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I like the way you think! Anyway, it's been years (decades actually) since I last worked on Packards but now that I'm doing so, it is coming back to me. These aren't to push oil in as the taper must be as clean and dry as possible. Instead, I think these are there to keep moisture and dust out as was mentioned.

Therefor, and following your hypotheses, junior cars are senior to senior cars which are then junior to juniors. Strangely, it makes an odd kind of sense, especially coming from a senior!

When I bought the rear end assembly, I was rather pleased to find that there had been a bad seal leak as it preserved the brake drum, backing plate and everything on it. The other side wasn't so lucky and all these things had to be replaced due to rust. In fact, I recently bought an inexpensive solvent tank and 10 gallons of solvent primarily for the purpose of getting everything from the leak cleaned up and today I finally turned the solvent black in thirty seconds! Surprisingly, the leak also appears to have preserved the original colors of the springs.

I posted this first photo before but am doing so again just for the comparison after only a few minutes in the solvent. I don't know if soaking will take the paint off but they are still soaking so will see tomorrow.

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Nice.

Well, the new shop door was installed a few days ago which allows it to be opened with a car as large as the Henney-Packard up on the lift. Today was the drumroll as my father brought over his tractor to push the car back in and the fit is perfect! Now with the lift up it has a nice working height (any higher, I couldn't reach anything) the door is open and there's height enough to park my 1965 Cadillac underneath for when I'm not here for a while.

So with it back up, I managed to take out the muffler which was either the original or a good replacement as it had the hole for the pin at the clamp that later replacements are often missing, I have a couple new mufflers already so one less thing to have to buy.

Continuing with the triage, I see I have to take off the bell housing and the clutch to clean it all up as it's been open without a transmission for decades. It needs cleaning up at least but I hope no expense of replacement.

Still no luck on the tailpipe in getting one made but at least I now have a clear image that I was able to convert into a CAD file. This piece was made once and in very limited quantities so not sure why it can't be made again! One problem is a very large radius that is far too big for the mandrels at muffler shops but I am persistent and will eventually have a proper one made.

Excuse the mess, by the way. Clearing everything away for these installations left many things homeless until I get the shelving put back up. In fact, most of the mess you see in the background is already gone! This trip to the shop and the last we're primarily for infrastructure work and organizing once I realized that I was getting buried in stuff while disassembling another car.

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What mess?? My garage is down to a path....

In my cleanup errors this morning, I had to move several flat side window glass and channels from both Packards and Henneys. They were stored on edge and the first one I picked up, which was from a standard Henney rear side door with power windows, it became a phantom. I just touched it and it broke into thousands of tiny pieces. Some of the other glass, which I had saved primarily for the channels still attached, are cracked all over but not apart due to the substance laminated into the glass but either Henney did not use that on their rear side doors or it was replaced at some point with the wrong glass. The sensation was odd, like picking up a phantom as it was suddenly just not there!

I had wondered for years what was holding up the rear of the engine when there was no transmission but once I finally got the car up far enough to look, I forgot about it. Yesterday, though, I was removing the muffler and just happened to notice that it was being held up by the exhaust pipe! Temporarily I've placed a jack under the bell housing lower cover to remove the weight from it and it seems okay. I'm glad the pipe was solid and held up so well!

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That must be some heavy duty pipe there, to hold up a heavy engine like that.

Of the mysterious rear axle washer that was mentioned here, I have it apart again to get the dimensions to have some made and they appear to be phenolic rather than felt and it seems fairly sure to not have been felt that had hardened to look like phenolic. In my journeyman machinist days, I machined phenolic all the time and that's what this looks like.

Also, because they sit at the face at the end of the taper, there is no need for them to have a tang. That mine appeared to have one was probably just wear of the material taking up the void.

So if these things are true, how does one slide a hard washer which has an ID of about .81 over 7/8" threads? It's impossible although it's also possible that the wear pressed them to the point where the ID shrunk.

So now I'm back to wondering what the material is and even how thick it should be! The remnant from mine is only about .80" thick but I suspect that it was once much thicker so maybe it is restructured felt after all.

I think you will find a filet radius between the thread and the face where the taper begins. I suspect it's less than 0.875 in OD. In other words your sealing washer got pushed into the filet as a good little sealing washer should.

dp