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My 1938 super eight has a Packard search light. Its in the middle of the paint job and have to make the decision to keep it or not. If I keep it I needs a rubber piece to seal it (the old 1 is hard & cracked) but nobody seems to have it, or I can eliminate the search light all together. When I look at the hole in the windshield style it seems like it came from the factory with search light.

Is the old gasket a really odd shape that using some generic grommet is out of the question? If so and the old gasket is in good enough shape that some Bondo or hard sculpting clay can be applied to fill the cracks and replace any missing chunks you can do that and then sand the old repaired hard piece smooth. One you have it looking decent you can use the old piece to make a silicone mold and then use urethane rubber with a UV stable additive to make a new piece. I have done this for a few odd pieces on the 47 that were unavailable. Here are photos of those basic steps for some sill pieces I made.

For those that spot the differences, my 47 originals were so bad with large missing chunks as to be unusable for patterns so bought used but slightly damaged 48 pieces for the starting shapes. Those are different cosmetically from 47s so this job actually had another interim casting after the cracks and missing rubber in the 48 pieces was repaired. Using plaster of paris a work casting was made duplicating the repaired 48 pieces. That plaster piece was then modified to the 47 cosmetics and then a second silicone mold of that modified plaster casting was needed to make the urethane repro of a correct 47 sill.

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Very nice repro, Howard! BDC, I too have that hole in the windshield corner post and do not have a spotlight. I have not quite decided yet what to do about it, but if you elect to 'lose' yours and fill in the hole, I might be interested in your light if you were so inclined to sell it. I have seen a few on Ebay, but not sure how they'd fit and was hoping to find a Packard unit, or at least one that had been IN a Packard so I know it would fit. Maybe you could advise once you got sorted on your dilemma?...It does seem that a ton of cars are 'without' them and I'm not sure how 'proper' one would look on my car ('39 Six) - they sometimes look a little ungainly to me but like you say, the hole sure looks factory. Maybe welding up the hole is the right way to go.....

Beautiful work, Howard! Very impressive.

For the spotlight hole, as far as I know the spotlight was always added as an accessory by the dealer rather that being done during the car's production.

Is it possible Don, that the hole was factory and just came with a rubber plug, or some other blind, i.e. a chrome grommet? The hole in my car definitely does not look liked it was drilled, post-production.

Is it possible Don, that the hole was factory and just came with a rubber plug, or some other blind, i.e. a chrome grommet?

Apologies for jumping in for Don, but no, NOT possible.

Dave (O_D), no problem as it answered the question and confirmed my educated guess.

For what it's worth, I have a pair of period-correct Unity lights on my site linked below and also one that is specifically Packard as it says so on the switch. That one will need some work but the first two have enough to make one very good one with very little work.

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No idea what kind of tools were available then but some of the hand punches (Greenlee knockouts come to mind) will make a hole indistinguishable from one made by a factory using a monster press. It depends on access behind or curvature of the metal as to whether something like that could have been used but there might have been a factory tool with a die shape that could account for curvatures. A hole saw and a bit of deburring can also make a clean and punched look hole but would take some careful finish work. Unlike todays mechanics who seem to be under constaints to hold to the best case flat rate time and get it done quickly I think mechanics then took a bit more pride in their work so a clean factory looking hole by other means is not out of the question.

Okay, okay, I stand corrected. But it is a pretty nice hole, nonetheless. Not sure how one would drill a hole with a perfect chamfer like that. Looks like it's 'always been there'.(almost like it was punched or stamped out) So, that would lead to the question, what is the 'thinking' on spotlights? Use 'em or lose them??? My take was to put one on the car to 'fill the hole' more than anything. I have always found them to be a bit of an ungainly accessory on ANY car. I guess they have their uses (like on cop cars or taxis) but as an add-on for a regular 4-Dr sedan, they seem gaudy and cumbersome. Any thoughts???

IMO, in the postwar days thru the 50s spotlights were more of a follow the crowd thing. Seatcovers, sun visors, foglights and spotlights were all in vogue but as to how useful (except maybe seatcovers with small children) any of them were, probably not very. Roads were better and there were more lights along the way postwar to get much real use out of a spotlight. Prewar I would think the spotlight and driving lights might have actually done some good. If the car was not based in a city then lots of rural unlit roads and relatively poor headlights may have been an incentive to install and use a spotlight on a car.