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The main gallery plugs on the passenger side will do nicely for the aux pressure gauge. The fitting needed should be 1/8 NPT but the plugs could have been in there a long time and possibly have some sealant on them. I have 8 plugs and used the one next to the rear for the extra gauge on my 47 but if your engine is a 5 main it will only have 5 plugs. The 47 plugs have a screwdriver slot and was hard to remove.

The recommended tire pressures by Packard were based on the tires used at the time. Your American Classic tires are different than those used when the car was new. I would use recommended tire pressures from American Classics. I would guess that 30-32 lbs would be about right.

I used the rear main bearing gallery tap for an auxillary pressure gauge on my 47 Custom Clipper. Easy connection and mostly out of sight. As Howard wrote, be careful removing the plug. JWL

Thanks for the pointers. Working about 1/2 hour each day this week before going to work in the morning I was able to hook up my voltage gauge and vacuum gauge. I put a T right before the vacuum pump on the line that goes between the fuel/vac pump and the intake manifold. Vac signal is still low. I started out at 15 inches of Mercury, and after crawling in traffic for 15 min, my signal went down to about 12. That's too low. Idle should be 18. In the parking lot at work this morning, I richened the idle mixture a little, and got it back up to 15 inches, and the idle smoothed out. The idle was too lean before.
It looks like I still have a vac leak someplace. On the way home today, I will remove the T connection, so that I have only the vac signal from the intake manifold, and not any interference in measurement from the vac pump. I don't know if that is confusing my measurement.
I will soon check around the carb base and starter switch for leaks as Ross suggested...
The vac gauge is very cool. Learning as I go, and I think I am slowly improving things with time!

Before driving home from work, I disconnected the vac line going to the wipers, and am now measuring 16 in mercury at idle. Getting better. Hope I can get up to 18 with some more fiddling. When I close the throttle, I only see a spike to about 22 inches of merc. Not sure if that is low or normal.

I think the carb is in a very happy state of tune. I plugged the choke vacume line, and attached my hand held vac gauge to the pipe leading to the fuel/vac pump, and was able to tune the idle to a good 19 inches of Mercury! After re-connecting the choke to the choke stove, the idle dropped down a little to 18 inches, and I could see the mixture leaned out a little due to the air drawn in through the choke stove. Not much, but a little. I then attached the vac pump and wiper system, and I could see that bleeds in some more air into the intake, which leaned my idle a tiny bit, and reduced the idle vac to 17 or 17.5 inches mercury.
My Stewart Warner Vac gauge reads 3.5 inches low compared to my Gunson hand held gauge. The idle mixture is set to about 13.3:1 Air Fuel Ratio now, which makes a nice smooth idle, and fits to what is suggested in the packard carburetor service guide from a few posts back!
My cruising vacuum is between 10 and 20 inches mercury, which I think is good, and when closing the throttle, I see a spike to about 25 inches, which I think is also ok.
Attached are a few pics of the choke stove from below, and my gauges...Tuning with the vac gauge is the way to go. Highest vacuum signal with the leanest mixture possible seems very good.
(Oil pressure gauge is not hooked up yet, that's why it reads 0)
Gotta clean the car up, and change oil and check all fluids in the week before the euro meet!

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Mike, I'm sometimes surprised that more folks don't recognize that using a vacuum gauge is the most accurate way to set idle mixtures - maybe they just haven't been exposed to enough of the period service literature. Absolutely correct - maximum vacuum consistent with the leanest mixture!! An engine in good condition and good tune should give about 18" (at idle, obviously).

I cringe at bringing this up here, but I am currently running 10w30 that has an api rating of SF. This is actually what is known as low quality oil according to Richard Michells book about choosing oil. It is from liqui moly which is supposed to be a quality oil supplier.
I would like to use SJ middle or Sl/SM/SN high quality oil. In germany that pretty much means 5w30 oil.
Now, at low temps, 5w30 is still thicker than straigt 20 and even thicker than straight 10 oil which packard would reccomend for temps down to freezing.
Anybody run 5w30? For most of my life I would have said this is crazy, but looking at viscosity charts, I start to think it is reasonable. Any other educated opinions are welcome. Thanks.

I'm not an expert and am looking forward to answers from those who are but, until recently, I always ran standard 30w in all my older cars including Packards. In fact, my 1954 Packard Patrician has 30w graphite oil which was available decades ago and was so "slippery" that I had to turn down the idle speed, then turn it down yet again after adding multi-tip spark plugs. However, now I run multi-viscosity 10-40 or similar and am a firm believer in synthetic lubricants of any sort.

I shared the page of the owners manual for my car where Packard made their oil suggestions with Richard Michell. He wrote a book about choosing oils for classic cars.
https://www.amazon.com/Which-Oil-Choosing-greases-collector/dp/1845843657

Given that my temperature ranges are from about freezing in winter to 90/95 degrees F on a hot summer day, he gave me a professional recommendation. In short, 10w40! Here is what he wrote:

"Hi again Mike.

Original 1950s oil viscosity recommendations are always a little tricky to interpret. They invariably list lower viscosities than is the case 10 years or so later. I looked at a couple of old manuals that I have. An early fifties Austin A40 (1.2 litre, 4 cylinders) specifies SAE30 for ambients from 32 - 90F, SAE20 for 10 - 32F and SAE10 for below 10F (sorry about the units!). An Australian Holden (straight six of US GM design) from the 50s specifies SAE 30 summer, SAE 20 winter.

The reason for this is that the recommendation was dominated by the need to ensure lubrication at start-up temperatures. It was essential that the oil flowed. Wax levels in the base oils used were relatively high and the only measure that they had of the low temperature start up problem was the pour point of the oil. We learnt subsequently that the standard pour point test was not an adequate measure of the situation in the real world.

This need for a low viscosity for start up meant that lubrication at operating temperature was not ideal. The viscosity was lower than would be preferred but was generally adequate for normal engine use.

Today, as you are well aware, multigrades can help us greatly with this problem. I would strongly consider a 10W/40 for the Packard. I am not familiar with the German retail oil market but a quick Google seemed to show a much wider range of performance levels being available in that viscosity grade. I would avoid the A1/B1-type of oils. They are pursuing outcomes that are not relevant to your car.

Best wishes,
Richard"

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Made it 150 of the 240 miles to the euro meet! Car is running well.
This was at lunch in Wurzburg.

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