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It was in the 20's here in Central Penna. got up in the morning and turned on the heat in the garage before going to the animal shelter.

When I came home and went up to the garage it was nice 54 degrees. Got the computer up and running and did some cleaning up and putting things away.

I am finally in the mood and have some spare cash and time to starting working on getting one of my two cars back on the road. It felt real good to be able to shut out the world for a couple of hours.


John F. Shireman

Here we go again! I removed the water pump from my 327 and sent it to Arthur Gould's today, they said $85 plus shipping, 3-5 days of shop time, I should have it back relatively quickly. I'm shooting for June 18, the local date of the car show, so that is 17 days minus two weekends, 13 days, plus a couple days to mail it out there and mail it back. It'll be tight but it might work.

Hope all of you have been well over the winter. It's hard for me to get excited about the Packard when the garage is full of winter stuff. Now I have the whole thing to myself again, Packard is in at an angle.

Other projects I want to complete before the 18th is the exhaust leak between the intake and exhaust manifold, the leak at the rear pinion seal, and cleaning up the new hood that I received.

I have a 51 hood with letters "PACKARD" on it, which is technically not correct for 52. But I'm not entering any competitions, and I think it will help identify my car when someone asks what year of Chevy it is. So I think I'll run the 51 hood on my 52 Packard until I can afford a complete body off restoration.

Does anyone know will a 56 ultramatic transmission oil pan fit a 52 ultramatic transmission? I know the dipstick location and length is different...

Good question. It appears there are 4 part numbers for the oil pan.

1949-54 423162
1954 450368 (Gearstart)
1955 440845 (with cast iron case)
1955-56 470143 (with aluminum case)

But they all use the same gasket (421327).

Would be good information to know since I would like to swap out the oil pan on my 50 Ultramatic one of these days. It seems to have a brazed patch where it took a hit from below.

I believe they will bolt but it's been awhile. Parts manual says the aluminum case uses 20 bolts vs 21 for 55 cast iron and the earlier models. If memory serves the extra hole space is covered with a reinforcement strip on the aluminum case pans but don't have any of them easily available to compare. Think later ones are also deeper because of the two layer valve body which might be a issue for the oil pickup on the older unit.

Carl, good to see you posting - I thought we'd lost you. I haven't got up north lately but may come up this winter. If I do, I'll give you a holler and we can sit around and talk some Packard.

I made some progress today. I removed the right fender again, and pulled the intake/exhaust manifold off. There's a big exhaust leak between the two, at the 'box' on the engine side, so I bought a couple of off-brand intake manifold gaskets and cut a gasket to fit, and installed between the two. Last year I had the face of the intake/exhaust manifold ground down, and that must have made the connection between the two out of wack. I reassembled the system and torqued everything.

I also installed the water pump, which was recently rebuilt by Arthur Goulds for $85 plus shipping. They gave me both gaskets and it went on smoothly.

The last item I'm working with is a separate tranny cooler, to replace the factory one. You can see I built a bracket to hold it in front of the radiator.

Tonight / tomorrow I'll put the rest of the motor pieces together and fire it up. I have to have the car running by Friday, our "Back to the Fifties" car show that draws over 12,000 cars.

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So, is the intake and exhaust mantifold supposed to be painted silver or are they supposed to be bare metal? I have my motor painted grey but didn't know about the mantifolds

They are supposed to be "natural" cast iron. Many folks use the fresh cast iron high-temp paint to keep them looking good and ward off rust.

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Yeap, I ordered the wrong paint, but I like the silver manifolds...while it lasts.