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

I am servicing a recently acquired '54 Convertible. The service manual says when refilling the reservoir to have the windows lowered. My car does not have power windows but obviously has a power top which is not mentioned in the service instructions. Does it make any difference if the top is up or down when I remove the bail from the reservoir to clean and refill?

Not really but IMO, down would be better. There is a minimal amount of fluid displaced by the rods and if the top is down and rods retracted that sends the non rod side which is the most amount of fluid that the cylinders can hold back to the reservoir.

The point of having the windows down and seat back is because those cylinders only fill or empty. You want to ensure as much as possible of the fluid in the cylinders has returned to the reservoir. That way when you refill or add more you do not overfill the reservoir and cause any excess to spill out if you did put all the windows down.

With just having the top there is sufficient space that the slight difference between up and down because of the rod displacement won't cause any issues.

Isn't there a fill line in the reservoir so as to avoid overfilling?

There is. IIRC the fill line is somewhere around 2/3 of the reservoir. If you add to the fill line and all the windows were up then when you open one or two windows and send their contents back to the reservoir the excess 1/3 space left in the reservoir would quickly be filled and overflow.

As I mentioned, with the top only it is not that important because the few ounces difference between top up and top down is well within the safe space. The point of cleaning and refilling is to get as much of the old fluid changed as possible so the top down sends the bigger quantity of the old fluid back.