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Don, I too love the detailed analysis. To further support Kev's analysis, my block was cast 22 Dec 1936, and marked as delivered in Cleveland 31 Dec 1936!

Weird though - on my car, the date of casting is on the drivers side of the block.

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Wow, the timeline on your car was very quick. One week to cast the block, build the engine, assemble the car, and sell it! Mine clearly didn’t go that quickly as it sold in Kansas City on July 8, 1937

I just edited the post - 22 Dec, not 24 (typing is hard), but yeah - out of the sand to sold in 9 days seems crazy to me too.

1937 was Packard's highest volume year. They were turning and burning them for sure!

I wonder how many shifts the factory was running at that point.

Casting date of January 14, 1937 is confirmed. Now, based on how quickly Ken’s car was turned around, it appears that cars rolled off the assembly line less than a week after the casting date (at least in one case).

If that’s the case, my estimated manufacture date of January 18, 1937 looks like a pretty decent estimate.

In any case, I think I can say with confidence that my car was built in the last half of January, 1937.

I had my new aluminum machined hood louvers that I had gotten from Max Merritt ceramic coated (Cerakote) in clear gloss. You actually cannot tell that they've been coated, but they will be sealed and it will prevent oxidation.

Anyway, they were done today, so I picked them up and delivered them to the body shop. The shop wanted them to test fit everything on the hood. They fit great, as expected.

While there, I took a look at the new progress. The owner of the shop wasn't completely satisfied with how the rear end repairs had come out, so he had the guys revisit that. And, he gave me a credit on the hours for revisit. That was all without me saying anything. It just gives me a good feeling that they are doing things right and workin on the up and up.

Today they had pulled out the center divider bulkhead. They had to remove one front door to get it out, but all the doors have to come off anyway. The car looks odd without the bulkhead.

I meant to include something in my last post. When I first took my car to them, I emailed a copy of the 120 Body Manual that I had gotten on this site. They have told me several times now how helpful that has been. They also said the will definitely be passing it along to their upholstery guy as well since it shows a lot about how that all goes together.

We just got back from our trip to the Dallas area to visit our daughter. While there, I dropped off my dash panels and interior trim for woodgraining. I’ll be really excited to see those pieces done. I also retrieved a couple parts from Flackmaster.

I have a “new” headlight switch since mine was causing problems. This one is a NOS, but still had 88 years of dust accumulated. I have started cleaning it up. Before I started, I had about 2 ohms between the main input terminal and all of the other terminals when the switch was in the corresponding position. Most of that resistance was between the points of the thermostatic relay. I carefully cleaned the points and got the resistance down to between 0.1 and 0.2 ohms. At that point, I still had about 0.5 ohms to all the terminals. I sprayed the switch down internally with contact cleaner and operated the switch repeatedly. I now have 0.2 ohms from the input terminal to all other terminals. Should be good to go!

I also came home with a transmission top plate. i have a 23rd series transmission with R11 overdrive that I’ll be putting in later in the year. To install it, my existing top plate would need to be modified since the 23rd series transmission was column shift and not cane shift. I wanted another top plate so I could keep my original transmission whole in case any future owners ever wanted to put the car 100% back to original. The cane on the new top plate had a bit of oxidation. I took some steel wool to it and it cleaned up REALLY nice. So, I think I’ll likely use this one with the new transmission. Here are before and after pics.

I did a little more clean up on the new top plate.

I went to the shop today…There is a lot happening. They found that the right front fender support arm was not really supporting the fender any more due to extensive rust. That has now been repaired. That alone will raise my front fender about an inch and get the car “level” for the first time in my lifetime. That should also take care of the tire rub issue.

I brought home a box of parts to work on. I have the door latches, window regulator, wiper motor, wiper regulator, and wiper arms. The gears in one wiper were frozen solid, but a short soak in some penetrating oil freed it right up. Both of those are now cleaned up and working great.

I’ve started on the wiper motor rebuild. I have everything apart and cleaned. The paddle looks to be in pretty good shape. I’m letting it soak in ATF overnight. The gaskets also looked to be in decent shape. I’m letting them soak for a bit as well. Then, I”ll put the motor back together and see what happens.

I do have a question about the wiper regulator. How does it work? It appears that pulling the knob turns on the wipers via a cable to the wiper motor. Then, the it appears that the knob turns as well. I’m assuming this adjust the amount of vacuum to the motor which in turn controls the wiper speed. Is this correct? If so, what service, if any, does the regulator need?





I also brought home my original light switch to compare to the new one from Flackmaster. I have confirmed that the original has at least one issue internal to the switch that would require opening the switch to fix. There is some cross connectivity between terminals in Parking lights position that should be there. Also, the thermostatic relay also has an issue with the points. About 2 ohms is the lowest resistance I a get across the points without applying pressure to them. And that is after cleaning the points. So, it is definitely good to have the new switch.

Another bit of good news is that my sill plates from Doorsills, LLC showed up today. We had given up on these since the USPS had lost them from the last two-and-half weeks and had no idea where the were. Don at DoorSills had just finished making another set today to send. So, if anyone needs a set of sill plates for a 138CD, Doorsills, LLC has a set in stock!

Here are a few pictures of the pieces of my car. It looks like a mess, but needs are being uncovered and taken care of.




















Here’s the fender support arm after being repaired. They still have a little more to do on it. You can see three pieces that are the three sides of the section that had to be replaced. It was shot.