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It's been a busy week at work and the dishwasher died to top it off. I got the new washer installed a couple of days ago and finally made it out to the garage this morning. Next thing on my Packard list was replacing the rear bumper brackets that someone had sawn off years ago. Luckily I found another set of frame horns with John Ulrich in California. I was initially going to re-rivet the frame horn castings to my frame but that turned out to be much more work than I had anticipated. After milling the old rivet heads off I heated the rivets up with a O/A torch and tried to drive them out with a punch and a 5 pound sledge. Those suckers didn't move one bit and drilling them out just sounded like a nightmare. Plan two was to cut off the bracket and weld it to my existing framehorns and this is what I did. I had it done in under two hours and with a little bondo no one will ever know. I put down a 1/4" bead of molten steel around the perimeter of each bracket ensuring they will never come off.

In order to make sure everything was straight and true I first tack welded the two brackets to a piece of steel tube at the correct spacing. I then leveled the frame to the car and held the bar in place until it was level and positioned correctly. I then tacked the brackets and double checked it was still straight. It was so I removed the bar and finished doing the welding and then did a bit of grinding to smooth out my less than perfect welds.

I'm off to a birthday party for a two year old but hope to get out in the garage again tomorrow. Next step is to move the engine mounts back 7" on the frame.

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Even with two sets of shackles at my disposal I have found that I don't have enough good shackle bolts to finish the job. I broke down last night and bought a new set of shackle bolts from Max Meritt. Ouch, those weren't in the budget!

I discovered the bad bolts after sandblasting them, even the ones that were the correct diameter were heavily pitted. I see those pits acting like sandpaper on my new bushings so they had to go. The shackle sides turned out pretty nice though so there is a bit of good news.

Todd,

Rather than take this thread off topic I'm raising my question here. One of your pic's on the other thread shows an interesting exhaust whistle, I think? Is that what it is?

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LOL, you mean that isn't the stock exhaust tip? I've never heard the car run so I don't know if it's a whistle but that is what was passing as the exhaust tip on my car when I bought it.

It's been a few weeks since I've posted and I've spent that time waiting for some parts to arrive. While waiting I had my front axle sandblasted and I drilled it out ala hot rod style with lightening holes. Looks pretty cool to me but I am sure I will catch some flak from some folks. I also took apart the new springs I had made at Eaton and I ground a full radius on the end of each leaf and ground out all the tool marks they left with the hammers they used to taper the springs. They are all painted now and ready to be installed on the car. It took a couple of weeks to get my new shackle bolts from Max Merritt but they arrived last Thursday and look great.

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Here are my new modified kingpins which I got back from the machine shop last week. The bearings surfaces on the old pins were badly worn so I redesigned the kingpin lower bearing to accept a modern style sealed bearing. More on this a bit later.

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Also received from the same shop are these new radiator neck seal compression rings. I had them make two, one for me and another for a fellow 1930 Packard enthusiast. I gave the shop my radiator neck to match the threads which I was unable to measure because I had to destroy my old ring to remove it. The new rings are made from 7075 aluminum which has the highest content of zinc it it. My intent was to match as closely as I could the composition of the original which was a zinc pot metal of some kind. The original had corroded completely and welded itself to the threads of the radiator neck. The new seal will be a 1/4" round x 2 3/4" OD silicone o-ring from Mcmaster which should be here in a few days. The o-ring should seal the brass radiator neck with the pot metal cap casting above and prevent them from touching each other which would cause the new part to corrode all over again.

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Back to Kingpins. The old kingpins had grooves worn in them from the constant beating they took and replacements were nonexistant. I had brought this up on another board and someone suggested I use bearings from an Australian SUV as replacements. Seemed like a good idea so I ordered a set from down under. The new bearings are hardly a drop in replacement though so I had to redesign the old kingpin to accept them. Below are some drawings I did in order to get a shop to modify my pins.
Pic 1: This is the old set-up
Pic 2: Drawing of old set-up
Pic 3: Section thru redesigned assembly
Pic 4: Modifications to existing kingpin

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I'll be dropping the front axle off at O'Briens, a local shop tomorrow to have the kingpins pressed back in. They have a 20 ton press which struggled to get the pins out a few months ago. Packard did not want the pins to come out....ever.

What make and model are your new pins from?