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

All done! Just need to figure out what I'm doing for the bushing insulators.





The vacuum diaphragm was toast, so it obviously wasn't doing anything.




There are a couple of little vent holes in here, is there supposed to be something to keep dirt from getting in?

I cut a strip of gasket paper and roll it around a bolt to form a little insulating sleeve. 2 or 3 times around is usually enough. At the vent there was something like horsehair. You could cut a little piece of a kitchen copper scrubbing pad for that.

The vent hole should have a fibrous material in it. You can see some of it sticking out on this photo of my 1951 Henney-Packard’s pump which I rebuilt a while back.

A bad vacuum diaphragm will often lead to oil burning and will usually disable windshield wipers. A bad diaphragm may allow enough oil to reach the intake manifold to cause plug fouling in two adjacent cylinders.

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Sounds good, I'll do that. I suppose the vent holes had a filter like the brake booster, also horsehair I believe.

I put a bit of polyester fill that was left over from rebuilding my seats for a filter for these little vent holes. If the judges notice I'll tell them it's unicorn hair.




The rebuild of my fuel/vacuum pump was only supposed to be preventative maintenance because I had no idea how old it was. But I was pleasantly surprised that a random miss, that I had been unable to tune away, was gone after putting the rebuilt pump on.

Regarding the electric fuel pump debate.........
After putting my fuel pump back on it was empty, and the line to the carb was empty, which I assume always drains back down after a while. I fired the car up and it ran for a few seconds, stopped and then I fired it up again and away it went. (It hadn't been started since the day before.) All that to say, I still think that if you have a good mechanical fuel pump that's all you need..............along with your original 6 volt system!

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This has been my experience too. With a good mechanical pump and a sorted fuel system I've never had any scenario where an electric pump would have been necessary.