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There is no date on the card. So I was going to try to poke around and see what I could dig up on the dealership, and narrow it down from there. I was thinking perhaps sometimes in the early 50's?

Well back in the garage for a little bit of work today. The first couple of pictures are of the truck lid that I fixed the dent in the "hump" portion. Had to use a uni-spotter to remove the dent as there was limited access to the rear of the lid because of the bracing. I little skim coat of filler should finish it off nicely.

I also removed a dent that was in the glove box where someone had used a screwdriver to pry it open at some point in it's history.

Next we have the front bumper. Time to pull it all apart and refinish all the braces and paint the back side. I will also attempt to straighten it as much as possible as there are dents from the use of a bumper jack over the years. I will polish up the chrome as good as I can, and leave it. Plating will come much later depending on budget. Also the "grille guard" the horizontal bar between the bumperettes on my car is dented, but the chrome is salvageable. But I do have another one that has no dents, but I need to see if I can clean up the chrome on it. Rust stains and major oxidation on it.

When I took the drivers side fender into school to massage the metal, I removed the battery tray, and all the terminal block and horn relay from the fender to keep them from getting damaged.

So everything needed to go into the media blaster. But I was having trouble with the blaster gun clogging. So it was time to screen the media and remove all the little bits of junk that came off previously blasted parts. So I just removed all the media from the cabinet with a shop vac. Remove the lid from the shop vac, and using a cup, pour the media back into the cabinet through a mesh screen. The removed a lot of debris, and I was back at work.

So the cleaned up all the terminals and the relays, and the battery tray. Some make ask why I simply cut all the wiring and left it attached to the terminal block and relay. Well as I am replacing the entire harness, this gives me a road map latter to match up all the colors to the right terminals.

Lastly, I got the battery tray into primer, and then into paint.

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i remember those days before i had a blast cabinet and i got to do the battery tray by wire brush, which sucked! ;0)

The NOS Transmission Cooler arrived today. It looks great. Nice thick metal in the hose ends. Just needs a quick coat of paint to take care of some paint blemishes from sitting in the original box for 55+ years. It came in the original box, which has the part number and the words oil-cooler printed on them. Almost like I went down to the local Packard dealer and picked it up from the parts counted. Thanks to Donald for locating this for me and being very generous when it came to the pricing.

Also I received the rivet tool that Howard made for me. Looks like it will do the job perfectly! Hopefully I will get to try it out this weekend. Thanks Howard!!

Tonight was a bust at school. I lugged the fender back down there as we were going to try to match the paint up to a modern color from their paint chip library, but no one could remember when it got stored. So I will try again on Wednesday.

Also I have come to the conclusion that the paint I got from Tower paint and used on the firewall and rims with is incorrect. After looking at the original paint chips I have, and a large spot of original paint on the fender that was hidden by the front trim that we hit with some buffing compound which then matches the paint chip perfectly, it is obvious that the Tower paint was closer to Meridian Blue then it was Bikini blue. So I am going to color match it to a modern color, or get a custom formula generated for it, and respray the firewall and rim faces. I thought at first it was that I perhaps sprayed it too dark/heavy, or the paint chip was too small to match with what I sprayed, but when the chip was dead on to the original protected paint on the fender, that was when I realized that it the Tower paint that was off.

The paint from Tower is labeled Bikini Blue, but either their match is off, or someone mixed it up with Meridian Blue. Oh well.....win some....lose some.

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Kev,

That transmission cooler is quite a find. I wonder if they sold well as an option? If they were available in '55 and '56 they would have been very useful on the Twin Ultras. Should have been standard.

They were standard on all Ultra cars--just different designs for mounting positions on the engines. Believe the first few 23 series originally in radiator but changed to this type with a kit.

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You are correct... my 23rd series transmission cooler is in the base of the radiator. I keep my fingers crossed since I read somewhere that this was not one of Packard's better ideas.

I don't know what problems Packard might have had with the cooler in the radiator tank, but this method became the standard of the entire industry so as a concept it's fine; for Packard it's execution may not have been the best.

Just as a matter of curiousity, which automatic transmissions didn't use a transmission oil cooler? Early Powerglides that I remember. Others?

Think the Torqueflight Trans in my 55 Desoto didn't have an oil cooler either if I remember correctly.

Remember the Firedome 291 ci Hemi engine in the Desoto's?

Believe several Ford units (B-W design ??) also used air cooling.