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

Attempting to track down the factory ground strap connection points for my '53 Clipper. The wiring is the original unaltered 6 volt positive ground system. Under the hood, I have the factory ground strap running from the battery post to one of the water pump mounting bolts which according to the Packard Service Manual, appears to be correct.

What I need to confirm is if this is the only ground strap that the car came with from the factory. In checking and tracing the wiring schematic, it does not depict any additional grounds running from the engine to chassis, engine to firewall, body to chassis, etc. etc.

This seems kind of odd to me so if anyone has knowledge of any additional grounds that the later 6 volt systems are supposed to have, please share what you know. Thanks in advance.

Unlike the prewar conventional body cars which had a large ground strap between the transmission body and the frame, the single ground cable to the block appears to be all there was on postwar cars thru 54. Possibly that prewar strap was needed because with the underseat location of the battery, it's ground cable went to the frame as well. Postwar, the only other hard ground between the engine and body is a 14 ga wire between the generator case and fender which continues on to a screw on the regulator body or a regulator mounting screw and is used to provide a solid voltage reference between the regulator and generator.

There have been some reports of people finding an additional ground strap on postwar cars at the transmission but as you mention, it does not show on any documentation nor can I recall ever seeing one for myself. It is possible others have felt the body ground provided mostly by linkage and tubing was a bit precarious on postwar cars and added a strap akin to the prewar models. Something like that might be what the reports were seeing. Several owners of postwar cars have added their own small gauge ground straps between the engine and body to provide a better ground for lights. In 55-6 models Packard started placing a short factory (maybe 8 or 10ga) strap between the engine and body.