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My gawd, what a beautiful workspace!!

Right! Not even a trashcan in the way!

Thanks guys! I try to keep it as clean as possible....makes working in it less stressful. The floor coating helps because it keeps dust to almost zero, and makes fluid spills easy to clean up. It's not totally impervious, but better than bare concrete. I also haven't built a workbench and some other storage areas yet. Those will fill it up more. But I will keep the floor space as open and clear as possible. Working in my neighbor's shop back when I first got the Panama made me a clean freak for my own shop. Over there every square inch of floor space had some random junk on it, making it impossible to move around and find any sort of tools.

I had a few minutes to look deeper in the Super 8 tonight. A quick check of the radiator showed it was dry inside, though I had filled it up a month ago. Also, the rubber gasket on the cap had folded over last time it was installed.

I found a few coolant leaks. One around the gasket for the oil cooler, and a few loose hose clamps. I tightened all those up and refilled the coolant to the correct level.

I started it and let it warm up. No other coolant leaks noted. The water pump is pushing water as expected. The temp gauge on the dash is reading higher than with the temp gun on different parts of the engine. When it says 180 on the dash, it's closer to 160 on the engine.

There is an electric fan installed on the front of the radiator. I turned it on, and it does indeed cool the water as it passes through the radiator, but it is crazy loud. I will have to find a better solution.

The engine is not totally smooth yet. It has a random stumble at idle and is not smooth at all when accelerating. I will begin by verifying timing and dialing it in. The carb will likely need a rebuild and maybe that will help. Any other advice would be appreciated.

-Kevin

Those dash gauges are not pin point accurate.

I have an optimistic reading temp gauge on my 32 Ford 3-window coupe hot rod with a 55 Dodge Super Red Ram Hemi engine. It reads colder than actual coolant temp. I check the coolant temp on the back of the cylinder heads and the top and bottom radiator tanks. The radiator reading runs 170 at top tank and 150 on the lower one. This makes me think the radiator is doing its job. I get about a 170 reading on the heads I use a mechanical fan and a 160 deg thermostat.

Thanks both of you. That was my assumption as well. Testing with the temperature gun last night showed me similar to what you are seeing JWL.

The guy who rebuilt the engine left the thermostat out on purpose, but I will likely put it back in. I prefer to have the cooling system operating as designed (as much as possible given that I will have to use an electric fan).

Does anyone have a picture of the bracket for the air cleaner? I think I'm going to have to fabricate one up, but I'm not sure what it looks like or how it attaches to the air cleaner.

-Kevin

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  Missing bracket.jpg (125.35 KB)

There is a repro on ebay.


Ebay Bracket

or search for:
1937-39 Packard Super Eight air cleaner bracket NORS

Thanks for the link Bob! I went ahead and ordered it.

-Kevin

My brother in law and I were able to pull the fuel pump and rebuild it with a kit from Then and Now. It took quite a while for the kit to arrive, almost a month.

The kit was great, and they had a video of their machinist rebuilding nearly the exact same pump. It made the job easy for us, especially with it being our first time opening a fuel pump.

The fuel pump no longer leaks. Now I need to figure out the carburetor rebuild. I'm not seeing a kit from Mike's Carb Parts. I'll call them on Monday and see.

Also need to go through the whole ignition system. The car idles rough and is really rough on acceleration. I noticed today that the distributor is "clocked" one mounting hole off where it was before, and where other cars have it mounted (3 mounting holes). Does this mean the oil pump was installed incorrectly? I remember we set #1 at TDC and put the distributor on according to that. But I want to go through and check it all again. Something isn't adding up.

-Kevin

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  Rebuild successful.jpg (109.08 KB)

Have you checked with Daytona? They have most of the Carb kits. Also what number kit do you need? I have a couple of new kits that I pulled out of a parts pile recently.