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Isn't it great fun working on Your Packard in a cold airplane hangar along with a Cessna ?
I congratulate You, It's not always easy :
My difference was, I had a Cub for company & it isn't quite as cold in Oregon.
Packard 385

Ha, yep the hangar isn't ideal but I have my work shop just down the road with my big tool box, lots of shop equipment and heat which is nice. So the components get done over there during the winter.

Haven't had much time to work on the car recently, I was flying all over most of last week and the weather has been low crap for the last week and a half. Getting my instrument flying skills polished up, in case I'd been getting lazy at all. Plus I spent last weekend doing the annual inspection on my plane (the one you see in the pictures sometimes) so we'd be good to go for flying around over the big metroplex area to check out everybody's Christmas lights. Gives you a neat perspective from 1000 feet up.

I got a present (well OK, I did have to pay for it) in the mail today from Mike Borth, a set of taillight housings, a backup light assembly, and a glovebox emblem that are all better than the bent, missing, or broken ones on the Ghost. The taillights are more pitted than my originals, but aren't bent or scraped and the chrome shines up without rubbing off like the old ones. Now, I have to figure out how to get the bent taillight area on the right rear fixed up so the new, non-bent housing will fit. I need to make friends with someone with bodywork skills for that.

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First the holimonth, then fighting the flu, and now I'm frantically trying to get ahead at work before we head off on vacation for a couple weeks. So I have been getting nothing done on the Ghost.

I want to order some stuff to start ticking off some boxes once I finally manage to get back to it. My question for today is regarding Eastwood seam sealer. I'm going to get a can of the brushable sealer to renew the seals where I ground or sanded the old sealer off when I was doing the inside of the car.

So, it's cold around here (North Dakota, remember) and even though I can spot heat up areas, how warm do I have to have the surfaces to get the sealer to stick?

It has been a long time since I got to work on the Ghost, work and life (with my job, definately in that order) intruded and kept me away. But summer is upon us and I have all the summer projects in the field and now I am
beginning to get some spare time again.

So this weekend I worked on the wiring, months ago I'd run the wires on my generic harness to the proper places more or less. Since my brain isn't what it used to be I spent time remembering what wires went to what, and labeling them to make sure I had all the bases covered. Next will be to lay out the runs so I can cut to length and then start hooking things up. In no time the Ghost will roar to life again, I hope.

I have all the wires in place and bundled, and I have hooked up all the wires forward of the firewall. I installed relays for the headlights and just have to come up with conduit to protect the wires as they pass through the front wheel well area before I intall the headlight plugs. I also installed a new key-start ignition switch.

As a Father's day present to myself I got far enough to get the engine running again for the first time since last fall, along with testing my wires for leaking smoke. No smoke, and the engine fired right up! Still sounds like heck but it runs smoothly.

Now I can pull the left fender back off, finish hooking up all the lower wires and lights, clean up that fender, and wire up a plug for the guage cluster for easy removal in the future.

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The owner's manual says that the ignition and door lock keys should be the same. The Ghost had no keys other than one broken off in the trunk, apparently a long-ago hired man liked to collect keys from junk vehicles at the farm. So, even though I replaced my ignition switch with a more modern unit I got a locksmith to make me a key for the old switch.

Took my new key to the car and tried it in the door locks, and...

Didn't work. Rats. Apparently the ignition switch was replaced once upon a time I guess. I wonder if they can re-key the door locks without removing them from the car, I don't particularly want to go through the hassle of removing a door handle and breaking the lock tabs that hold them into the door. I've read nothing good about that process in these hallowed pages.

They did get my glove box lock a new key, but the trunk lock that I had to drill is toast and they didn't have anything that would fit it, they said. I know I've seen something like that somewhere so I'll snoop around before I give up and order one from K or MM for $75 or more. For now a screwdriver works.

My solution to roughly the same issue was to source a full set of matching locks & keys. The old cylinders were quickly sold and helped recoup some capitol :)

And to answer if the cylinder can be removed while the handle is on the car, I don't see how. The two holes in the handle the cylinder and spring retaining collar fits into are behind the lock plate -- actually in the small space between the outer skin and the track the retaining plate slides into. It is a pain to tilt and orient the retainer to remove it even with full access. Add to that the long bar that works the latch assy is pinned to the cylinder which will be well inside the handle. In order to remove the cylinder the entire latch mechanism would have to remove and there still might not be enough room to slide the complete one piece cylinder assy out of the handle.

A word of caution if you do take the cylinder and have it rekeyed. The long bar will have to come off the cylinder end to slide the key part out of the housing for any work. To do so requires a pin to be pressed out. The pot metal is extremely brittle so take caution to support the ears on the housing -- both of them -- when trying to remove the pin or one or both will break and you now need a complete new assy.

Well I took everyone's advise and disassembled the headlight switch, cleaned up the contacts, and reassembled it. Now I get the readings that I expected, so that's progress. The old grease inside the switch pretty much looked like old ear wax, cleaned it out and renewed it with some very similar grease that we use for magnetos (piston aircraft engines aren't all that advanced) - should be good to go for another 60 years. With the relays that I'm adding for the headlights that switch should work great.

I installed a plug that contains all the connections needed for the instrument cluster, so that it will be easier to remove and reinstall. These are AMP plastic plugs that we use for some of our special missions stuff on our airplanes, so I could just pull plugs, pins and sockets out of the bins. Price is right.

Rang out all the connections to verify that I didn't get something wrong, then hooked up the battery and everything works! Lights, gauges, turn signal and hi beam indicators, oil light. ALT (GEN) light doesn't work yet because I don't have the alternator yet. Gauge lights dim and bright, fuel looks accurate, started the engine and the temp comes up. The clock is inop and it will stay that way, see some earlier posts where I gave up on it.

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