Packard Forum Index » Pre-War (1899-1942)

1941 Packard 110 Club Coupe. Transmission was professionally rebuilt 10 years ago and has been running flawlessly ever since -- 5,000 miles so far. Went underneath today to change the transmission oil and saw this strange looking device sticking out of the back of the transmission. There are some wires coming out the top of it which have been clipped. I vaguely remember discussing this with the rebuilder but not sure what we concluded it was.

Any ideas?

That is the governor for an electromatic clutch.
There may also be a couple of switches on the gearshift shafts on the opposite side of the transmission cover from the shift levers

As mention, that's the Electromatic governor and some photos of the engine, driver's side, would help determine whether or not you have that option or what's left of it. Cars with Electromatic usually had red clutch pedal pads too.

The Electromatic Clutch was introduced in 41 and was offered as a standalone option for 41 and I think 42. If you want to read the operation manual and get a general feel about how the option works and what components it had, the EC is well covered in this service letter. Some articles have said it was a stopgap Packard made to try and better compete with the fully automatic transmissions coming available from other mfgs. I believe Hudson and maybe a couple of others had a similar device.

Not sure how popular buying the EC only option was as most often it seems the AeroDrive (later called EconoDrive) overdrive option was also installed along with the clutch. The prewar EC unit was quite complex and had many fine tune adjustments for the various gears but despite all the adjustment possibilities, it could only be perfectly "tuned in" for one driver's preferences. Once adjusted, from all accounts the EC did seem to work well but because it's operation was adjusted to almost always have the same response, using it was not the best option under all driving conditions. Fortunately it was easy to turn it off and still have the clutch work under manual operation just as if the EC was never present.

Not sure the EC standalone availability was even offered postwar and that later EC unit was a completely redesigned, much simpler -- mechanically and electrically -- unit with only a couple of adjustments needed. It too could only be matched to one drivers preferences though. EC was available thru the 23rd series but was discontinued with the 24th series since after the Ultramatic was introduced and established, Packard was fully competitive and no longer had a need for such a device.

As the units aged and expertise on how they worked and what adjustment needed to be tweaked when something was wrong went away after the introduction of the Ultramatic, many of the units were turned off or entirely disabled if they started to act up. As parts availability went away after Packard's demise, often to make reaching something else needing service easier to get to, a part of the non functioning EC was removed and not reinstalled.

Thanks, Howard! That's very interesting and definitely not something I'd want to reenable. I just wanted to make sure that it wasn't some sort of overdrive that I was missing out on since I've been doing a fair a bit of highway driving and anything above 60 mph starts to feel like it's pushing the car too hard.

It is good as a conversation starter at the local car shows since so few in working condition remain but the OD is definitely the better option. The good thing is if you ever decide to find and install a trans/OD unit you have one less thing to buy -- only repair the cut off wires. The governor was the same for both units and one or the other or both wires was used depending on which option(s) were installed.