Packard Forum Index » Post-War (1946-54)

Ok guys, finally got to dig a little deeper into my new project. Car is a 1952 Patrician 400 with Ultramatic. When I got the car the head was off and missing and there was a mangled and broken piston lying under there. So, I'm going to pull the engine and trans. and rebuild if possible. I got under there to remove the trans. and got to the step where you remove the drive shaft/propeller shaft and noticed something odd. In the manual, it states there are 2 types of shaft. Ultramatic type has snap rings at the axle yoke. Manual trans. has a type of screw in plug. My car has an Ultramatic. But it has the manual trans. type of yoke retainer. Hmmmm?

A few further oddities I've noticed.

1. There's no Ultramatic script on the side of the car nor any holes where one would have gone. Did they stop putting that on in '52?

2. The column shift lever looks to be a manual trans. type. It's not straight out, it goes out and turns back towards the driver.

3. I pulled the nasty carpet out and noticed there is an extra hole in the panel that the pedals go through in the floor. It's completely open to the underside of the car. Wouldn't they have left this hole plugged for an auto trans. car?

Lastly, if someone at one time tried to retro-fit an Ultramatic into this car what does that mean for me? What kind of differences are there between an engine with manual and one with auto? Or am I wrong in some way in all of my suspicions and everything is as it should be?

Unless they changed the differential carrier, a manual transmission car would have a 3.90:1, where an Ultramatic would have a 3.54:1.
Does the column have the transmission indicator for the automatic?

John

The Ultra shifter arm was the short straight type only in 50 and 51. Standard trans had the longer curved end arms. For 52-54 the arms were all the same. Ultras also went to the longer type.

Ultramatic script was only used for 50 and 51 then dropped for 52 and later cars.

Floor plate is hard to nail down. Typically they would have had a plate with two holes for clutch equipped and one with a single hole for standard brake but it is possible they used the two hole plate and covered the extra opening with the water resistant asphalt material they were fond of. The Korean war was putting a crimp on a lot of parts availability so you will see odd things from time to time as they made do. The war chrome on 52 cars was and is a big issue.

If it has power brakes, that was a new option for 52 and there was a concerted effort to have it installed in cars as a new safety feature. Packard had a promotion and issued a kit and instructions so dealers could sell it to customers and modify existing cars or add it to cars still in dealer stock -- even retrofit to 51 models. It is hard to say what a dealer might have done with an original plate..

Everything is as it should be. The Patrician 400 came standard with Ultramatic for '52. There is no script. The shifter handle is correct. And yes, the toe board in my '52 Patrician also has the hole where a clutch pedal would go (mine is a power brake car), though it was covered as HH56 guessed, with an asphaltic mastic type material.

The 327 should have the "high compression" cylinder head on cars equipped with Ultramatic, which could have also been installed by a dealer looking to boost power on the standard trans cars. The Patrician engine was a nine main bearing version of the straight 8, and it was only available with the high-compression head for '52 because Ultramatic was standard. I'm sure there were cases of folks having a dealer retrofit a standard 3-speed to the Patrician (the Ultramatic acceleration is best described as leisurely), and someone perhaps could've bribed the factory into deleting the Ultramatic, but if that were the case I'd be hard pressed to think someone would then convert the car back to Ultramatic.

Thanks for all of the feedback guys. I think that pretty much tells me everything I wanted to know. Sounds like good news too. I was having nightmares of someone trying to cobble up a retro-fit at some point and screwing it all up resulting in the parking of this car many years ago. Glad to know that is most likely NOT the case. The only thing unsolved now is the mystery of the drive shaft having the wrong type of yoke on the axle end. It's probably just something that changed during production or may have had something to do with availability of parts at the time of manufacture.

By the way Drew, since the head from my 327 is MIA I am planning to put the 288AT head from my parts car on there. I read that increases the compression on the 327.

To agree with the others, the 1952 Patrician that I parted out decades ago also did not have the Ultramatic script and did have the extra clutch hole, which made it handy when I installed its power brakes into my manual transmission 1952 Henney-Packard. I still have the 9-main engine, transmission and many other things from the Patrician but sadly, had to recycle its nice body when relocating and could not find a buyer.