|
Re: Yesterdays Radio
|
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Home away from home
 
|
There are still excellent quality replacement pieces for radio and other plastic and metal trim pieces.
A good friend makes virtually any plastic part for Packard radios-no matter how old, including radio dials in plastic or glass, knobs in plastic, trim in plastic. And the quality is amazingly good. He also makes body and data plates or can restore yours. Here is a sample of an ignition plate made from scratch. Dating is his, not mine. This fellow can make virtually anything in plastic, glass, cloissone and more. Attach file:  (109.82 KB)
Posted on: 2016/1/31 21:00
|
|||
|
||||
|
Re: Wheel well color
|
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Home away from home
|
Quote:
If by "wheel wells" you mean under the front fenders this was usually body color without any question for Caribbeans. There are numerous photos of 1953 Caribbeans on the internet and on this site showing factory original cars with body color on the inside of the front wheel housings. I also have them on the assembly line with body color. Mitchell-Bentley did paint firewalls (below the cowl flange) flat or satin black, but not inside the front fender wheel housings. As far as undercoating... that's a whole different matter. Of course if undercoating was ordered (and this was usually a dealer-installed or aftermarket item...and best left alone rather than scraped off-as is proclivity today)... it would be black, of course.
Posted on: 2015/11/20 3:08
|
|||
|
||||
|
Re: 1955 Caribbeam top
|
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Home away from home
|
Ahh. Electron is an old company and they actually made several tops for me back in the 1970s. I also had tops made by Acme Auto Headlining in Long Beach, CA (I gave them all my Packard factory top patterns but no idea if they still have them)and by Robbins Auto Top Company.
I highly, highly recommended Robbins. They made the best tops for 1956 with color inside. But unfortunately when Robbins moved from Santa Monica they closed their retail and individual customer service operation. Let's see your pics. The main thing to remember with Caribbean convertible tops is to install them properly and don't be in a hurry. The alignment of the rear bow is extremely critical and if not done dead accurate, the entire rest of the top fitting and measurements are thrown off. And remember... the rear bow was trimmed at the factory with a stainless steel trim piece-not soft trim. This allowed better water proofing and very beautifully finished appearance. But lacking this piece, only use a trim piece called a "wire-on." NEVER use a piece known as a "hidem." These tend to fill with and absorb water. Very bad for these tops.
Posted on: 2015/10/25 11:57
|
|||
|
||||
|
Re: 1954 Caribbean convertible top
|
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Home away from home
|
Quote:
The rear backlight window should be clear vinyl...plastic. Glass is not correct. Don't do it. The more detailed items to look for-especially if you presently have an original top on the vehicle are as follows: ? Stainless rear bow outer trim (usually missing) ? Rear bow outer trim retainer channel (also usually missing) ? Beltline stainless trim Also, as I have said before, most people tend to jump into an old convertible and immediately want to run the top down and up. A bad no-no. Especially if the car has been sitting or the top unused for lengthy periods. Always clean the hydraulic ram rods first! Rods should be shiny with no corrosion or black hard rings on them. Coat the clean rods with a thin rub-down of transmission fluid and let them sit overnight. Then operate the top. Lowering a top with rusty, dirty or corroded ram rods merely tears the ram seals and eventually will result in a nasty leak. Some things to think about.
Posted on: 2015/10/22 1:08
|
|||
|
||||
|
Re: 1954 Caribbean convertible top
|
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Home away from home
|
Yes, the original 1953-54 Caribbean top fabric was Orlon. For 1953 it was only white with a white underside. For 1954 it was also offered in black, but with a white underside (inside layer).
And yessss, there are all different shades of white. So keep this in mind since you won't want a blinding snow-white shade. Yes, diamond pinpoint grain vinyl convertible topping is probably the closest you will find today to the original appearance-if you are not deeply knowledgeable about this stuff. But still you need to find material that is off-white or light tan on the inside and that is not really easy to do anymore. But it is out there. Have your trimmer contact some of the bigger, older sources in the industry for convertible top fabrics. There is a lot of leather-grain vinyl convertible top material laying around in trim shops and fabric warehouses. But one just has to know where to look. However, I would not use this stuff on a 1954 Caribbean if you are putting it back to original appearance. Save this stuff for 1956 Caribbeans. By the way, the closest leather-grain vinyl convertible top fabric to looking like 1956 Caribbean is from Rolls Royce Corniche and was called "Everflex." It comes in with exterior with light tan inner face. But again, I would not use this stuff for a 1954 Caribbean. As for woven white (canvas) convertible top material... yes, this stuff is also available for outrageous, insane prices and still hard to find. Worse, the inner face has European "dobby-weave" (a zig-zag pattern). It soils easily and does not have the most accurate appearance to match the original Orlon. But it is indeed around. As for judging... who knows? That whole thing has gone haywire with what used to universally be called "customizing" now being accepted as "restoration." Every few years the standards get slacked just a little more and something that was once unacceptable gets squeezed in somehow. So I won't touch that subject.
Posted on: 2015/10/21 16:04
|
|||
|
||||
|
Re: My "Before It's Too Late" Trip
|
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Home away from home
|
Quote:
Drive a relatively new Corvette from Atlanta to Detroit on I-75? Piece of cake. Back in the 1970s I drove a 1958 Corvette from Los Angeles to Detroit over what was left of Route 66-yes, like Todd and Buzz! And yes, a lot of it was still 2-lane blacktop in those days. Today, there really isn't much going on in front of the EGB Packard Plant. Just don't plan on parking and getting out on foot. That would not be wise. For sure add the Citizen's Packard Dealership/Packard Museum in Dayton, Ohio to your list. It is just a hop & skip off of I-75 and is just loaded with great Packard stuff. I was just there last week and looked at their propane-powered Twelve, oodles of other cars and literature. The Turnquist library is there and now I see that many of the items from the Mitchell-Bentley auction have turned up there-some are already on display. The 1953 Caribbean supposedly owned by Perry Como is among these items... along with other Caribbeans. There is also a very interesting bubble-top Studebaker on display. As for sites on Conner Avenue in Detroit, the "new" Packard plant there never even made it out of the 1950s since they started tearing it down in a hurry almost right after it closed... and quickly shoved a shopping mall in on top of the land. Last I saw of the mall, it had one foot in the toilet, the other on a banana peel and it was leaning on the flush handle. Nothing at all left to see from the Packard era. And likewise for the Hudson plant on Conner which went to Hudson heaven in the early 1960s. My family's music store and restaurant were located on East Jefferson Avenue, not far from the intersection of Conner (our building is gone too). And I well remember watching the plant being torn down-which took forever since they were doing it with a wrecking ball. Nobody had real experience with tearing down poured reinforced concrete plants in those days (another reason why nobody back then really wanted to tackle the big Packard Plant on EGB). I even went to take photos of the old site of the headquarters and main plant of Creative Industries of Detroit. The place where the Panthers were made... where the Request was made...and where the Predictor was serviced and photographed. One driveway remains in very poor condition... and the other can be partially found under the overgrowth. But otherwise? Five sad decimated acres of weeds. I did find a few crushed souvenirs of building pieces that perhaps only myself or someone who worked there might even recognize. Pic here shows a scrap from decorative wall that was in front of the building and a scrap of glass from one of the beautiful glass blocks once in the building. The ground below in this shot is the original asphalt where Rex Terry's Panther, the Request and Predictor all once sat. Heartbreaking for me to see this sad destruction. Oddly enough and unlike EGB at the Packard Plant, there is still quite a bit of traffic on East Outer Drive past the site of Creative. I counted a couple hundred cars go by while I was there. But it all made me wonder: how many people driving past this site even know the incredible automotive history and other technological history that took place at this very location from the 1930s to the 1990s? Oh, and just a few blocks from the old site of Creative Industries is the intersection of East Outer Drive and Packard Avenue... which is now a one-way street. Note the art-deco glass blocks in the bay window bulge on the house. Interesting in a photo...no caption needed... Attach file: (153.75 KB) (123.75 KB)
Posted on: 2015/10/5 8:41
|
|||
|
||||
|
Re: Packard Request
|
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Home away from home
|
Quote:
Ahhh... while I realize that these online "forums" are seen by many as places to have endless arguments, ongoing debates, guessing and supposition, I have neither guessed, nor used someone's web photos to determine what was on the Packard Request. I simply attempted to impart some facts-which I am often reluctant to do for this very reason. As I have stated-and as impossible as this may seem to people on an internet "forum" in 2015, I had dear friends who actually built the car with their own hands for Packard. I was there. I saw the car when it was brand new... right where I could touch it and look at it up close-and not at a car show. I held the medallion in question in my own hands. I also had friends who did the first cosmetic restoration on the Request. This is not conjecture, nor is it guessing. I was there when they did it and I have my own photos of me personally standing with the car when it was completed. I even supplied some of the parts for the restoration. So there is nothing here to debate or guess about or go over somebody's web photos to prove. Here are MY photos... As for the automotive meaning of "stock" versus "pilot pre-production" you are welcome to adhere to whatever definition you choose to make up and believe. But having spent my life as a professional in the auto industry and having been around my share of pre-production pilot cars, bodies-in-white and other such stuff... and having held membership in SAE... AND having coined some terms used in the industry, I have some idea of what I'm talking about. And the differences between "stock" and "pilot pre-production" may or may not be subtle-but whatever those differences may be... they were/ARE still differences-as in not the same. And there was never any mention of "hastily cobbled-up mule"... which is a statement no where included in what I have said. However, since we've now gone there, an engineering "mule" is hardly a pilot pre-production body. So again we are talking apples and oranges here. Nobody said that one was the other. You can bolt the front clip of a 1956 Packard to a 1955 Clipper... but so what? You can bolt the front clip of a 1955 Pontiac onto a 1955 Chevy but so what? A 1955 Ford station wagon body is basically the same as a 1956 Mercury station wagon body. But what does any of this prove in terms of the Request and the body used to build it?? Nothing. In American automotive jargon "stock" means (or used to mean) as in production stock... as in dealer or W-D or factory inventory. It does not mean anything that merely looks like stock. I realize the term has become wildly perverted over the years... but this is what happens with terminologies get twisted to mean whatever someone or some group decides they want them to mean. All of which is why nobody knows what the ding-dong is being said by the auction companies when they proudly tell you on TV that "this beautiful classic has been..." "restified"..."resto-modded"..."resto-rodded"..."tributed" or any of the other mumbo-jumbo being used today to describe things. But it is what it is. But whatever anyone, anywhere chooses to call it, the Request body was not stock. It was a pilot pre-production body done so early that the fittings and tail light assemblies had yet to go into regular production and thus had to be hand-made. And that's all I have to say on the matter. Attach file: (90.33 KB) (115.45 KB)
Posted on: 2015/9/30 22:38
|
|||
|
||||
|
Re: Packard Request
|
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Home away from home
|
Quote:
There are a lot of folks making guesses about the Request, but you cannot look at the car today and see how it looked when new. Or guess how it was done. ? RE: the "update" of Request... The so-called "update" of Request did not include the present interior at all. In fact, the second interior included was a 1956 Four Hundred fabric interior. This interior has apparently been recently removed. ? The original interior was basically a 1955 Caribbean pleated genuine leather interior-which is also no longer in the car-with leather supplied by Lackawanna Leather Company. Ask me how I know.
Posted on: 2015/9/28 1:31
|
|||
|
||||
|
Re: Packard Request
|
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Home away from home
|
Quote:
? Actually my friend Larry Dopps was out of Washington state. And Larry was one of three partners who originally restored the exterior of the car. The Request was found in Oregon. ? The Request was not "sold of of Packard in 1957"... it was simply taken home in 1956 by someone who was-shall we say-a senior person at Packard. This person's wife actually drove the Request on the streets on numerous occasions. I can tell you it was driven on the streets in Florida and in Chicago-among other places until it was wrecked and changed hands more than once.
Posted on: 2015/9/28 1:23
|
|||
|
||||
|
Re: Packard Request
|
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Home away from home
|
Quote:
As a last resort, you can find the issue of The Packard Cormorant with the Request on eBay. Likewise for the Collectible Automobile. But the magazine aside from TPC with the most stuff from those days with the car was first being restored was "Car Classics" magazine. Again, locatable the same way. RE: duplicating the Request... Any serious duplication would be quite intricate and costly. Just the grille alone consisted of a lot of very complicated rippled and bent strips of heavy metal. Then there is the massive casting of the hood... and then you're still left with the issue of the huge, heavy dual front bumpers and then after you've cast them, there is the plating.
Posted on: 2015/9/28 1:14
|
|||
|
||||
