was a moment after I had balanced the head on the exhaust manifold when I thought the head was getting away from me and so I grabbed it with little thought of doing possible damage. This is a long way of saying that I think that '55 Packard Guy may have something when he talks about bending things that shouldn't be bent - more or less supported by my finding that the throttle was binding just a little.

I think my next step will be to take off the carb and see what the throttle shaft looks like compared to the one in my parts carb. I probably won't get to that until the weekend but I may be able to grab a few minutes as I know it won't take long.

Once again, my very belated thanks to Owen, Fish n' Jim, Packard Illiterati, Tim, Howard and '55 Packard Guy for helping me figure this one out. I was really disappointed when, thinking I had the car pretty much sorted only to find a brand new problem - but I guess
that's the Hobby!

As soon as I have the carb off and sorted, I'll let everyone know.

It looks like I may have spoke too soon about my success with the valves on my '51 200 Deluxe. Not that the valves aren't still quiet but another that I think must have been caused somehow by my work on the valves.

Wednesday I took it out for it's first drive. Before it was just sitting in the carport and idling for 10 minutes or so.

The car starts up fine and the only noise I hear sounds like someone holding several lengths of chain together and shaking them. As I drove away Wednesday, and as the engine got warmer, the idle speed increased until it was really racing if I put the transmission in Park or Neutral. By the time I got home the engine was trying to race so hard that I didn't dare to try to put it in the garage and just parked in the driveway and shut the engine off while the transmission was still in gear. After a few hours I figured the engine was cold enough that I could at least get it under the carport and did so but not before noticing that the earlier situation was beginning to repeat it's self. I've checked the linkage for binding and it's fine. The automatic choke assembly was a little loose so I tightened that up but it made no difference. I figure it has to be something that happened to the carb during the valve work but don't know what it could be. During that, I didn't attempt to lift the head off the engine but sort of set it on it's side on top of the exhaust manifold. I checked the linkage with the parts car and it looks the same to me - no bends or anything. I checked the wiper vacuum system and it's all intact and plumbed correctly. Before the valve work it did seem like the auto choke was hanging up a bit but nothing like this. It almost seems like a vacuum leak but I don't know where it could be and I've never had anything like a manifold vacuum leak make an engine race so fast. The fact that the RPMS increase as the engine warms up has me stumped. In fact, the whole thing has me stumped.

I need all the help I can get on this one, please.

Quote:

I have a Pay-Pal Account that I use to send and receive payment and the email account that is pinned to it is also one that I use for correspondence. I do that so that I can see as soon as money changes hands without having to go looking for it.

Having said that, I suppose it's possible that someone could have an email address solely for Pay-Pal. I'd just send him a message to that address and add a read receipt to see if it's active.

Hope this helps -

That's a great idea! It would work perfectly too. I know there'll be others interested in using this mirror. As I said earlier, I have yet to discover what evil lurks in the heart of my '51 Patrician. If it turns out that lifter cleaning is needed on that, I will be getting one for sure.

Jim

Quote:

Thank you HA52 - the lack of clatter is a good feeling and knowing that the little click that's left doesn't mean that the engine is getting ready to toss a rod all the way back to Grand Ave is a relief. I've been following your postings diligently as we seem to be going down the same path. I couldn't tell with any degree of certainty what was making the noise or really where even using a stethoscope. The thing than was most helpful was the picture that JD in KC posted of the leaking lifter. I had about three of them with one squirting a stream of oil that cleared the engine. That has stopped as well. It's a project that sounded daunting but really isn't. The main thing to remember is to plug the Oil Drains so those pesky keepers or locks don't escape to the crankcase. I had the benefit of a donor engine which was a good thing as even though I don't think I lost any, it saved time to have a few extras all cleaned and ready. Max Merritt has them (they call them Valve Keepers) for $3.00 a pair. If I had to do it over again, and I may depending on what I find in my "New" '51 Patrician, I might blow $9 for a backup.

See if you can take pictures of the valve chamber when the engine is running to isolate the bad lifters. You'll think that you will remember which one's needed attention but if you're anything like me - life will get in the way and by the time you get back to it, you'll be lucky if you remember which Valve Cover the're under.

I've been following your blog all along with special attention to your valve noise situation and more recently, your work on the body like "de-rusting" the body and the underside of the roof.

Anything I can do to help I'll be happy to do so.

Thanks Mal!

I all,

Today I finally wrapped up a project that should have taken a weekend but took 3 months. That project was seeing if I couldn't quiet the hydraulic lifters in my '51 200 Deluxe. They were making so much noise that it sounded like I had a whole troupe of Spanish Dancers - complete with Castanets" under the hood.

Did the usual opening: Drain the radiator, remove the head and valve covers. The latter after putting the RF corner of the car on jack stands so I could remove the tire and the access panel. Dug out my trusty Valve Spring Compressor, plugged all the oil drains in the lifter chamber, removed all the keepers and then the valves, springs and finally the lifters placing each one in it's proper place in a lifter rack I made out of a length of 4X4. After that, it was disassemble them and blow them out with compressed air then, back in the rack. The next step was the leak-down test detailed in the FSM. I was delighted but puzzled to find that all but one of the lifters I could remove check out fine. The one that didn't I replaced with the best of the lifters I had harvested from one of my spare engines - along with the keepers.

The one lifter that I couldn't get out of the cam follower I decided to leave in place as from what I could gather from the forum really wasn't likely to do any damage. There was only one other abnormal situation. That was the lifter that had TOO MUCH ROOM in its cam follower. For that I just tried to find the lifter out of my stash that moved around the least and call it good. There is no way I was going to remove the cam for this given the little it's driven.

At last it was time to reverse the process and put the whole thing back together. Getting the valve spring keepers or locks installed was a real treat! I worked on the first one for 1 & 1/2 hours. Back to the relevant sections in the Forum where I found the "Grease Trick". I would be showing my age if I said a jingle from the old Brylcreme ads came back to me - "a little dab will do ya". By the end, I was getting those things in pretty fast. Maybe too fast.

After the valve train was all back together and the head was torqued down but before I installed the plugs, I decided to use the starter to spin the engine just to make sure everything stayed put that was supposed to. It did! Put the plugs back in, got cleaned up enough to get in the car and fired her up.

Sounded real good for the first 15 seconds or so.... Then it was making all sorts of noises I knew it shouldn't be making. So I shut her down, locked up the garage and went in and fixed a drink!

Two weeks later and I opened up the valve chamber again and I immediately saw what the problem was. One set of the keepers or locs I thought was firmly in place - wasn't. It had come loose and the result was the spring was just sitting there with the valve inside doing nothing. Out comes the valve spring compressor, bag with the spare valve lock or keepers inside and after re-plugging the drain, fished the two errant keepers out and after putting a dab of grease on my finger put two clean keepers on the the valve then lowered the spring and everything held. Took the plugs out and ran the starter - this time, a few more shots of cranking before I put it all back together and with everything crossed, tried it again.

SUCCESS ! ! ! And SILENT success as well. Well, not completely silent as I still had those two lifters - one too tight in the cam follower and the other too loose; but compared to the cacophony that was present before - what's a couple of soft clicks every so often.

So there it is. My first major Packard engine intervention. And it RUNS ! ! ! !

David - Thanks for the heads up about the trunk carpeting. Does he have a website?

Stephen, thank you very much for the tip on the photos. I had no idea about the degrading effect of repeated viewings in JPG. Keeping a separate storage system for the pictures off the PC is excellent. I have experienced that first hand. I recently bought a new Laptop to replace the Desktop I bought in 2003. One week later, before I got all my files transferred, the Desktop died (won't do anything) so I'm going to have to have the Desktop fixed just to get my files (sigh).

Continuing with the saga of "Indiana Jones and the Packard Patrician" I came across more artifacts today. One was a Registration Slip from Oregon DMV for the car covering the 1977 - 79 period. From that I now know the name of at least one prior owner and where he (and the Patrician) lived. I plugged the address into Google Earth and came up with a very nice house in a upper-middle class housing area with the houses being of the late '40s to mid 60s single floor vintage with large yards. I was also surprised to see in-ground swimming pools in the back yards of several of the houses including the address in question. For those not familiar with Oregon, the climate is such that in-ground pools are not that common even in up scale homes. Given the era the houses were built, there was a strong "keep up the the Jones'" ethic abroad at that time. I suspect that a sharp contractor made a deal to install one, which soon lead to him being quite busy building others for the neighbors.

With the amount of time that has passed I doubt if the people owning the Patrician are still living in the house, but there does seem to be a lingering appreciation for Collector Cars in residence. Parked in front was a very nice 1963 Chevrolet Impala Sport Coup.

The other was a tag for service at Deleigh Studebaker-Packard in Medford, OR for a Lube, Oil and Filter plus fluid level check. It's a little hard to make out the date, but it looks to be October of 1961. There seems to be another one under that I will have to get at a little later.