Packard Forum Index » Pre-War (1899-1942)

I will be taking my 1938 super 8 for a frontend alignment this week and thought I would ask if anyone has advice from past experience? A little background on car, the previous owner spared no expense on rebuilding this car. The front end has freshly rebuilt shocks, rubber, tie rod ends etc. the car has fairly new radial tires . When I got the car the inner tread of the tires had severe wear on them and the car actually squealed while going down the road. We found that the previous owner reversed the upper pilot bushing, so we solved that problem and the car handles a heck of a lot better, however it seems to not hold the road as well as my 39 twelve. I switched tires from front to back and adjusted toe in to spec, any advice will be appreciated,

That's simple, your Twelve OWNS the road while a Super 8 just has permission to use it. A good front end shop should e able to solve your problem. Look up a reference on handling problems and find your symptoms

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Unless you are as wild and as crazy a driver as I am, you should not notice any - again ANY difference in how a 1938 Super Eight and Twelve handle. At least at sane speeds.

And assuming correct "front-end" alignment. Obviously, at extreme speeds, the greater weight & power of the Twelve comes into play.

Your description of front tire wear tells me your former owner most certainly did NOT get what he thought he was getting. No late news there - incompetent servicing down thru the years has reduced so many "big" Packards to under-performing, even dangerous junk, it does not surprise me that few have ANY idea how a properly maintained Senior Packard should behave.

As for alignment, the provisions for toe-in adjustment have not changed down thru the years, thus are obvious.

As to the caster, and the camber adjustment, while quite different from modern practice, any half-way competent "front end" man should be able to figure it out. Adding or removing "shims" is how it is done.

Well I just got back from alignment shop and after some explaining to shop foreman that this car make and model is not likely to be in the alaignment computers data base, then we were able to move on. As soon as it was on the rack I measured tie rod length and the left side was nearly a half a inch shorter than the right . The front was toed out .11 so I evened up both tie rods to 24.5 inches and got the machine to .14 toe in . The camber on the left side is 0.1 positive and the right is -0.2. The left caster is 0.9 and the right is 0.8. I noticed that there were no shims at all on the lower control arms and I did not have any pilots to trade out the top for camber. I did notice slight king pin movement especially on the right side. I drove the car home and noticed a remarkable improvement. So my job now is to look for shims, the book says they are tapered ? Cut some new pilots with right offset and look for king pins. I recall some conversation last week about oversized pins, I will reread and see if I can learn,