Packard Forum Index » Packard and Website FAQs, Common Questions and Answers (Look Here First!)

For information on the proper operation and service of your Packard, your first points of reference should be the Owner's Manual, Service Manual (shop manual), and Parts List/Catalog (parts book). Thanks to donations from several generous members, many of these original factory publications - as well as new articles written by hands-on members - are now archived, in PDF format, in this feature:

Packard Literature and Manuals

Entries in this growing collection were categorized from the very beginning, but thanks to our webmaster, BigKev, the category lists can also be sorted. See his thread on Literature and Manuals for details; clicking on the inline images will open their respective, static, screen captures in full-size, in a new window, so you can see the details more clearly.

Still, there are so many files that a newcomer may wonder just where to begin. Therefore we began adding convenient links to the more typically sought-after items, where available, in another useful feature:

Packard Model Info

Just drill your way down to the specific model of interest. In addition to summarized data on that model, you'll find links to the available "Recommended Literature and Manuals".

Next, to keep its servicing dealers updated on new and important matters, the factory also issued supplemental service newsletters and bulletins - even before there was such a thing as a shop manual. A large quantity of this material has been collected and stored here (and we're hoping to acquire even more), but searching for an answer in all that paper - even in digital format - can be like looking for a needle in a haystack. To facilitate that search, we've established another feature:

The Packard Service Information Index

Our intent is to provide a full set of indices for groups of related models. Follow the link to the appropriate Index for your vehicle, and then click on the relevant service category to generate a list of known topics. Each entry will specify the document containing that information; in turn, each document citation is hot-linked to a corresponding PDF file - provided a scan of that document has been donated.

With pages scanned as images, these documents cannot be searched as text. However, because the summarized topics in the online indices ARE text, the scope of this site's Advanced Search function was expanded to allow you to quickly search the entire Service Index by essential keyword(s).

No matter which route you choose, unless you're working over a high-speed connection (or are very patient) you might do better to RIGHT-click on the link to the actual PDF and select "Save Target As..." to copy the file to a folder of your choice on your computer's local hard drive. Files stored on your computer will open a lot more quickly than trying to open them over a dial-up connection to the Internet.

After all of this, if you still haven't found the answers you were looking for, you should now be able to ask a highly-informed question in the appropriate discussion forum.