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I look forward to hearing your review on it.

I was just about to suggest a review on the MoparPro site too, especially if you're happy with it once installed, to encourage them to keep making it!

At this point, West and Don, I'm pretty happy. My tank arrived tonight. I'm excited, but I going to tackle the installation tomorrow morning, maybe after a cruise and coffee in Bethesda.

They did send a 37 Plymouth tank intended for a guy in Hawaii which arrived here yesterday, but bottabing bottaboom the 37-40 Packard 8 correct tank arrived tonight. It looks great, no?

I'll syphon and filter my existing gas into 2 new 5-gal cans, then drain the rest with a short 2-gal that fits under the car.

I'm really glad I invested in those long stainless T-bolts. Besides not corroding, they are long enough to make it easy to attach the straps and cinch up.

Five holes are correct for this tank so my sending unit should transfer over. My current tank is a bit misshapen and only holds 18 gal, I may have to bend the arm on the float down after I measure depth of the 2 tanks. I'm tempted, once the tank is out, to cut an access hole in the floor of the trunk and make a cover.

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FUEL TANK: Usually it takes me 4 times to get it right, but this time it only took once, but all day.

High marks on the moparpro.com '37-'38-'39-'40 Packard 8-cylinder fuel tank FU-1101. Everything is correct. Same size drain and threads as original. Same gas gauge sending unit holes and threads as original. Same spout. It fit like a glove and looks so good powder-coated..

I couldn't find where the grounding should be for the gauge. On my old tank I had scraped the lower rear of the tank where the strap holds it and jammed a flattened piece of copper against it with the other end jammed behind a rear frame bolt. I was not going to file the new tank. The manual just tells you the tank must be grounded for the gauge to work.

I made a grounding wire and ran it from one of the sending unit mounting screws to a self-threading metal screw in the center rear frame. That worked, or it's getting grounded some other way because the gauge worked when I filled it with gas.

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Joe, that's great work and looks like a nice reproduction of an otherwise hard to find tank!

FUEL TANK Thanks, Don. West, that tank is all you could wish for.

DOOR HANDLES, LOCKS and KEYES: Back in '59, a girl I had been dating and I went to the drive-in movie theater. When the movie ended, she replaced the speaker box on the passenger side stanchion and I pulled away. The cord caught on the door handle and badly damaged it and the door itself. Even after having it repaired, I could not lock the car and always had to leave a vent window open. Also over time my handles got droopy.

I got a new locking door handle for the passenger and for the driver side. The locking door handle for the driver’s door was an accessory in 1940.

I bought a blank Packard key on eBay and had it cut to my ignition key, and then had both door locks cut to my ignition key. I can finally lock the car after getting out on either side. OK Big deal. But I'm already getting comments like "Gee I'd forgotten that we used to lock our cars with a key instead of a fob."

HORNS My horns were an embarrassment. At the Forest Grove Concours in Oregon 4 years ago, the judges asked me to honk the horn and promptly burst out in laughter. It sounded like a calf calling for its mama. Finally I read the manual, the '38-'39 service manual ('40 didn't have one different from the owner's manual.) You need a feeler gauge to set the gap for the high and low horns. Then you adjust the nut at the top until it's loud and clear. It was actually pretty easy. Horns pull a. lot of amps, so I shut off the battery while I disconnected and reconnected wires to adjust one horn at a time. Works great now. Wow. I leaned on it pretty good on someone who decided to so some texting while the light was green. Makes you jump.

CONVERTIBLE TOP HOLD DOWN STRAPS PP#327380 Back in the day when I was working on the top parts and the box was being built by Gary Martin, I found a part called a footman loop, PP#327381. In the sheetmetal wall that forms the insides of the box on the left and right, there were 2 holes on each side to mount the footman loops for the hold-down straps. The straps I had for many years weren’t long enough to pass through the footman hoop and encircle the folded top frame, so I got some leather strap, punched the holes and reused the buckles from the old straps. The folded top is really secure now and looks neat. Little things please little minds.

HEADLIGHTS AND HIGH-BEAM INDICATOR. I bought a large picture frame. The carton it came in was perfect opened up flat for making a headlight test screen. The instructions were in the Owner's Manual because sealed beams were first used in 1940, so everything about them was written up. I marked my targets on the cardboard and propped it. I used my iPhone measurement laser to position the car back 25-feet from the board.

The right headlight was relatively on target, but the left was way off, too high and too far left. Probably shining directly into the eyes of an oncoming driver. I also used the board to aim and even up my fog lights.

There was a tiny bit of rust at the inside bottom of my headlight rims, so I steel-wooled them and sprayed new primer before reinstalling.

I don't do a lot of night driving, but I did on Friday night taking a friend's son to his senior prom at Dumbarton House in Georgetown. I noticed that my High-beam Indicator wasn't indicating. I reached under and up on the left side of the column, which makes it east to access the speedometer backside, and popped out the light. I replaced the bulb with a brand new one, pushed it in the socket hole, and…. nada.

At this point my style of thinking is at a disadvantage. I missed a clear logical step.

Instead I went on an Easter Egg hunt into the electrical, pulling out my wiring diagram and noting that wire #25 goes from the high-beam light to the dimmer switch. Aha! Two screws on the floorboard and the dimmer drops with its wires into a compartment under the car.

I pulled it out from the top side and noted one wire was hanging by a connector with a broken prong. I tried to reconnect that one-fingered connector but it just kept slipping out with the last turn of the screw. If I cut off the connector and added a new one, the wire would be even shorter and harder to re-attach, so I opted to add an extension. That effort was fraught with difficulty, my arms not being as long as Sonny Liston's. I made an extension with an L connector to lessen the tension, jacked up the car, removed the pedal springs so I could stick one hand up and weave the other to the switch. I managed to cut and strip the wire and add the connector on my extension, and attach the new connector to the switch. NOW the light has to work.

I stuffed the dimmer through the compartment hole into the cabin and from the top side aligned the screw holes. The operation in that position is meant for contortionists only. I got everything back together. ..Hit the high beams…nada.

What if the light socket isn’t get enough ground? Should have thought about this. I pulled the socket out, attached a jump wire and attached it to ground. The light burns brightly.

I dipped a Q-Tip in turpentine, prob should have used alcohol, and stuck it through the whole to clean the back side of the red high-beam gem. That’s all it was, my friend. A dirty (#!%&*$&##) red gem that just needed cleaning. Now everything absolutely works except for rolling up my rear window with the crank. If your high-beam indicator isn’t working, I hope this post saves you some time and anguish in solving it.

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That fuel tank looks awesome. I'm glad that's an available part. Nice work on the install.

Excellent report. You got a LOT done in one day. There is nothing like everything on an old car working as it was designed.

Thanks, Kevin and West.
HIGH BEAM INDICATOR: to follow up, the light was dark the next day. The back side of the lucite must be corroded. The turpentine and alcohol I applied cleaned it and while wet the light shone thru, but that didn’t remove the corrosion. I very carefully scraped it with a dental tool and now the light shines thru.

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‘40 160 DASH PLASTIC: I’m going to replace 3 very warped pieces of original dash plastic (from a sedan). My center ash tray does not snap into position as I remember it did. I have Prevegen but forgot where I put the bottle. A cross piece of some kind is missing. There are two screw holes in the dash metal, but I don’t know what the missing piece looks like.
If your dash has a similar set-up, I could sure use a picture of the hole with the ash tray removed. Maybe the piece is easy to make.
I use a blinking LED as my security system indicator and placed it behind the 110 radio button hole I don’t use. The battery box and switch for it go in the ashtray.

mktx.com/packard/IMG_0892.MOV

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