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I'm not sure but i believe the 7 foot door was an old pre-1920's standard. Many houses and buildings of 'better quality' had 10 foot ceilings and used a transem over the top of the door. Transems were usualy about a foot high giving an even standard 8 feet.

I lived in a house in the Detroit area that was built in 1919. 10' ceilings and transems over entry doors and 2wo of the interior doors. It was a rental so i never bothered to measure them.

BTW. the house also had LEAD water service pipes from the street into the house basement where the meter was. Had to let the meter reader in to read the meter every month.

Hot water tank (electric) had somekind of radio controlled switch box near the regular power switch box thing that Detroit Edison Electric company would send out a radio signal about 8pm at nite to shut it off and then another signal to turn it back on about 4 AM.

I often hear so much recent nonsense about carbon foot printing, saving energy, toxic shock syndromes and many other such wet dreams of delusive concepts that only a moron could believe in. Then i think back to some of the fine life style items of the 1920's thru the 1960's and wonder how i ever lived thru all of it and WITH all of it to have stayed so healthy to this day.

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That sentence explains a lot about you right there, lol!

i emailed Paul back about finding a door that may fit specifications better. i'll buy a third one and trim a bit off of it to make it fit if i have too. i want to enjoy at least one and save the others in their original setup for future use. i have a french door bathroom, take them both down and the doorway is 3'1" wide and 6'8" high. i'm gonna try to put a door there and have privacy glass put in with the words BATHROOM painted on it. sound cool to me.

i also refinished the crown molding. i just cleaned it off with a wet rag, let dry and resealed it with a good poly stain that was lighter then the original 100 year old color.

it worked out pretty good. it left behind a great shine and the patina that i wanted. you can still see the wear of the years, but it is nice and protected again. you can see the pieces as i went on. the before next to the after is pretty impressive i say.

enjoy the pics. i'll have more after i hang it up. i bought a 15 dollar brad nail gun from harbor freight and i am using 2"x 18Gauge brad nails. should work great with very minimal damage to the wood. no hammmer misses and making indents. and the nails are small enough that you wont see them once i set the depth right. just under the surface.

later,

Hank

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alrighty, crown molding is all done. ;0) i like it, WEEEEEE!!!!!

bought a brad nail gun at Harbor Frieght for 15 bucks. yeah take that Lowe's....phhhsssttt 59 on sale my butt! and this one does both nails and staples. didn't jamb once, worked like a champ. i used 18G 2" brad nails. worked perfect and you can't see the nail holes hardly at all. my cuts were so good i may not have to use wood filler in the corners at all. its pretty tight. and my butt joints were pretty good at my transitions.

i've never done crown molding before and i tell you it took a bit of practice to get things to work right, but after a bit i was cutting and hanging faster than i could think...it was second nature.

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here are some better pictures of the molding installed. you can see my cuts are rough and i haven't filled in with my wood filler. not to mention fixing the paint. blugh!

you can appreciate the patina and the beauty better up close.

enjoy

Hank

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That's some nice wood work, and a really imaginative application of Packard mementos. I can see more decorative touches with various logos, hood ornaments, etc. It's a unique home decorating theme: 'classic period Packard'

sold my huge item on ebay, finally! got enough money for it to finish the motor i think. may put some in savings and just do as much as i can on the engine.

either way, finally this blog will come back to life again.

Hank

Henry, thanks for sharing the good news. Look forward to your future posts, I've been missing your "adventures".

(o{I}o)

ahhhhh, just the begining of the motor parts i need, no not Mopar. LOL!

okay, what would help me determin if i need standard size main and rod bearings? the motor only had 47k on it supposidly and i didn't see much wear on the bearings that were in there, but i'm no expert obviously.

my current plan is to go with standard size on everything, rings, bearings, etc...

the ring grooves that they are listing are 5/64, 5/64, 3/16. does that sound right in my case. honestly i have no idea what this means and i am about to google it and look in the service manual.

this is going to be an all stock 352, i don't have enough money to do anything fancy to it, so lets go off that assumption.

thanks guys.

Hank

okay, what would help me determin if i need standard size main and rod bearings? the motor only had 47k on it supposidly and i didn't see much wear on the bearings that were in there, but i'm no expert obviously.

I think you should start by reading a really good book on the general principals of engine rebuilding including evaluation and measurement. To me one of the best was Glenn's but it's long out of print, though no doubt there are others. Generally this will give FAR more information than you'll ever find in a shop manual.

But you could start by dropping the oil pan and using plastigage to measure the clearances of the rod and main bearings as they presently are. When the bearing saddles are down (do one at a time) to insert the plastiqage, take time to examine the crankshaft for smoothness and absence of defects. If the clearances are within specification are the bearing and crank surfaces are in good condition, determine by part numbers on the current bearings if they are standard or undersize and replace with the same size.

BUT at least on the rod journals, a better suggestion would be to buy a good micrometer and measure the journal top-to-bottom, left-to-right, in several places and compare your measurements to the original crankpin diameter specifications. This will tell you if the rod journal is worn out of round enough to not hold a new bearing properly and will require crankshaft removal and resizing. 0.001 out of round is probably about the limit. A bit tougher for the mains as with the crank in the block, you won't be able to get an easy measurement. Anyway, that's a starting point and I'm sure others will come along and elaborate.

For the rings, remove a piston, examine the ring grooves for wear, giving special focus on the top one. Measure the clearance between the ring and the land and compare to general guidelines for clearance. If the groove has become tapered and you will reuse the piston, cutting the groove oversize and using a spacer with new rings will be one alternative. But I'd certainly remove the pistons, clean them and have them dye-checked for cracks, and plan on replacing the piston pins and bushing.

If you want, PM me with your USPS address and I'll photocopy some pages from Glenn's for you to read.