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

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At the least you should remove the front seat cushion and seatback to check out the wiring between the burned area and the cigar lighter. It is almost impossible to say what caused the problem without looking at the run. You did not say if the replacement lighter was Packards but just be aware that some of the older sockets are slightly different sized and modern and sometimes other mfgs elements from the same time may not just drop in without issues. Modern cigar lighter plugs for electronic items are another item that may or may not work with the old sockets.

There does not seem to be any damage in the portion visible in the photo closer to the center pillar and that is a good thing. I believe through 54 the body feed wire was in a loom that goes above the headliner traveling between the dash and the trunk and that portion will be very hard to check and will require removal of the headliner. Hidden issues in other areas can not be ruled out -- but I do not think any are likely based on where in the overall wire run the damaged area is located. Loom comes out at the left front of the trunk where it gets clamped to the upper trunk opening and goes on to the left tail light area where other wires join.

There is no fuse protecting that wire -- just a circuit breaker on the back of the gauge cluster. There should be two breakers which look like small rectangle boxes with 2 threaded studs sticking out their backs. I believe the aux breaker protecting the body feed wire will be the breaker closest to the center of the car but you can probably see for sure which one it is by finding the wire. I believe the body feed wire will be one of the few cloth covered wires still used in 54 and the wire color if not too faded to see it will be red with a white tracer.

Here is the portion of the wiring diagram showing the damaged area. The burned area is sort of isolated from the rest of the body feed wire which also supplies power to the rear dome light and trunk light. If both of those still work chances are the wire and breaker is still OK.

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the lighter was from another 1954 Packard patrician so no issues there

I’m at school at the moment but the issue most likely is the breaker you mention as neither the trunk light nor back light function. (Only from the passenger side door?)

Your assumption of the wire going back up to the headliner being in a healthy state is correct. As far as i can see it go back up the top it seems perfectly fine.

I will use the image provided as reference. Thanks a lot!

I recently removed the front seat from my 1954 Patrician parts car and know from experience that the hard part is getting the roll pin out where the actuator anchors to the floor. Ultimately I had a custom tool made but somewhere in my Tale of Two Patricians blog there is much discussion where various methods were shown. I’m at my shop now with only a mobile device so can’t look it up but if no one posts any details here, when I’m back to the PC I’ll try to locate the page and provide a link to it.

If you have time that would be very much appreciated don!

It's no problem at all! Starting here you can see the mechanism with the post following showing Howard's simple way of doing it. Of course, I don't do anything the easy way so I had a custom tool made which you can see here but I would stick with Howard's method!

The seat is extraordinarily heavy and will take two people to get it out. I did it myself on this parts car but then I wasn't trying not to damage anything else in the process.

Thank you once again Don! And thanks to all for pointing me in the right direction. That cigar cable was completely fried all the way up that seat!

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