Only $159 a yard? The material I need is $179/yard, haha. I didn't realize it would take that much material to redo front and rear seats. Ouch. Everyone says that upholstery work is crazy expensive. Eventually I will get to doing it, but it's low on my priority list right now.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but can't SMS also sew the new seat covers for you, then you have an upholster install them? That's kind of what I was planning on when I get to that point.

-Kevin

Video says unavailable when I click on the link.

Looks like your work was successful! And your door still has all the original sound deadener on it....mine is mostly gone.

-Kevin

John - thanks, yes it's great to be driving finally. Brings a smile to my face every time.

Mike - Thanks for the confirmation on the oil pressure. I thought it was still okay, but wanted to be sure I wasn't missing something.

Good call on capping off various vacuum lines. The line going down to the master cylinder was capped off long ago when the Treadle Vac was removed. It's possible that it's leaking there, or really anywhere along those lines. The needle was bouncing a good bit too, which from what I understand is not what I want to see. Probably was moving 1 mmHg when it bounced.

-Kevin

Congrats on the progress. Good to hear that it is running.

Off the top of my head I believe the idle speed should be set to about 450 RPM for our cars. I borrowed a friend's tachometer to do that. It's much lower than I thought. But I don't get any sort of harsh shift into reverse or drive.

-Kevin

Aren't there supposed to be cotter pins on those bearing bolts? There were when we rebuilt my dad's '38 Super 8 a year or so ago. Not sure if that changed for the later years or not.

Glad there was no damage done!

-Kevin

I've been doing a few more small things to the car in between taking it out for runs. I finally replaced the old heater hoses with black (old ones used to be red, but were mostly brown). NAPA didn't have the correct wire style hose clamps, so I just used screw type for now.

I'm running straight water in the cooling system right now while I check for leaks. I've been running water only for about a month now since I've been messing with the heater core and heater valve. During my drives today I didn't see any leaks, and I turned the heat all the way up to get water moving through the replacement heater valve and new hoses. All looked dry. I'm assuming that water was actually going through.

Car still tends to get a little warm when driving. Not much, but the needle moves up past half. Temp gun on the top of the head shows a range from 180-192 directly over the spark plugs, with the higher readings being around cylinders 6-8. Ambient temps aren't helping. Today's drive was in 93 degrees. I'm hoping that coolant will help keep it cool. Temp gun on all parts of the radiator shows pretty even distribution.

I double checked the timing and it looks like it's hitting at 6-7 degrees BTDC at idle. I wondered if the car was running lean, so I hooked up a vacuum gauge and it looks like I'm pretty low. About 14-15. Messed with the idle screws, but couldn't get it above that. How do I improve vacuum?

Perhaps the exhaust is part of it? I seem to have excessive vapors coming out the road draft tube when sitting....maybe the exhaust isn't flowing out the system like it should?

Also noticed that once that car is really warmed up the idle speed is lower, so much so that the oil pressure seems low. When warmed up at low idle (engine is very quiet except for my ticking valve) the pressure is below 20. When first starting the car at high idle it's closer to 25. When driving at 30-50 mph it's 30-32. Normal?

I finally filled the tank all the way up to see what the gauge would do. Went to just above half. So once the needle drops below a quarter tank I'll just fill it up. Eventually I'll have to tackle that problem, but I really don't want to drop the tank again anytime soon.

Went to a local cruise-in on Saturday. The straight 8 attracted a lot of attention. Lots of Chevy's and Ford's here but only one Packard. Lots of heads turning when I drive it.

Took my boys out for a spin today after hooking up all heater hoses, then took all the girls out to lunch at a burger joint. Again, lots of heads turning (all the guys) and one person at the restaurant even knew what year and make it was. He's the first one to ever get it right.

Lastly, one year ago my friend and I were cutting the old rusted windshield header out. Lots has happened in a year! I'm so happy to be driving the car now. I only wish that I could have taken my Dad for a drive before he passed.

-Kevin

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Sprague is only a couple of hours from me. Someone else told me about this collection but I haven't been out there to see it. I may need to make a trip.

-Kevin

Thanks Mike and Don. The car has mechanical lifters (I checked) and I don't know when the last time was that the valves were adjusted. It's definitely on my to-do list but I'm not opposed to doing some additives to see if I can help keep my sticky valve clean.

-Kevin

Ernie, how much are you putting in a full tank?

-Kevin

I had a bit of time on Saturday so I gently washed the Panama. The paint felt very rough still because of all the sandblasting, metal grinding, and welding. So I decided to try a clay bar to see how it would do. The clay came up red, which I think means there was a bunch of steel dust on the surface that was corroding.

I clayed the whole car, then waxed it all. The paint is much smoother, but there are many, many imperfections from dust bits to chips in the paint, to the huge dent in the rear fender. Eventually I might fix those.

A couple things I'm noticing now. I have a very small leak at the junction between the hard and flexible fuel line in the front. I thought I had fixed that previously, but turns out it's still there. I still have a very slight leak on the rear junction at the fuel tank. So fun.

I have a ticking in the engine that I believe is a lifter, or possibly still that sticky valve. I can hear it up high in the vicinity of the valves. It is louder when the car first starts up then quiets down some as the car warms. Should I run a bottle of Seafoam or Marvel Mystery Oil through a full fuel tank?

-Kevin

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