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Well the drive across ND went fine, got about 14mpg at 60-65 pulling that big hunk of iron. I pulled it into the shop and washed the car as best as we could, the dirt was really thick. The next morning I rustled up some help from work and we pushed the car off the trailer and got it wrestled into my hangar, tucked under the wing of our airplane. Just in time as the snow was coming.

Next step was to get the rotted tires off the front, and once I got them demounted I bead blasted the rims and blew some rattle can paint on them so they wouldn't rust. Looking at the front drums I think a light cut will smooth them up for new pads etc. I plan to replace all the wheel cylinders and master, and brake lines. Everything is pretty rusted and cruddy and brakes aren't a good place to cut corners.

Then it was time to pull the plugs, which had been soaking in Kroil for a day. Once they were out, I emptied a can of Kroil into the cylinders and managed to turn over the engine. Since my brother in law said he had it running about 40 years ago, I of course was never worried. Heck, the oil looks nice and clean. But, I think I'll dig into things a bit before we fire it up anyway.

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Looking good and keep our fingers crossed all continues to go smoothly. Have you got the big drum puller available for the back drums? After that many years, I'd almost bet they will be a challenge to get off the axles.

Decided to make the windows transparent again, if for no other reason than to let light in while working. The side windows cleaned up OK, but the film on the windshield resisted all efforts. Finally I took a razor blade to it and followed up with some carb cleaner, and ta da! A nice clear, if cracked, windshield.

The next order of business was to get the interior out, before someone caught the hantavirus. 50 years of mice and plenty of dust from farm roads before that made everything dirty and rotten. There was carpet in the rear, but it was so dirt-encrusted and mouse fouled I just chucked it, it was pretty much disintegrated. The front floor mat fell apart as it came out too. The seats came out easily, and I ripped the remains of the aftermarket seat covers off to reveal the rotted, mouse peed original seats. Lots of vacuuming and more trash cans emptied.

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Howard, I am thinking the same thing about the rear drums. I have a friend who is in a local car club, and I'm hoping he knows someone with a puller. Otherwise, I'll be looking to add to my tool collection. I never seem to have enough anyway.

Hans

Someone on PackardInfo said that they had to go to a big (semi) truck stop to get the rear drums off of their Packard. At this point, that is your biggest challenge. Otherwise, the pictures and narrative are pretty much SOP for a car like that. It still is looking good and eminently restorable.

Craig

Suggestion - save at least some of the fabric so you can come close to matching it. Also suggest either leaving the fabric on the seat, or making a sketch with dimensions so that your upholstery person will have a guide. Ditto for the door panels. Take lots of photos of them also before sending to the incinerator.

I have the seats and door panels stacked and waiting for when we get to the point of rebuilding them. It has the striped broadcloth seats and we aren't sure if that is what we'll go with, but I do have everything for patterns.

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The amount of dirt to go along with the mouse condos in the car was pretty daunting. Lots of very fine red dust, from the roads that are graveled using a local baked clay called scoria. Everything was full of that dust, you can see after the rear seatback is out and I scraped some of the dirt off the trunk panel.

The tarpaper on the floor that isn't rotted will come out so that I can grind off the rust and reprime. The tarpaper in the roof after I removed the headliner (in a shower of dirt and mouse droppings) was falling off, and that came out easily.

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The trunk key had been broken off in the lock back when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, so we plotted ways to try to spring the latch through the rear window deck holes. But finally I just drilled out the lock, and we were in! Found the other 3 hubcaps, they are all bent up so I can see why they weren't on the wheels. And a lot more dirt and grain from the mice. No spare or jack though, darn.

It finally got too cold to work on the car in the unheated hangar, even with my little 35K btu propane heater aimed at me it wasn't fun. So I'd been planning to enclose our workspace with plastic to make a heatable area, and my son and I got busy and framed that up. Pretty simple, just high enough because I had to keep it under the wing of the plane. I made the front corner post adjustable so we can drop it down to get the plane in and out, then put it back up when everything is in. This is working great, it's very comfortable now to work, just use some old rugs for laying on the cold concrete.

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