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may I respectfully suggest you get competent maintainence supervision ? There are "clues" in your description of your problems with your Packard, that suggest you have been badly served by whatever maintainence techs. you had been dealing with.

This business about "old yellow 6 volt headlamps" tells me alot. NO Packard had "yellow" headlamps IF its electrical system was properly maintained. That suggests VERY low voltage, which could be due to any number of electrical maintainence issues.

You have a RIGHT to expect excellent service, whatever the year, series, and model of your Packard is. Go get em !

Hiya Petey, how's the weather out in Arizona?

in answer to your question, I just got back from a long trip, to find the weather was marvelous today, but looks like we are headed for more thunderstorms.

Glad to see you're getting them too, we went through a week of nothing but rain here last week. It's beautiful now!

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Petey, if I may call you Petey that is,

Thanks for being concerned about maintenance issues with my '38 Eight. But Packard maintenance techs are pretty thin on the ground down-under. A bit of background to the car itself first. It was restored about 20 years ago by the previous owner, a mechanic, who has also restored a number of other cars including Packards, most to concours standard, but is now a good "20 footer". It was used extensively over those years and clocked up an unknown number of miles, the odometer being broken. It's not lack of maintenance just the passage of time that's contributed to "yellowish" headlights as reflectors dull, lenses scratch and bulbs loose their effectiveness over an extended period plus this happened in daylight hours and was thrown in more for the storyline than as a statement. The matter of the wheelnuts however is more recent and I believe this stems from the repairer of my front fenders having the flu while doing the work and missing tightening that wheel properly.

And some further background to the car itself. It's believed to have been used by the US Army during WW2, to perform a return mail run from Melbourne(2400 miles approx) or Adelaide(1800 miles approx) to Darwin every fortnight. This was over unmade roads when there were roads and along railway lines, dry creek beds or anyway they could find a way if there weren't roads, which was most of the route! When being restored, the only rust was the bottom of the fuel tank. And mechanically, although the engine had been replaced with a '37 in Darwin after the original "blew up" it needed a thorough restoration including replacement of the "knife edged" gears in the transmission from the unknown number of miles it had accumulated.

I see from this and your other posts you really are concerned with the driveability and performance of our Packards and ensuring that all aspects contributing to those ends, including maintenance, are accounted for.



PS - Why has your Forum member name changed recently? It's now "PackardV12fan" and was previously "Packard Twelve fan"?

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That is the great mystery of Peter F. Hartmann, use up one name until you've worn out your welcome, then change names and start all over again.

Hi Ozst...

In answer to your many questions and comments. First of all, I was apparently thrown out of this forum while I was on a trip - came back, asked Bev thru an E mail, got no answer, so I just re-registered under a slightly different name.

I am glad you appreciate my intention, which is to sing to the world how marvelous Packard was as an institution, and how marvelous ALL Packards were, regardless of which price class any particular Packard model was in.

Obviously, some Packards are bigger, better, faster than others - I have to continually remind people that it is nonsence to accuse the Packard Company of de-frauding its customers, of COURSE the more you paid to Packard, the more car you got.

Let's take your situation for example. Packard "120"s were damn good cars. I'll match a "120" series Packard pound for pound, performance for performance, against ANY car in ITS price range. That is...WHEN IT IS FIXED ! FIXED RIGHT !

I am not so sure I accept your story as to why that car of yours is so screwed up. hARD USE DOSNT HURT A PACKARD IF IT IS FIXED RIGHT.

My own Packard is coming up on 200,000 HARD miles. When it was in service with its first owner, it was driven hard at high speeds all over the California, Arizona, and Nevada deserts, and when it wasnt doing that, it spent a lot of time in Los Angeles traffic (then, as now, a lot of stop and go). It was left outside on occasion, getting wet.

In 1955...it was purchased by a wild and crazy teen-ager, who beat the hell out of it and drove it even faster....( I still do ! ).

I re-wired and got re-finished reflectors for it about 30 years ago. Guess what-its headlights are NOT yellow- they are BRIGHT and WHITE. And the lenses of those Flex-Beam headlights it came with when new, are still clear.

And be assured then when I am four-wheel drifting it around some of our sorry excuses for roads here in northern Arizona, I dont hear funny noises ...if I did..I'd FIX EM !

Bottom line - that's my message..my relgion...YOU GOT A PACKARD ? FIX IT RIGHT, AND DRIVE THE HELL OUT OF IT WHERE THE PUBLIC CAN SEE IT !

Mine had to be towed ONCE. That was in the summer of '57. Coming up the Cahuenga Pass on an extremely hot day, the $(##(@* vapor-locked. The cops came along with a tow truck and told me they wouldn't wait two minutes...it had to be gotten off the road NOW. Again...towed ONCE. By evening, it had TWO electric fuel pumps. Hasn't been towed since.

(actually..there is more to that story of getting vapor-lock and having to be towed, in the Cahuenga Pass that summer of '57....you see..I had this really foxy girl in the car..and she got mad at being stuck...and ditched me...so I didn't get to...hmmm....guess the rest of that story isn't for a technical chat room on Packards.....!)

Pete,

I didnt do anything with your previous username, and I never received any emails from you. So not sure what email address you using for me. It should be bigkev@packardinfo.com

Can you just not login using your previous account?

Bev - I am pretty lame with computers. Seems to work now. I'll try and let you know SOMEHOW if I have trouble with this thing in the future.

Pete Hartmann

"Bev"???

Who dat?