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With the engine on a stand. Fred has made short work of getting the short block together. The crank shaft and camshaft are in as well as new pistons and rings. Over the long weekend Fred lapped the exhaust valve and started on the intake. The head was sent out the machine shop for cleaning and resurfacing.

Today Fred is over at the restoration shop cleaning and prepping the oil pan. So the engine should be ready for paint soon.

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The restoration of the frame is nearly completed it is finally off the frame machine. The frame has been moved to Fred's corner of the shop and both sections of the donor car have been placed back onto the frame to start the fabrication of the new center sections. First on the list is to mount each sections of body and square them up. This included installing new body bushings to make sure our heights are correct. With that done we turned our attentions to the rockers to start. We will be removing the inner and outer rockers in preparation of new inner rockers being installed. Once the new inner rockers are installed a piece of metal bracing (seen in picture below of Fred holding) will be welded in giving additional strength and rigidity from front to back. This will be welded to the inner rock as well as plug welded to the body mount braces. Once that fabrication is done the outer rock will be installed and we will move on to hanging the front doors, B pillars and rear doors to finalize gaps and fabrication of the roof and rain channel.

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Fred is working closely with an employee of our restoration shop on the extensive metal fabrication that will need to be done in order to the mate the two halves of the body. Prior to installing the inner rockers the body/floor braces between the two sections of body will need to be cleaned sand blasted and in some cases fabricated. In the picture below you will see one of the braces in place and because of the stretching of the body the tunnel is actually removed and the center section of floor is flat. The original brace had rotted away so the brace that was used was from a donor and the hump portions of the brace will was cut out and a flat section will be fabricated and welded.

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On the parts end of the project Fred has been busy with finding and gathering parts. As with any restoration it is a game of logistics. Any little hiccup on a part needed can greatly slow or bring a project to a halt. In Fred's case he is gather items such as sheet metal for the nose and trim for the sides as possible. Even though it may sound premature they will be need the trim to test fit prior finalizing any of the metal work. So far Fred has retrieved from the fourth of our warehouse new inner fenders, hood and passenger side fender. He did say that we have the driver's side as well and hopes to locate that in the coming days. The interesting part about the NOS hood was that it had been ordered from Packard by the dealer pre-painted in green, interesting to see that being done even back in the 50's. Fred also located the side trim, gravel shields, grille surroundings and inner pieces all NOS and that is just the tip of the iceberg here at our warehouse. We have numerous pieces of NOS body panels and trim for various years of Packards.

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My favorite part was reading the tags with the various Packard dealer names on them.

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The floor in photo #4 does not have the same relief as the floor in photo #175.

Will that be an issue?

The original floor looks like it is raised in the back?

I hope the dealer information is noted somewhere for others interested in such information. I don't know who the roster keeper is for Packard Dealers/Distrubutors is anymore.

Quote:

Good catch. The floor in #4 also appears to have two large and thicker reinforcement panels placed on a large portion of the floor for some purpose.

If you are referring to the center section of floor. Look in the back section of the body in picture #175 you will see it sitting there. That is the center section that was fabricated originally by the coach builder. We will use it as a template and make make new