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Has anyone offered turbine blades that offer significantly more efficiency? Or are there too many other factors involved?

You mean aftermarket for Packard?--then no. Never enough interest to make that worth anyone's while.

Ultramatic, like Dynaflow, was planned with the convertor being the only source of torque multiplication unless low was selected. To fit that parameter, the convertors were designed to provide a high degree of torque multiplication about 2.4:1 in the earliest, and rising to about 2.7 in the 56s. That was the result of finessing the blade designs and was quite a good figure.

Just to contrast, the excellent Borg Warner transmission supplied to Studebaker in 1950 was designed to use gear reduction in addition to the convertor to start the car rolling. To fit that design philosophy, the convertor was designed with only a 1.4:1 torque multiplication. (All these figures are coming somewhere out of the back of my brain. I can't even remember where to look to verify them.)

Anyway, given the parameters it was to fulfill, the Packard convertor was quite a slick piece of work. Later ones even better than the earlier.

On a related note is there any efficiency difference between the converters on a hardtop and sedan. For some reason -- maybe for a sportier image?? -- they changed the blade angles to get a higher stall speed on converters used with Caribbeans and in 56 used that different converter on hardtops. Would that have changed anything else?

Once upon a time I went through all the part numbers and the only difference between the 56 Sedan and Hardtop convertors was the first turbine or pump, the outside of which you see when you look at an assembled convertor.

I once had a 56 400 with a 3.54 rear and that high stall convertor. That car would jump off the line, but otherwise I never noticed that much difference while it was in convertor mode.

So there were 4 different converters used in the V8's.
I for all the 55 except
The
1 for the 55 Caribbeans
And for 56
1 for the 2 doors
And
1 for the 4 doors.

But
How do you tell them apart without taking them apart?
I know you can use an input shaft to tell between the 55 & 56.

How did the factory workers know which one was which?

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I'm sure they had some simple fixturing or marking system. At this late date with all the swapping and handling that has occurred, I have to take them apart and look.

On the low stall convertors the vanes stand pretty much straight like a half of a grapefruit. On the high-stall convertors the vanes are at a slight angle.

Here are 2 pump housings.
One has T-71 cast in it, the other one does not have anything cast in it.

Can you see any angle in them, or are they both the same?

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They look the same to me. I had previously hoped that the cast number meant something, but over the years have noticed it on both styles of 56. Probably had something to do with just the outer mold.

These are pictures of NOS converter pumps

465327 all 55th ex 5588, 5640, 5660-70, 5682
423182 all 24th-54th ex G/S
470218 5588

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At a casual glance, they look very similar if not identical.

Has anyone measured the differences?