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Sunday 30th December 2012

Mal's Driveway, again.

Removed the inner door panel today in readiness for Col to start on the Coupe early next month. Took out the five screws holding the window garnish mold in place, the two screws holding the armrest to the door panel, the window winding and door handles, then prised the panel out. Replaced the winding winding and door handles, temporarily securing them in place. Of course found another item that needs to be addressed. The channel that holds the window glass is badly rusted so will need replacing. But that will be another project. For this one, still need to slacken off the left front mudguard(fender) that will be done down at the workshop mid week.

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Wednesday 2nd January 2013

A Happy Packard New Year to all!

Took the Coupe down to the workshop and, while Wade was fiddling around with Big Red, and after pulling the left front wheel off loosened off the bolts holding the left front mudguard(fender) to the body and the bonnet(hood) side panel. Once all the bolts were loose then removed the fender welting in preparation for the Coupes facelift in the coming weeks.

Also had IanH drop in to look over the various Packards in attendance to help in the restoration of his '36 120B Club Sedan, believes it is probably the only RHD '36 120B Club Sedan in the country. I think it may be the only one in the world! Bought the car 39 years ago and restoring it now. Lots of the parts came in boxes so he needs points of reference for some items.

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Wednesday 3rd January 2013

Couple of hours at the workshop this morning, basically spent cleaning while Wade continued with Big Red. I did contribute to that exercise as I cleaned and re-gapped Big Red's sparkplugs! Then, rather than have me looking over his shoulder while he re-set tappets etc, Wade set me to work cleaning up Harvey's 320 block. It had gone up to Tamworth months back, along with a slew of other 320 blocks, and been hot tanked for its troubles. But with very degraded valve seat surfaces, among other problems, was passed over in favour of the one now in use. My job was to clean it up so it could receive a protective coating prior to returning it to Harvey. Wheeled the block out into the carpark on a hand trolley then commenced scraping and wire brushing. Along the way noticed, besides the usual casting date and marks, there were a lot of numbers and letters stamped into various block surfaces. Don't remember seeing any of these on the other 320 blocks so I'm surmising they were probably stamped there when the engine was rebuilt at some stage. Amazing what catches your attention when working on Packards!

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Mal, watched some frightening news coverage from Australia last night. The news was of the bad wild fires in New South Whales near Sydney. I hope everyone there is safe from the fires and that they are burning in uninhabited areas. Stay safe.

(o{}o)

Friday 11th January 2013

John, fortunately although there has been property, pasture damage and livestock loss no lives have been lost. But things are heating up again with 95 fires already reported state wide and temperatures soaring.

On another note hitched a ride with Noel to pick up a box of Hershey goodies from Sydneys semi-rural outskirts at Rouse Hill. Thought we might call in to see DavidM on the way but the reason to head in that direction fell through, so maybe another time. Noel had borrowed a ute to pick up the box of goodies and what a box it was. Constructed on a pallet base it went from DAF to LA and on to Oz. Contained many Twelve parts for Peter Packard as well as parts for Noel and myself with half my stuff being parts for Starliner. After picking up the box up we returned to Bankstown where there was an unpacking to filter our stuff out from Peters. Noel will then take the remaining parts to Peter at Canberra tomorrow afternoon. There was a touch of excitement in the unpacking, a bit like opening Christmas presents, in discovering again some of my impulse Hershey purchases which had slipped from memory! Noel was a little concerned though, because he couldn't find the almost mint Goddess of Speed he'd picked up for his '41. But, later at home, he discovered it carefully packed within a box with some breakables.

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Monday 14th January 2013

Afternoon at the workshop was spent working on The Fossil. That is until John and Junior arrived part way through. John has Junior back on the road following the blown head gasket mishap on the way to Bathurst back in November. However he was having trouble refitting the Cormorant and bonnet(hood) centre trim piece so made the 40 mile trip to his local Packard specialist, Wade! That sorted, John was returning home, and because his carb is leaking, via the carburettor shop which had very recently rebuilt it!

But back to The Fossil, for which Wade is in the process of refitting the front seat/s. I say seat/s because the side drivers seat is adjustable, whereas the passenger side is not. Because the seat base had been adapted from the LHD body donor car, following the "great fire", to suit the RHD chassis a few fitting problems surfaced. Another factor was that much of the wood in the body has been replaced therefore there were no old screw holes to help in locating the seat base. But with the steel floor panel in place and the seat back located, for which the wood in the B pillars hadn't been replaced so it still had the bracket holes for fitting and aligning purposes, the seat base was fitted. But before doing that, the drivers seat sliding mechanisms had to be freed up. A good cleaning saw them operating satisfactorily and trial fitted to the seat base then the sliding seat frame fitted. Everything was falling into place, although some tweaks were required along the way. Then the seat base was screwed to the main longitudinal wooden body "rails". Of course it's all going to come out again, as is usual, because there's further work to be done in that area but that required the seat to be properly located before work on that could be started. But it is another small step in the right direction!

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Tuesday 15th January 2013

More of the same today, including working on getting the drivers seat runners to run without binding. The runners worked well on the bench but when bolted onto the seat frame bottom and the seat bolted to them bound up. Solution came after taking the seat frame off, the seat bottom out of The Fossil and careful inspection on the bench. Turned out the problem was the right side runner mount was slightly twisted and not flat. This happened because the seat bottom came from the donor car and the runner mounts were relocated from the left to the right side and, in the process, the right side runner mount was installed slightly skew-wiff, aka lopsided. A short treatment from the angle grinder was enough to bring the warped end back into alignment. Then followed another trial fit proving all was now well, The seat bottom was then screwed to the body timber frame rails, hopefully for the last time.

Because the seatback for the front seats needs to be upholstered prior to final fitting it to the body, working out what pieces were required to do this was a head scratching time. The fact that the LHD seatback is being used in the RHD car continues to throw up "challenges" and solutions for some are still not evident, but we're closing in. To help with this the seat bottoms, both RHD and LHD, were retrieved from mezzanine storage as references. The RHD squabs are quite decent, apparently The Fossil had been reupholstered sometime in its past. While the LHD squabs attest to the harsh conditions the donor car was in when Wade purchased it.

During the times I wasn't helping Wade directly, I was cleaning parts, what else! These I'll paint in the next few days, together with some fasteners for my Coupe, while Wade heads Northwest to Tamworth and Gil-bl**dy-gandra.

The foregoing doesn't sound like much was achieved. But it takes time to fit and re-fit, scratch heads, kick around ideas, propose solutions, discard the unworkable and/or impractical(ie most of them) and go on from there.

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Wednesday 16th January 2013

With only Rick at the workshop, needed him to show me where the switch was to gain some illumination in Packard corner! Reason being, with Wade being away, I painted the battery box cover and it was nice to be able to at least see what you're painting. As well, cleaned up a few more parts Wade had left out, and painted those, some other parts for The Fossil and some nuts and bolts off my Coupe. Will return in a couple of days to take down the windchimes.

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Monday 21st January 2013

Back at the workshop after his Tamworth and Gilgandra sojourn, Wade and I worked on the front seat of The Fossil. While Wade disassembled bases of all four seats, Fossil and donor, I removed the upholstery on The Fossils drivers seat back piece and cleaned it together with some other pieces. Scared the cr@p out of me when one of the hose connections for the blasting cabinet media spray gun let go! That fixed got to work and cleaned all the pieces. EDIT - See my "mea culpa" in the next post!

During the course of this Chris, Starliner, arrived. Chris was there to 1) pickup his Hershey goodies, and 2) drop off the striker plates he had cast up for The Fossil at Wade's request. Chris had driven over in his '54 Clipper Super Club Sedan, but I didn't know that until I went outside to farewell him! It's looking good with the interior coming together, new seat and panel upholstery, but still a little way to go with the headliner, carpets and kick panels still to come. And Pepe, if you should read this, Chris thinks he'll be attending the Phillip Island Rally.

After Chris's departure continued on with The Fossils front seat. This time moving a wooden trim piece from one side to the other of a metal panel in the bottom half of the seat back. Wade had finished his seat bottom disassembly extracting I don't know how many upholstery tacks. Will be using the wooden bottoms from the seats of the donor car, The Fossils wooden bottom frames both suffering from breakages. At least that's one thing the donor car had lower miles, after all it did sit for years and years, although it was deteriorating due to elemental exposure. The metal hardware strips off the front of the wooden seat bottoms was also removed and cleaned. With all the metalwork cleaned up, including one spare piece from the donor car which will go on the shelf, gave them a coat of POR-15.

Backtracking a little, on Saturday I dropped my Coupe over to Col so he can start work on the scratch, scrape, ding, crack and chip repairs.

And fast forwarding, tomorrow Noel is dropping into the workshop late morning to see Wade. However after that he's proposing to travel onto Vintage Motor Garage on the Central Coast North of Sydney. I'm planning to hitch a ride with him, at the Bosses discretion of course, and there we should see Phil from Tassie's '26 333 6 cyl Sedan Limousine which is in the later throes of its restoration.

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Tuesday 22nd January 2013

First a "mea culpa", yesterday Quote:
This morning Wade was kind enough to let me in on a little secret, it's NOT part of the drivers seat back! It's actually the cover piece for the rear window roller blind! Wade didn't want me to be embarrassed by any comments once my error was noticed, good guy that Wade. However, as I am prepared to bear reasonable criticism, I've let the original post stand but with an EDIT pointing to this post. Plus, I've made so many blunders already, my skin has thickened considerably. If anyone wants to take that as a reference to my being a dinosaur, then, so be it!

That off my chest, onto todays events. My time at the workshop was limited because of travelling with Noel to the Vintage Motor Garage at Central Mangrove to pick up some pieces Noel had left there. As well, we were able to view the progress made on Phil's '26 333 Sedan Limousine. An enjoyable trip up, then Noel recovered his goodies and we were able to see Phil's '26. Since we saw it last it has been running, but not far. It had been thought the clutch was OK but the reality was somewhat different, the '26 only ran a minimal distance before the clutch failed. Likewise with the diff, it's developed quite an oil leak, it too was thought to be OK. Presently the trans is out and the clutch being repaired, next will be the diff, then the body will be painted. And when Noel inquired what was being done about a wiring harness for the '26, Jonathon advised it was already installed! The wiring harness came from Vintage Wiring Harness in Victoria and looks good. With this revelation Noel cast his beady judges eye over the engine compartment wiring and was duely impressed. Funny too about VWH, Wade and I were only discussing VWH yesterday with Chris!

VMG behind us Noel and I returned to the workshop but not before a lunch stop for Fish & Chips in a waterfront cafe at Brooklyn on the Hawkesbury River. A really delightful way to enjoy part of a Packard-centric day. Noel was telling me about a holiday of his enjoyed at a house on the river some years ago and about the Riverboat Postman who services the various properties along the river reachable only by boat, see this link. Back at the workshop found Wade had addressed the wooden front seat bottoms and reglued them. He had also addressed the companion piece to the cover piece for the rear window roller blind. The rear window roller blind itself. With two blinds to select from Wade chose the one from the donor car as The Fossil's original had been restored previously but not very well. Plus the donor car blind's hardware was complete although very rusty. But with the rust now removed from the hardware it looks like with some paint and new blind material this little piece of the puzzle will be complete.

Tomorrow there'll be more Noel involvement. In the afternoon, if the Boss will give me the time off as I've been making a habit of this recently, I intend to join Noel. Noel is going to see and discuss with his painter the how, what, when, etc required for the painting of his Coupe's body.

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