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I think that's a great plan! From the pic the car really looks nice. My 50 is in less that perfect original paint and it is going to stay that way.

That looks great! Would you mind outlining your process, and the products and equipment you are using? I would love to add some shine to mine, but I'm terrified of burning through the original 65 yo paint.

That original lacquer paint takes a good polish. Why not try the same on the white and see how it looks? An original looking exterior has many pluses, and think of all the money you will not spend.

(o{}o)

Thanks for the thoughts and the input. I will try to outline some of the products as I go along. At this time I am trying many different things. The best so far is a H.D. compound by 3m and I plan to follow up with 3m's Perfect-it system followed by the finesse-it. The paint is very thin on the tops of the fenders and primer is showing, but I like it gives it character in a way LOL. I do have access to laquer so I haven't decided if I will touch up the fenders yet. As for the roof and lower portions of the vehicle the paint is in very poor condition. The paint is cracking and checking with rust bleeding through. For now I will try to bleach out the rust stains but before summer I will end up repainting the white portion.

Thanks
James

As I understand it, this car was owned and driven by a Packard enthusiast. So why did he let it deteriorate to this condition?

Well I can't speak for him, but I can tell you it happens to the biggest of enthusiasts. I know I am guilty of letting a car deteriorate. A ford fairlane that was my first car and it had a lot of sentimental value. Unfortunately other things in life take priority. It took me 10 years till I got back to that car and by that time nature had taken it's toll. But I do know that the previous owner is very happy to see the progress on the 400 and in a way passing the love of packards to on a younger generation. I had always wanted one and he made it a reality.

Made some more head way last night managed to get an oil change done on the 400 and drain out the 10+ year old gas out of the tank. Thankfully no rust came out with the bad and extremely yellowed gas. I do have a leak at the feed line where it connects to the tank. I plan to dig into that tonight its looking like its either the line or the threaded bung in the tank. If it's the bung then I will just end up replacing the whole tank as the new tanks will be in shortly at work. I did help with the test fitting on the final sample tank before they went into production and they fit beautifully.

Thanks
James

i'm glad to hear about these new tanks. when it is time for that on my car, i'll just be buying one of those rather then mess with my old one.

No real updates so far for this past weekend. I did manage to drain the rest of the gas out of the tank and clean up around the line and threaded bung on the tank. Man there was a lot of under coating on that thing. I then filled the tank up with a few gallons of gas. I let the 400 run for about 30 minutes and wouldn't you know it now its not leaking. I did tighten the line a bit before running so that may have been it. I also did pick up a tune kit from work so I hope to get that done some time this week. Also I checked on Kanter's new gas tanks and they should be in this week.

Thanks
James

Today I found some time to get back on the 400. I am still working on trying to salvage the original paint on the car as I would like to keep the 400 as original as possible. I ended compounding the majaority of the pink color and it has seem to come back. I also started on the white portion of the 400 as well and it as come back to. The hardest part I believe will be the roof, but I am very pleased with the results so far.

Thanks
James From

<a href="http://s671.photobucket.com/user/JamesRFrom/media/Packard%20400/DSC_0093.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i671.photobucket.com/albums/vv72/JamesRFrom/Packard%20400/DSC_0093.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo DSC_0093.jpg"/></a>