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Good Morning Kevin...May your memories of your Dad keep him alive and with you every day. Ernie in Arizona

Over 2 years after our last failed engine, we were at it again today. Our good friend has been diligently plugging away at getting the engine put back together in between health problems and other unexpected issues.

We had it towed to his shop, then dropped the engine into place. During the course of pulling the battery, we noticed that mice had somehow gotten into the car and started to make a mess. In fact when we lifted the seat, several of them scattered. Ugh.

We spent some time getting everything hooked up to the engine in preparation for starting. Drained the old gas, new oil (10W-30), and adjusted the distributor. The engine started right up first time. It definitely needs timing dialed in and to be tuned.

Once we confirmed the engine started, we installed the radiator and filled with coolant. On the second start try the ignition wire shorted out somewhere and caught fire. Quickly shutting the ignition off stopped it. We removed the ignition from the circuit and started the car without it. The engine immediately raced (not good) because the throttle was stuck. We killed it immediately.

Third time was a charm with normal starting, idle, and running. We took it up to operating temp, lots of smoke out the back initially, and smoke off the newly painted exhaust manifold. Confirmed the '39 water pump works and no leaks. Let the engine cool down and will retorque the head nuts after.

Video:

Problems:
1.) Fuel pump leaks all over the place. It works, but the gaskets are likely shot.
2.) Carb needs a rebuild. Runs a bit rough, and accelerator pump is no good.
3.) Need to replace the ignition wire. It's going to be a nightmare. Under the dash is packed with air conditioning equipment and wires. I'm seriously considering tearing out all the A/C stuff. It is very frustrating to work around.
4.) Need to figure out a fan solution. The '39 water pump is much shorter than the '38, which leaves the fan about 6" from the radiator. I'm thinking it may be best to ditch the belt-driven fan and do dual electric fans. It's not original, but options are very limited with the situation we have.
5.) Need to find the right fan belt. 3/4" and about 49" long. We threw a temporary one on there. It works but not well.

-Kevin

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Snow visible in the picture and you don't care for the A/C... wonder why

The weather is similar here in PA and I feel the same about the A/C in my car, if it gets in the way too much it's going. Speaking of cool air, due to a combination of non-working turn signals and charging system concerns, I was driving it back and forth to the shop recently in 40° weather with the driver window down and no heat on. I don't know about your 39, but on my 55 my favorite thing to do in WARM weather is open the vent windows and air ducts and BLAST air into the car.

Sounds like you are making a lot of progress on it. In a shop setting, it's often better for something to fail obviously (like your fuel pump) then you just replace it, compared to the alternative of something you think will probably fail, but seems to work, so you are more reluctant to spend the money+time to fix it, but also feel uneasy about it if you don't. 😅

Only tangentially related to what I just said but I think you will find it humorous is the Oliver Wendell Holmes poem "One-hoss Shay" regarding the question of what were to happen if engineers were best able to design for greatest reliability but with all parts having a finite lifespan. A hint to the answer comes in the Ferdinand Porsche quote "The perfect racing car crosses the finish line first and subsequently falls into its component parts."

Safe to say that when testing in and around the shop, we wish that anything that wants to fail should do so quickly and obviously so that we might diagnose and replace it, but when on the road anything that starts to give a sign of trouble we want to "hang in there" indefinitely. Such is life!

Oh man, what a day. Ignition wire is a PITA to replace, but you've gotta do it - the old cotton insulation is crumbling inside the cable as well. Not fun.

6V electric fans, sure why not, but I also wonder if you are going 12V all the way with the A/C....

Pleased to see long awaited progress on this former Texas car. OH, and Terrell Machine for the fuel pump rebuild, but you know that.

DAF

HPH - The A/C set up takes up a ridiculous amount of real estate. The compressor on the engine is not too bad, but it interferes with the fan now that we are using a '39 water pump. But the entire underside of the dash is taken up with a massive air handler, ducting all over the place, and a stupid amount of wires. It's insane. The reason the engine raced when we started it the second time was the air handler had fallen down onto the gas pedal. I'm so tempted to just remove it all. Our temps here in eastern WA aren't too bad.

Once I get the list of above items sorted out, I will leave the fenders off and drive the car for a while. I'd like to work out any bugs before I put those enormous fenders back on.

Dave - to be honest I'm not even sure how to get the ignition cable off the ignition switch. I can't even see it, let alone reach it, with all the A/C junk in the way. I'm pretty sure the old wire caught fire inside the whole length of cable. Not sure how I'm going to clean that out and get a new wire in there.

The car is already 12V, so should be easy to do the electric fan swap. The 12V conversion and A/C was all done by the previous owner down in Texas. I can see how A/C would be helpful down there, but it's just not needed much up here.

Good call on Terrell Machine. I'll get in touch with them.

-Kevin

The ignition switch has to be disassembled which isn't easy, but I have done it. Given the car has different electrical a main relay can be installed to convert the switch from load bearing to control very easily.

I put mouse traps in the garage given northern Michigan has winter - much less so now with the global warming hoax - and I leave the hood open on my car.

Mice will not hesitate to build nests inside exhaust systems which can be prevented with a bottle over the tail pipe, and inside of disassembled motors, and open radiators

Tim - we stuck mousetraps under the seat while we were working on the car. Didn't catch any though. But I'll be very aggressive with getting rid of them. I don't want them destroying the nice leather.

How do I remove the ignition switch? I assume I have to unscrew it from the back of the dash? I really can't feel back there, let alone see anything. The A/C stuff is everywhere.

-Kevin

It's it's like the 37 ignition, the are two standoffs built into dash panel. The switch is held to those standoffs by two hex screws or nuts.

I found sticking my phone camera back there and taking a picture was helpful

Reportedly the best bait is peanut butter, and I have been told that mothballs are an effective repellent.

We had a mouse living in the stove in college and I made up a box trap the engineers said wouldn't work and caught the bugger.

Those things are observant, however. If they see one dead in a trap, they can learn to avoid it, so my traps are for data collection. If I find one in a trap I will put out poison.

If they were littering in the car, you must have a large population problem. I had a chipmunk burrowing near my garage and tried the usual methods that didn't work, but a strategically placed rat trap did. I also had squirrels thinking my pulling weeds was hiding something and they were digging up my yard. I hung the corpse from a tree branch Frankenstein style, and it was hilarious watching the reaction. What finally scared them off was putting a plastic tarpaulin over a mulch pile. I'd shoot them but I don't own any guns.

I was in town, and had a bit of time to work on my dad's Packard. First order of business was to clean up from the mice. I didn't catch any in the traps. Not sure if they are there anymore. When we lifted up the seat before, we saw at least one every time. Nothing now. I cleaned up the mess and set sticky traps all over under the seats. I put some cut up Snickers bars in the center of them. We'll see.

I removed the ignition switch from the dash. It was not fun. I can't see anything with the massive air handler in the way. I disconnected a lot of it and dropped it down a bit so I had room to get a screwdriver in there.

Now that I have the ignition switch out, I'm not sure what my next steps are. I was hoping I could just undo the armored cable and clean out the old wire. But it looks like the switch it buttoned up tight. I can see where the outer body was crimped, but I'm having a bear of a time trying to undo those crimps. The metal is thick and stiff. Do I just need to replace the whole thing? Or is there a modern replacement?

-Kevin

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