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Looks great!

For the heater, I would shut it off, especially if you're planning on running it for some amount of time. Can you pull the connections and just insert pipe plugs for now until you get the heating system components restored?

Vacuum lines are quarter inch steel lines.

For the heater bypass if a valve or plugs is not a good option use a length of rubber hose between the ports. Place some kind of wood or metal plug in the hose that is large enough to not go inside the metal connections and will stop the flow. If there is flow present the hot water will in effect be continually short circuited and a substantial portion will keep heating up and never reach the radiator for cooling.

Thanks for the tips. I'll pick up some 1/4" lines today and get the vacuum lines on.

The car came to me with no heater valve installed, so there were only two hoses....one from the water pump to the heater core, and the other from the heater core to the block. So I can just undo those hoses at the heater core and plug them?

The entire heating system is going to have to be rebuilt, but I need to get the car on the road and begin testing other systems first. I won't be needing a heater until late fall, so I'm in no hurry to tackle that.

-Kevin

You could remove the long hose from the heater core and the short hose from the head outlet. Plug the long hose and reconnect the former heater end to the head outlet. When you get the core and valve fixed you will probably want new hoses anyway.

Gentlemen,

Celebrate with me a major milestone....the Panama's first drive on on an actual road!

It's been 10 months since I bought the car and in my time owning it, it has never seen pavement. The extent of its "driving" was down the gravel driveway to the neighbor's shop and lift. There were times when I thought that I would never reach this point, so it was a great day to actually be able to drive the car.

Video:


Last night and this morning my brother in law and I worked like crazy to get everything wrapped up. We bled the brakes last night twice and got a nice firm pedal. We adjusted the brakes on all four corners, and my neighbor checked them all and gave us a thumbs up. Also adjusted the parking brake.

Also finally got around to making and installing new vacuum lines from the fuel pump. Two lengths of rubber vacuum hose, and two lengths of 1/4" steel tubing. Pretty simple to do overall.

I washed the car for the first time in many months. It looked much better afterwards. The lack of weather stripping means a good amount of water got on the carpet. Eventually I'll get that dealt with. We had a short debate on whether or not I should put the wheel covers on, because the blue wheels look great against the whitewalls. But I like things to be as original as possible, so I polished up the wheel covers and slammed them on.

After some fiddling with tuning the engine (didn't help much) I took it out on the road for a test, with a chase vehicle in case things went horribly wrong. I'm happy to say that all went relatively well! In fact, I ended up going on several test drives, as did my brother in law. Probably went 15 miles total. Not much, but enough to do a quick shakedown.

A couple of observations.
The good:
1.) Brakes work great. No pulsing, pulling, squealing, etc. Firm pedal.
2.) Transmission works! Direct drive lock up occurs about 35 mph and shifts out of direct drive when coming to a stop. Once or twice it didn't shift down, but for the most part it worked fine.
3.) Drives straight with no major wandering
4.) Fairly smooth over bumps
5.) No overheating. The temp stayed just about the center of the gauge the whole time. Checked temp on various parts of the engine with an infrared thermometer and nothing was high.

The bad:
1.) Engine performance is not good yet. We redid the initial timing, cleaned the points and gapped them correctly. Idle is not perfect, still runs a bit rich, but does seem to smooth out at speed. I'm going to do all new ignition parts and go from there.
2.) Stumble on initial acceleration
3.) lots of rattling in the doors due to no weather strip.
4.) On my last test drive I heard a squeaking or chirping coming from somewhere in the rear. Very minor, but definitely noticeable. It was not there on the first several tests that I could tell. I'm hoping it's not one of my bearings....ugh.


All in all, I'm just happy I was able to drive the car!

-Kevin

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  New vacuum lines.jpg (133.60 KB)


  Sans wheel covers.jpg (94.90 KB)


  Brother in law at the wheel.jpg (138.91 KB)


  First ride for the kids.jpg (124.90 KB)


  Happy to be driving.jpg (109.46 KB)

Congratulations and well done! A just reward for all the work you've done. Nothing like being behind the wheel on that first drive.

nice.

Awesome. Just awesome. And yes, the hubcaps are righteous.

Wow...Your Packard is so lucky that YOU purchased her...Great work all the way around...very impressive...Ernie in Arizona

Congratulations!!!

You've worked hard to get to this point. Enjoy it!

That first drive after tons of work to get them roadworthy... always a fantastic feeling.