Plating some bad parts to pass as acceptable with other aged chrome may be OK but I don't know about doing the whole car.

The bumpers are steel- the grill is steel. Everything on the sides is stainless. Door, trunk handles potmetal, windscreen frame also. The bird or other hood ornament is potmetal. Hubcaps and wheel trim rings are steel.

I agree. There is no good close up so assume the paint is 20 footer grade. The seat ere reupholstered but the rest of the interior is rough. The carpet doesn't fit and the headliner is not original but looks saggy. Door upholstry is not original and sags too. Engine hasn't even been painted if it was rebuilt. Remember "rebuilt" has many definitions. The chrome is gone and for quality rechroming you're looking at probably $3000 minimum. Wiring needs replacing.

This thing is barely worth $9000 and you WILL spend another $8000 bringing it up to a value of $17000 for sure!

Here's some pix of my car-original upholstry stunning chrome fair driver quality paint.

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My car is a late 1950 model. The carb is available fromhttp://www.packardpartsonline.com/ or www.kanter.com They run like $225 or so. The place in AZ says their carbs are new not rebuilt. Who knows. Anyhow they work and your car should have an automatic choke. Be warned if the choke is missing your core exchange will no be fully credited by any carb seller.

Drake- also keep open the option of finding an auto electrician to do the rewiring for you. My car was done for $450 dash forward- wires to rear are still flexible and good. A good guy can custom rewire about as fast as replaceing it with a harness. 1 day for mine. Best price I found on a Packard repro harness was $600 from Rhode Island Wire which is a good complany.

Drake- good luck with your car. Most of all have fun! You'll hear all sorts of rhetoric about how blasphemous it is to change anything on any original car from a minority of people. You can take that with a grain of salt or not. After all you have a relatively common Packard, like mine. There's a zillion of them out there and plenty of parts cars too.

I got mine because it had a unique engine- a straight 8. I have a DOHC Northstar V-8, a Corvette 350 V-8 in my Z-28 so why have the same thing every other mofo that stumbled into town has?

I mean your car puts out like 150 HP compared to a Ford flathead with 85.

Realistically it won't make much sense if you did spend lots of $$ and go with a V-8. While it would be less ubiquitous than the same era Ford or Chevy, most people are not into Packards as a basis for modifying heavily. The same 51-54 Ford or Chevy will have a greater value than an added-on V-8 Packard simply due to general popularity. And unless it is a 2 door it will never be on par with other era cars in popularity = value.

Every car dicipline is a minority- rodders, rat rodders, low riders, mild customs, stock originals, 1/4 midgets, go carts, pick-up trucks, individual marque clubs- Mustang, BMW, Saturn etc., radical customs, Jap tuner cars, repro kit cars, Euro cars, land speed record cars and whatever else there is.

Whenever one gets on their high horse and begins dictating how all the others should fall into line of their tunnel-vision philosophy because othes' ways are wrong, well, you can see how silly it is relative to their minor standing in the world of cars.

I vote for keeping the unique straight 8 but it's your car. Have fun with it!

yes it is up to condition/values. Hagerty insurance wil linsure my 1950 for $17,000. I have it under $15,000 value policy now. They offered increased coverage for only one reason I can see- NADA evaluations of the 1950 went up on "High retail" category. In all honesty my car is not a #1 condition car. I could say it was insured for X amount but that doesn't mean that's what I'd get if I sold it. Unless this one is, it is worth something less- look carefully at values versus condition descriptions.

My 288 with 30W oil has showed a little over 30 lbs. since I've had it. It is steady at 30 no matter what RPM from idle up so it too could be slightly inaccurate from age. Since it certainly does go down when you shut off the engine it is still useful to watch in any case.

I think it would be cool to have a brick or 2 from the building!

Guess I'll just stick to straight Valvoline 30 for warmer weather. Actually since it doesn't get below 60 when I actually use the car I could leave that in year round. Was mostly wondering how low you go in the frigid East.

Back in the 60s STP was experimented with for things such as gearbox woes and tons more applications so there is probably something to the Redline thing.

The Russkies are notorious copy cats. During the Korean War when a B-50 made an emergency landing in Russia the bomber was flat out copied by Tupolev and became the TU-4. They were so anal about it they copied a patch that covered some minor battle damage!