Packard Forum Index » V-8 (1955-56)

Think you need to jack the car up.

Remove drive shaft. Support trans. Remove bracket holding trans..

Get small jack, . Jack trans over till you can remove motor

Few things you can do. . Use long jumper wire, jump each wire from connector. To the correct finger.. to see if you have continuity.

If not ,, possibly a broken wire..

Download the autolite procedure, to test system..
It is supposed to be on this site.

It shows the test lights they use.. to locate problems.

Quote:

You need to reinstall the armature in a way where the brushes are pushed properly. Hopefully you saw they are out of place in this photo. Don’t forget, or the plastic mounting board may be damaged.

Did you read the service manual for the push button system? I really recommend it. It will be a lot easier when you have a full understanding of the intended system operation.

At this point I don't see any way to repair things without taking the actuator out of the car. It is hard enough to get the brushes back in position even with it laying on a workbench. In the car, I think it will be next to impossible without causing more damage. It will also be a bit easier to trace out and replace or repair any damaged wires while it is out of the car. Make sure none of the fingers are damaged or bent out of position while it is out too. If the actuator was not in reverse when the motor end plate came off you will need to pull the rest of the motor off and use a screwdriver to turn the worm manually to get it to reverse so you can reach the setscrew holding the actuator on the manual shaft. With luck none of the fingers are off the segment blocking it but that is not a given.

The brushes will need to be held in against their springs and away from the armature using some very small ties or thin string as you slide the end piece back in over the commutator. At the same time take care to gently pull the slack in the wires thru just enough that nothing touches the armature when the end plate is in position. Wiring inside is a tradeoff between excess wire that pushes back and can bunch up vs being pulled so tight a loop is pulled against the end of the armature. Once end plate is about halfway in position when the brushes are far enough over the commutator to stay in the holders and just before the end plate is fully seated in position, the tie material can then be cut and gently pulled out. The fiber insulating piece that holds the bushes and holders is very fragile so you need to take extra care not to put any pressure or twisting force on it while you get the brushes in position..

Mr Pushbutton wrote a brief how-to article on how to remove the actuator and disconnect the wires without causing unneeded damage so read thru that piece first.

The factory instructions for the pushbutton assembly and their procedure for removing and adjusting the actuator starts on page 111 of the Twin Ultramatic supplement section of the service manual.

Here is the Autolite service manual for the pushbuttons and actuator.


Once everything is back together, if it still won't work we can continue with finding out what has happened. One possibility is the motor kept running or coasting and managed to drive the sector off the end where it lost contact with an end finger. That can happen if the brake adjustment is too loose and the motor coasts after it was told to stop. Once contact is lost with an end finger it will not drive back on its own and in most cases the actuator will likely need to be removed so the finger(s) can get placed back on the segment without getting further damaged or bent in the process. There was a service article advising dealers to chamfer the ends of the segments to make electrical driving possible if a finger was off but often that chamfer was not enough -- particularly if the finger is completely blocking the segment.

Here is what I mean if the actuator wound up in that finger off condition. As you can see, if you tried to drive the motor electrically with fingers off the segment like the photo shows nothing would happen except the fingers would be bent or other parts broken in the process. In that photo it also shows the park finger off and shorted against the sector metal which would definitely cause a problem with melted wiring if the auto park relay is in the circuit. I am not saying that is what happened to yours but it does need to be ruled out.