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Ford used lead on body seams as late as 1954 that I know of.

My 1965 Imperial LeBaron used lead too and it is documented that my former 1964 Imperial Crown Limousine had over 150 lbs of lead.

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Wow. I come across a lot of lead on my car, but nowhere near 150lbs.

Even with all that lead, I still found faults and flaws in the Ghia coachwork but all in hidden areas. With the cost of the car when new at $18,500, it had to be visually flawless!

By far the worst area of lead on my car was a repair that had been done at some point on the passenger side rear fender. Here is the front and back of the piece that was cut out. It’s about a 5in x 10in section that was all lead. The thing that was bad about this old repair was that it included the bracket for the mud guard. Needless to say, that broke loose who knows how long ago. The last picture shows the new sheet metal welded in place with the bracket securely in place.

I’ve been meaning to ask for a while but keep forgetting. Can anyone tell me difinitively what the striping on my car should be? I know the deouble stripe from the spear down the length of the car. I also know what the two double lines on the wheels should be.

But, I have seen cars with and without striping around the hood louvers.

Looking at all of the various sales brochures for 1937 isn’t much help as it is nearly impossible to tell if I’m seeing a stripe or just a reflection on along the top edge of the bump out for the hood louvers. I’m leaning toward it just being a reflection.




Anyway, I’ve come across pictures of restored cars with a lot of variations. Some have no stripes near the louvers, some have a single stripe just above the louvers, and some have a single stripe above and a single stripe below the louvers


When I got the car from Dad, there were just two short spots where I could see a very slight remnant of the stripe that goes the length of the car. Dad had the wheel painted back in 2004, but I don’t recall ever seeing the stripes on the wheels before that. I’m sure all of them were pretty well polished off long ago. It will be nice to have the back.

I got back to work on the dash panel trip pieces. I think they turned out quite nice!. The pictures of the finished pieces makes the paint look a lttle blue, but it’s really pretty close to the gauge color.

This one is just another item to document. Maybe it will be of use to my kids one day….

A while back, it was brought to my attention that the commercial 120s and the 138CDs have a different part number for the hubcaps than the 120s. The difference being that these hubcaps did not say ‘One Twenty” on them.

However, I have an original sales brochure for the 138CD and in the photos of that brochure, you can clearly see that the hubcaps DO say “One Twenty”.

The theory is that the hubcaps that do NOT say “One Twenty”, were really only for the commercial 120s and not the 138CDs, even though the parts list indicated otherwise.

Now, I have another source of information. While looking at the Detroit Public Library site recommended by BigKev to research my striping question, I found an archive photo of a 138CD 7-passenger touring sedan. If you zoom in on that photo, guess what? The hubcaps clearly DO say “One Twenty”.

So, I believe that the hubcaps that say “One Twenty” are, in fact, correct for the 138CDs. Others may not agree. But, at a minimum, no judge could rightly make a deduction either way since there is clear documentation from Packard to indicate both. I don’t care about judges as my car will never be a show car. For me the only “judges” that matter are myself, Dad, my wife and the future third generation owners of my car….my kids.

The other thing about this photo is that it pretty clearly shows what my car looks like without whitewall tires. I’ll definitely be sticking with whitewalls!!

I can’t speak directly to that but in 1940 at least it was possible to order a Packard without the model designation showing and possibly the same was true earlier. For example, where the hood emblem usually would have 110 or 120, there were special ones with just the Packard script. As for the commercial chassis, again my knowledge is for slightly later models but they were typically fitted with Super Eight parts even if they were in the 120 series and they also had no model designations on them.

Photo courtesy of Mike Chirco at Tucson Packards