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Excellent results on the seat rehab. And thanks for putting together the video. It's a lot of work to do the editing for those, but they are so much more helpful (to me at least) than trying to follow along with pictures.

-Kevin

Today's task was finally swapping out the rubber valve stems on my wheels for metal valve stems.

I've gotten tired of having to recenter my wheel covers ever after a relatively short drive to prevent them from completely bending the valve stems in half.

I've bent the tabs on the wheel covers multiple times to no benefit. Even to the point where it requires a rubber mallet with some force to install them. Even with them that tight, they still spin and pinch the valve stems.

So I ordered these chrome-plated, brass valve stems from Amazon. I think there were less than $10.

Then a quick stop at the local tire shop to have them swapped out. The mechanics refused to drive the car in (nervous I guess), so had me do it.

They did it for free, at no charge. But I still gave the actual mechanic a nice tip to cover his labor.

The car up on the lift almost looks like it's hovering.

After it was all back together, an extended driving session proved they worked. The wheel covers still spun a little but were stopped by the rigid valve stem.

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Just a note, these bolt-in metal ones look pretty much like the all-brass ones that were in my rims when I got them.

Also, you need 1-1/2" long stems. The 1" will be too short.

The tire shop put those on my 1951 Henney-Packard and at first I had very mixed feelings about them because they looked so much nicer than the rest of the car which is quite rough! It did prompt me to clean up the beauty rings, though, and on your beautiful car they look great.

I put these types of valve stems on my Clipper when I put the new tires on. A big advantage is that they hold air a lot longer. A disadvantage is that they're not flexible like regular valve stems. So that's something you have to bear in mind.

Quote:Kev,

Did you try "Gorilla snot", aka a very grippy adhesive, before going to the metal stems?

Like the hover shot!

Quote:Kev,

Did you try "Gorilla snot", aka a very grippy adhesive, before going to the metal stems?

Like the hover shot!

EDIT This post took a loooong time to "post", probably 20>30 seconds. No wonder there are so many duplicate posts. People do get tired of waiting for an action which is usually very prompt.

Mal, I haven't been able to figure out the exact cause of that delay. It is sporadic and not repeatable. I imagine it has to do something with DB loading. But undeterminate at this point.

Kudos to Ralph the Radio guy. I've talked about the radio conversion he did and posted a video about it before (see link).

youtu.be/mWTSQ4wVa9g

But, last week, while out for a drive, the wonderbar (signal seeking) function stopped working. I pressed the bar, and the dial started to move and then stopped at the end of its travel without flipping back to the beginning. From there, it was dead. No matter where the dial was manually set, the wonderbar function wouldn't automatically move the dial.

I could still tune the radio manually, and the radio still worked. Just the signal-seeing portion was dead.

So I emailed Ralph and explained the issue, and he said we would take a look at it. So the radio came out of the car and went over for him to look at.

In less than 2 hours, he messaged me back and had it resolved. From what I understood from him, there are 3 spring-loaded inductor rods in the wonderbar mechanism that were used originally. The modern circuit board only requires a single one. One of the unused inductors had somehow gotten misaligned and caused a mechanical jam in the mechanism. So Ralph removed the offending inductor as it wasn't being used. Now everything is working again.

He refused any payment for the repair, which wasn't really his problem but a failure in one of the original radio parts. He stood by his work, which was done back in March 2020.

So if you looking for either regular radio repair (re-capping, tubes, etc.) or conversion, I highly recommend him.

He is based in the Chicagoland area but takes in work from all over the country.

I know a few other Packard folks have used him as well for pre and post-war radio repairs.

Quote: Kev,

Frustrating, both for you and us!