Packard Forum Index » Pre-War (1899-1942)

Owen,

THANKS for the picture. What a clever design. If I'm looking at it correctly, it had a "pent roof" piston top and head. Unfortunately the pic doesn't show the piston at TDC, but it seems like one side of the piston provided the "squish" area, and the side nearest the valve fit up close to the valve seat, and the machined "wedge" in the head completed the "wedge." Part of the combustion chamber was thus alongside the cylinder, not directly above it, but as close to the source of the air/fuel mixture could get.

Am I reading that right?


I still wonder if I'm reading this quote right, but I think PackardV12Fan wrote:

Quote:

Well, this is going a little too far. As Kev pointed out, Packard was by then building its own bodies, had the ONLY automatic transmission built by any independent auto manufacturer--even the "big three"--had a brand new Packard designed and built V8, and one thing Kev forgot, introduced a proprietary 4-wheel torsion bar suspension system.

Maybe the build quality wasn't the best, and they had some teething problems, they were no joke, especially to the automotive press, which especially gave credit to the Torsion-Level suspension. That alone, had it survived the corporate stodginess of the "big three" would have made a huge difference in suspensions to this day, I think.

Big Kev - you are wrong about this "delay in getting a V-8" excuse.

I was "there", and you werent. The simple fact is that ever-worsening "build quality" drove away Packard customers, and created an atmosphere of contempt by which they couldn't get new customers. The sales figures towards the end are not debatable. The figures are a fact. "New" unsold 1956 Packards sat out in the open in various dealers lots that I am personally aware of, clear into summer of '57. Have no idea how they finally got rid of them.

And dont try and tell me the '51's and later didn't have an axle-breaking problem. I broke enough of them myself, and I changed dozens more.

The sad fact is, while Packard in its "glory" years set standards for excellence, and pioneered all kinds of interesting engineering, towards the end, it pioneered failure. Sadly, our entire industry has copied that "suicide" method of doing business that Packard "pioneered" towards the end.

Yes, I remember those lying promo statements Packard put out after the war, saying over-head valve engines were "too complicated". What a crock. SHAME on Packard.

Packard was mass-producing quality, reliable over-head cam and over-head valve engines back during World War One.

Later on, Packard took the Rolls Royce "Merlin" (which RR CLAIMS originated with the famous "SuperMarine" racers of the early 30's, but was in fact copied from Packard's aircraft engines) re-engineering the Merlin from a motor that had to be over-hauled every 200 hours, to one that would run way past 1,00 hrs before TBO.

But after the war, new and ever-more-greedy management just wanted to make a fast buck without "wasting" money on product development & quality. Sound familiar ? I call it the "suicide gene".

Outmoded designs ? So what! Make em right, and people will buy them. Damiler Benz's post war Mercedes were obsolete pre-war designs too. But THEY had quality, and customers came back for more.

You folks can huff and puff, wish all this wasnt true, try and close your eyes to the simple facts, but there they are. Your attempts to find excuses for the simple obvious facts are just plain silly.

To all:

One thing to remember when dealing with Peter Hartmann is, that "He's been there, you haven't".

Here's a list of things that Peter's been there on, but none of us have, starting from the beginning:
#1-"And God said, let there be light, and there was light", Petey was there.

#2-When Moses parted the Red Sea, Petey was there chasing him in his Egyptian chariot (The horse's name was "V12", just a bit of trivia for later). Luckily Petey's V12 was slower than the other horses, as Petey made it there just in time to watch the waters to come back together and drown everyone.

#3-Peter worked in a chariot restoration shop during the reign of Alexander, restoring old Egyptian chariots and telling everyone how good they were, but they don't make them anymore because "mismanagement" of the Egyptian monarchy causing their defeat and subsequent takeover by the Greeks. Tells everyone that even though they like his chariots, "they just weren't there when they were new, and he was".

#4-During the reign of Caesar, Petey worked in a chariot shop recreating the style of the Egyptian chariots, but found the man down the street who was recreating Sumerian chariots to be a PITA and a constant bother. Numerous arguments and street brawls ended up with Petey's shop getting closed, so now he had to look for other work.

#5-So now at this time Peter finds himself in Judea, and finds a young man talking about "love" and "brotherhood" and silly words like "love thy neighbor" and finds them repulsive.

#6-Not much happening until the Middle Ages, when Petey finds himself in the middle of a Crusade, and tries to supply chariots to the invading armies, only to find that "his old ways are out of date" and no one's really interested in Egyptian chariots in the late 1300's.

#7-Figuring that the now occurring Renaissance will spark a revival of Egyptian chariot interest, Petey moves back to Europe to try and start a business. Business is good for a couple of years, then the two people that were interested take delivery of them and find that the build quality isn't up to their standards. One of the buyers even has to kick the one door to get out!

#8-Petey now realizes that the Byzantine chariots with their open rears and no doors is a better design, but the chassis of the Egyptian chariot is "stronger" and "has a higher build quality" than the Byzantine chariots, so Peter decides to put an Egyptian rear end under his Byzantine chariot, thus making the "perfect" chariot. Only took him 3000 years to figure this out.

#9-With the coming of Napoleon, Peter now finds himself in the "luxury wagon" business, building ultra-luxury high-end wagons for Emperors and Kings. With war, business is good.

#10-With the advent of the internal combustion engine, Petey now finds himself in a new field--Automobiles. Figuring that the old ways are gone, even with the current Egyptian Revival of the Victorian period, Peter decides to maybe incorporating some Egyptian design elements into his automobiles he might make some quick money. But alas, the Egyptian Revival period is over fast, and Peter finds himself looking for a new "angle"

#11-During WWI, Peter finds himself examining a Twin Six Packard, only to find that "these amazing humans" have created one of the finest engines ever, and so begins to evangelize the superiority of the Packard Twin Six. But soon finds them discontinued to be replaced by the Packard 8, a clearly inferior design by Peter's high standards.

#11-Peter wakes up one morning to read in the paper that Packard has re-introduced the Twin Six! Peter is so excited he stubs his toe on his "prototype Twin Six Egyptian chariot" in his garage.

#12-Knowing that this V12 from Packard is even better than the original Twin Six, Peter makes it his duty to find one of these engines to put in his chariot. Peter takes a job at the local Packard dealership to gather experience on working on these wonderful automobiles. Over time, Peter saves back enough money to buy that $400 Packard V12.

#13-It's the reign of Nixon, and Peter decides to "update" his V12 with a 1958 Oldsmobile rear axle. The Egyptian chariot axle won't work because it's not "beefy enough"

#14-Peter finds Packardinfo.com, and proceeds to tell all of us we don't know jack schitt about Packards, and we should listen to him.

Now, with this timeline everyone should have NO doubts about Peter's expertise. Remember, Peter's been there, and we haven't.

Gads, my very first thread on this site starts a flame war. I had a couple of additional questions regarding the combustion chamber of the 2nd Generation Twin Six and would appreciate it if someone has that info or if they'd like to post it in one of the special article sections here.

I have a pretty good magazine article with reviews of a '55 Packard 400 vs the luxo competition, which I'll post a link to here if I can find it.

Quote:
PackardFan

I know of one place for sure-- auctions, I know this because my dad bought our new 55 Clipper at one, and HE was there, and he wouldn't lie.

I appreciated reading a little more about the Packard/Merlin. However, I think Packard cannot take credit for the original design, but they sure can take it for redisigning an RR engine until it really was like a new engine, with better specs all around. And then they built practically all of them. That engine never would've "flown" without Packard, and people keep insisting on calling it a "Merlin" or a "Rolls Royce" engine. Bah.

As Promised, here's the link to the comparison done by Special Interest Autos on the '55 Cadillac, Imperial, Lincoln and Packard,

imperialclub.com/Articles/55Luxocar/index.htm

55PackardGuy, no flame war, but it just burns my ass when someone claims superiority over someone else because they claim "to have been there". Stupid egocentric posts that come onto any forum should be nipped in the bud as soon as they raise their ugly heads. FWIW, I enjoy the knowledge, but I don't like to see someone beaten down because they weren't there to live in the time when the cars were new. So what?

55PackardGuy, dodging the barbs and bait that has been offered to the unwary, perhaps this image will better show what you wanted to see about the valve/piston and combustion area. The source again is from a 1936 PMCCo blueprint of the 1936 V12 motor.

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Turbo has the right idea. When you see factual info. that conflicts with what you want to believe, CENSOR the guy.

Of course I did not claim "superiority" - I said the opposite - emphasized it was just an "accident of birth timing" that put me into an era and situations where I had exposure that many of you did not. But this fellow has the right idea - when you need to discredit facts, so what if you have to play "fast and loose" with them.

But again, I do understand. Precision of speech and accuracy are passe. Our educational system's rank with other third world countries confirms we do not want or need precise thinking - that is only for countries, cultures, and economies that are upcoming industrial centers.

The rise and fall of the Packard Motor Car Co. is an excellent model of how to build, then destroy excellence.

As for censorship & ridicule when something comes up that interferes with your belief system - nothing new there.

Another great example from Packard. Sometime in the early fifties I ordered a oil cooler for my '34 Super Eight. (incidentally, it was made by the Harrison Div. of GM)

The replacement oil cooler came back from Packard with a letter of apology that the original had failed, and an inquiry as to the nature of the failure. Reason - Packard Stores (what PMCC internal documents called their parts entity), was still doing well for the company, and in Packard's tradition, they were concerned about their product.

Years later (the night before the Packard records were to be destroyed,) a "tip off" by a sympathetic guard led to a pre-dawn break-in by Packard buffs, and some Packard papers were captured and saved. They are now in the Detroit Library. Someone either in this forum or others may have copies that appeared some time ago in one of the Packard buff publications. Amongst them is the interesting document I am about to refer to. If I recall the wording (this was around mid '54) it goes something like this....

"THE CONTINUED APPEARANCE OF PACKARD PRODUCTS FROM
PRIOR ERAS ON THE ROADS OF TODAY, IS CAUSING THE
PUBLIC TO MAKE UNFAIR COMPARISONS WITH OUR PRESENT
PRODUCTS AND PRODUCT PHILOSPHY....

THE BOARD HAS CONCLUDED THAT OUR CURRENT
MARKETING EFFORTS AND CORPORATE OBJECTIVES
ARE BETTER SERVED BY TERMINATING PMCC SUPPORT
OF PRODUCTS FOR WHICH WE ARE NO LONGER
RESPONSIBLE.....

PACKARD STORES INVENTORY OF PRODUCTS
FOR WHICH WE ARE NO LONGER RESPONSIBLE, SHOULD
BE TERMINATED IN SUCH A WAY THAT THEY CAN NO LONGER
BE UTILIZED IN A MANNER CONTRARY TO OUR CURRENT
OBJECTIVESS...."

This is about as close to the wording as I can recall. Dosn't matter. The point is, you can't have real-world facts screwing up what you want to believe. Sic Transit Gloria

FOR "55 Packard"

You raise an interesting question about timing of the introduction, then termination of multi-cyl. motors for Packard's automotive line.

Fact is, the V-12's and V-16's were obsolete even before they hit the show-rooms! There were essentially TWO reasons for this.

FUEL OCTANE IMPROVEMENT
As gasoline fuel octane improved, you didn't need monster engines with long strokes to get good power. With the improved slower burning fuels, compression ratios could be raised, resulting in more efficient and smoother running motors. Motors that put more of the energy from the burning of the fuel into foward motion, with less wasted as heat. Just look at how much smaller the radiators have become, for any given engine size, as compression ratios went up, and stroke length went down.

MOTOR MOUNT IMPROVEMENT
Up until the early thirties, motors were bolted rigidly to the frame, and were actually part of chassis stiffness. Once the rubber "isolater" ( I believe Chrysler started that) came into use, smaller engines with fewer cylinders could be made much smoother-appearing to the car's occupants.

Packard's product research showed most of the motoring public had no idea about cylinders - they just wanted a quiet, smooth car that could give sprightly performance in high gear without a lot of shifting. They gave the public what it wanted, in a reliable quality product, that in each price class, was worth the money. So long as they did that, they were successful. When they stopped doing that, they failed.

PackardV12fan wrote:



Later on, Packard took the Rolls Royce "Merlin" (which RR CLAIMS originated with the famous "SuperMarine" racers of the early 30's, but was in fact copied from Packard's aircraft engines) re-engineering the Merlin from a motor that had to be over-hauled every 200 hours, to one that would run way past 1,00 hrs before TBO.


Peter, Could you please elaborate or provide information on which Packard aircraft engine Rolls Royce used as a proto type for the Merlin.. I know that Packard made some "improvements" to the Merlin such as the use of interchangeable parts for mass production purposes which didn't require the fine hand fitting, the change from copper lead to those of GM developed silver lead main bearings, and also adapted the Wright drive quill supercharger for use on this engine but I am unaware or any Packard aircraft engines which resemble the Merlin or which Rolls-Royce copied. The Battle of Britain was fought and won with Rolls-Royce powered Hurricanes and Spitfires before any Packard engines were built. If any engine deserves credit for inspiring the Rolls Royce Merlin it is likely Hispano-Suiza engines. Please enlighten me since I am totally unaware of this.