Well as a follow-up the car is working great. The only things that need to be addressed is that it has a power steering leak and the carb needs to be adjusted. I still have not found the reason that the oil pressure gauge works intermitentily. I'm considering buying a cheap electrical oil pressure to verify that the oil pressure sender is working because I think the dash gauge may be faulty. All the other gauges seem to be working properly. Also I have added a low pressure electric fuel pump back by the tank to allow the car to start easier after sitting for a while.

I tested the continuity of the orig wire and it is good. I then used a new wire to go from sending unit to gauge and I got the same reading. So now I'm going to try locating another oil pressure gauge to see if the pressure stays constant.

The original sender which I kept ,I did clean it up and put it back in the car, works on the first startup after the car sits for a day or two, but then the needle slowly goes back to 0. I think my next step is to run a new wire from the sending unit to the dash gauge and see what happens.

I decided to just install the cleaned up orig. oil pressure sending unit on my adaptor. Well it worked for about 5min. After start the needle came up and stopped at the correct location that would be read as approx. 65psi. It stayed there and then the needle jumped and slowly went back down to 0 and never came back. This make the second sending unit to do that. The oil pressure dash gauge, the temp gauge and the gas gauge work off of a common power wire with a 5volt reducer. All the other gauges on that line seem to be working fine. I'm puzzelled!

Has anyone run into something like this before?

As a follow-up I found the orig oil pressure sending unit, so I proceeded to clean it up and used my meter to test the ohms and it does read 70 ohms. So I believe it is good. I'll reinstall and hope for the best. Any body have any tips on how to tighten it with out distorting the sender?

If I remember correctly I did buy the unit that was spec for the gauge not the idiot light. I didn't use any tape, I believe you are seeing the shine of the new threads on the pipe. I'll try the ground wire thing first and if that doesn't work I'll reinstall without the pipe extensions. It just difficult to tighten it so it won't leak.
Thanks for the info and advice.

The oil pressure sending units I have purchased from NAPA(3 times). That is why I was thinking NOS might be better. My next question would be, does it make a differnce if I mount the unit in a way to make it easier to change them(see attached photo), does that alter how the sender reads the pressure?

Attach file:

---

  Packard oil pressure sending unit.jpg (53.31 KB)

I just got the wheel cyl fixed and re-adjusted the throttle linkage. It seems to run and shift a lot better now. I took out my manual oil pressure gauge and put the repro oil pressure sender in and it worked for one test drive and then quit working. I think I'm going to look for a NOS sender with the hopes that it will work for good! Does anyone have a suggestion of who might have one?

Thanks, Ernie

We got the regular Olds pump. I have run it a few times but haven't driven it as yet. I did notice it has a left front wheel cyl that is leaking. I should probably fix that before any driving.

I just finished the oil pump change/conversion on my brothers 56 Packard 400. We purchased the kit and olds pump from Jack Vines, I followed the instructions from Jack and the pan removal instruction from the manual. I had to remove a few more things that the manual stated in order to drop the pan. Once I had everything down and clean it went along pretty easy. I used Jacks advice to replace the pan by making a couple of studs for the front two pan bolts in order to install the front cork pan gaskets. We formed the pan gasket to make it easier to install the pan without moving it to insure that it was in correctly, we applied the cork gasket to the engine(a grove on the engine, which allows you to seat the gasket first and then install the pan over the two studs), The rest was just put things back on in the reverse order you took them off. I used 10-30w oil and the oil pressure is at about 20psi at idle and then increase to 60psi as you increase the engine speed. So far all seems great, no more lifter noise too!
Once again Thank You to Jack Vines for the oil pump kit.