That's a nice piece! Perhaps this would be a good project for a PAC region or the national club.

Who do they send them to? Who would do that for "regular folk with a Craftsman". I've wondered.

What is the title of your book, and how much does it cost? Do you have a summary?

"The 1953 Patrician looks very nice but appears to have non-original upholstery fabric."

At this point in time, with SMS being the only source (if that) for any upholstery fabric that has any chance of being "original", I wouldn't think this would be a very big mark against a car. Maybe the Packard Club judges would disagree, however. I don't want to wait 2 years for fabric. In my case, I got something very close from LeBaron-Bonney, now sadly closed.

Hope it was OK!

This is a face seal, that runs over the face of the timing chain cover. What I think is the issue with alignment is if the inner edge of the face seal intersects with the hole in the cover, then bad things can happen to the seal.

I don't know if the "wiggle-room" that exists because of the slop in the holes for the attaching screws is large enough that it could also effect things like the clearance for the timing chain.

From what I can gather, the Small-Block-Chevy uses a regular shaft seal that is embedded into the timing case cover, and then runs on a shaft, which may be part of the harmonic balancer, I am not sure. Anyhow, the situation is different. One could do that, but it would require a significant modification to the cover and a seal race on the harmonic balancer.

For reference, this is the seal:

Front Crankshaft Seal against Timing Cover

I guess I was thinking is that they maybe they still had some buildings at East Grand where they, say, made trim pieces for interiors or the outside of the bodies, or components for the dash, or brackets, or whatever. It would seem insane to try to move all of that stuff to Conner Avenue and Utica. Maybe by that point all that stuff was being made outside by suppliers.

I just measured and eyeballed mine. But I had/have wished for a better method, in the absence of the aligning arbor. Packard Community - what have you done?

This is just a question for the experts:

I had always figured that, while final assembly was moved to the Conner Avenue plant, and engine and axle assembly had been moved to the Utica plant, that some smaller components would have been continued to have been manufactured in a portion of the East Grand complex, where they had presumably had been for some time. Given the space issues they had at Conner Avenue, it would think they would have tried to maximize space there by keeping what production they could at East Grand? Maybe not.