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Regarding your heat riser: the remnant of your counterweight indicates that it is in the up, or closed position. That puts a lot of heat on the carb. Take two small hammers and tap the shaft forward/back, forward back till it is free enough to turn. Turn it down and then unhook the spring in the front. In the summer you can easily live without it.

Thanks, Ross. I’ll give that at try!

Okay…didn’t take as much tapping as I thought it might to loosen it up a bit. But, it struggled to get ahold of the counterweight remnant enough to turn….turns out that the counterweight was broken at just the right place for a 15/16 socket to fit on enough to give me a little grip.

Got the heat riser position change….now for a test drive.

In some of the service material in the Literature Archive there is a procedure for removing the 120 radiator without removing the sheet metal. As I recall, it involves removing the fan and water pump and perhaps the water outlet on the head, removing upper & lower hoses, unbolting the horns and moving them back, removing the hood, then unbolting the radiator from the harness and lifting it up and out while tilting it back. One or both stay rods would probably need to be removed. It sounds like a two-man job to me, but it would save a lot of disassembly, and leave the harness and sheet metal in place. I don't remember if this was in a shop manual or one of the service bulletins.

Okay, several of you mentioned the heat riser a while back. Unfortunately, along with that were several that said “you’ll know if it closed”….Well, the rookie here clearly didn’t know. So, the heat riser was closed. I have it open now and took it for a test drive to get it up to temperature. When I came back and shut off the car, the carburetor leak was MUCH better. It’s not totally gone, but after about four minutes, it was like this photo rather than spitting fuel out. I’m gonna call this one a win and move on to trying to track down the source of the coolant leak. Thanks, everyone!




I’m also posting the following that I found on this site to my blog just for easy reference…

packardinfo.com/xoops/html/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?post_id=93945

Quote:
These do not typically come with a rebuild or a rebuild kit as it's expected to reuse your originals. On later cars and it may apply to your too, there should also be Phenolic washers under the flat washers holding on the pump (no lock washers) and the bolt heads were the type with holes drilled through the heads that used locking wire.

I’m working up the nerve to pull the front clip (piece at a time as Kev did). I have a serious undercoating…about an 1/8in thick and quite hard. It covers everything under the car, including all the bolts, nuts, etc…

Any recommendations on how to remove this from the nuts and bolts so I can get them out?

A wire wheel should be able to spot clean areas around fasteners.

I'm with BK, and you could try a heat gun on the fastener a bit before using the wire wheel/brush to soften it up some too. A putty knife will also help dig out some of the coating. The good news is that the fasteners should be rather rust free!
Bob J.

If it's that thick, hard, slick undercoat, you may need heat to get it off. I'd explore removing the radiator without removing the front clip or disassembling it.