Packard Forum Index » Post-War (1946-54)

Howdy y’all!
OK so here we go, asked the man who owns a few🤣
The newest arrival to the fleet is here, at 1949, 2300 series 2 door with an R 11, I picked it up from an old wrench in town. Who’s customer had passed away, couldn’t pass it up and even though it’s a basket case, I don’t think it’s scrap, it’s had a lot of work done to it already. The 288 has been rebuilt and a lot of other restorative work has been done in the past 1015 years. I have receipts, but it arrived and we had to put it in clutch we had to put the clutch in in order to get it off the flatbed, I open up the floor and I see that the top of the transmission is already halfway off all of the six or eight bolts are off and it’s teetering to the side. So I takeoff the arms and I open it up just to inspect it and that’s where I am right now , here are the pictures. What do I do? Is there a little bit of cleaning that I can do and drain it and put a new oil? Is there some kind of inspection that I can do to these yolk arms that go down into the gears to see if they’re worthy , or is probably the issue in the linkage? The column shifter was frozen for some reason it didn’t wanna move. It didn’t wanna move when the transmission was attached. It moves freely now that it’s off…. the way do I go from here? (Besides a new dash)

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Good afternoon...Start by removing the bottom drain in the case and cleaning and flushing the transmission and shifting system until all is nice and clean...take your time and get it really clean...Our 1949 is filled with 140 transmission gear oil...old fashioned Dinosaur juice. Look carefully at the connection from the bottom of the steering column, from under the car, and the two shifting arms. One is reverse and first, the other is second and third. When we did ours, we replaced the washers with ones that fit quite snug and with the new oil...the transmission has shifted fine for about 10 years. The key with ours was that there was too much slack between the shifting arms and the turnbuckel connections...once the slack was out...all was happy. Others more skillful than I, will no doubt have more to say...Ernie in Arizona

I believe the R11 your referring too is an overdrive unit, I am not to sure what transmission is in that car, but the V8 packards used the Borg Warren T-85 Trans with the optional R11 over drive.

However, with my T85 I had a similar issue where the linkage would not move. It came out to be that the shift forks (the things that actuate the sliders over the gears) were gunked up in the transmission cover. Once they were free it shifted fine. But at that point I just rebuilt the transmission.

Awesome advice yes. I’m planning on cleaning it out soon and I’ll take it from there.
140 gear oil, as in 140W? I’ve never seen that type for sale but this is all new to me.
I picked up a second R11 for the other one in Tucson a couple weeks ago, it was from a Henney Hurst packard. I can tell that one moves freely

The word is Hearse, not Hurst, but the Henney-Packard transmissions were different in that some of the components were specially hardened in order to handle the nearly three-ton weight of these coaches. They will, or course, work in a passenger car but only on Custom Eights with the 356 engine and larger crank shaft pilot bearing.

I’m sorry I was dead wrong, the R11 is from a ‘48 custom 8, that I just confirmed, but it was the driveshaft that I got from him that was from a limo

Even so, a Custom Eight transmission won’t fit anything other than a 356 engine. The input shaft is different with a much larger pilot on the 356 type and that’s the same whether overdrive or not.

**TOPIC MOVED TO POST-WAR FORUM**

Blake, with the top cover removed can you slide the 2nd/3rd synchro and the 1st/Reverse selector back and forth? If so the ‘lock-up’ is not likely in the transmission (you will likely need to depress the clutch and roll the gears a bit). Moving on to the cover, there are a sequence of detent and interlock balls that inhibit you from selecting ‘two gears at once’. If that mechanism is not working correctly you won’t be able to move to its neutral position thus inhibiting the shift. With one of the shifting forks in the neutral position the other fork should be able to ‘select’, both fore and aft, but be inhibited if the first fork is not in the neutral position. Finally the adjustment of the linkage between the steering column and transmission is critical in synchronizing the neutral position on the column and the neutral position of the cover. Your problem could be nothing more than a linkage adjustment, or a worn component in the linkage.

I have another hobby car that when I first bought it would balk coming out of first (the ‘stuck in gear’ syndrome). Either on the second or third try the inhibitor function would finally work OK and I could up-shift to second. When I use the word ‘try’ that means stopping the car, pulling the shifter back into first, accelerate the car to the shifting speed, and ‘try’ again. There was never a problem with the 2nd to 3rd shift. Driving the car, and changing the transmission lube a few times ‘cured’ whatever was wrong. That car is a ‘top loader’ so there is no additional linkage to worry about. The car suffered from lack of use before I bought it, so I just wrote it off to corrosion or varnish in the transmission shifting rails/inhibitor mechanism.

dp

Oh wow okay, I hope I got the right transmission, I’ll take more pictures of the exact stamped numbers besides R11, and I’ve yet to get any clutch parts, but how do I know which one to use, the bigger one that’s on the front of the transmission now or the smaller one that was included in the sale of the transmission, horrible pictures I know.

But the pictures here are of course, not the transmission that’s stuck, it’s the one that I hope with match up with my 327, but haven’t gathered any clutch parts.

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