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third times the charm on the motor, so good luck!

and great looking parts there!

Todd,

Those are some really nice looking new brake parts! Great job.

Tom

Tom, I agree, Steve's crew did an excellent job on them. He sent me some pics of the parts on the mill after he'd done the lathe work on them too:

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Last night I set the new felt seals in to the seal retainers and pressed them in to the end of the rear axles bearing carriers. The rear axles were then installed in the axle carrier tube and bolted in place. I used a bead of RTV to keep the oil inside the axle should it decide to make it all the way down to the bearings. The inner seals were replaced with modern wiper seals to keep the bearings in their own grease. The entire assembly was then bolted to the rear axle along with the brake backing plates with new brake cams pre-installed.

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Note that there are four new bearings mounted inside the rear axle bearing carriers. The old ones required some machining to remove as seen below. These pics are actually from last week.

The first picture shows a pair of holes I milled (drilled) with a carbide end mill in the front face of the bearing carrier in order to remove the outer bearing race. I could see no other way to get at this bearing and the holes won't hurt anything later.

Second picture: I had problems with the inner bearing race as well. To remove these I had to mill a 1/4" deep slot thru the axle in order to get a punch on the bearings shoulder. Even with this slot I had to hammer quite hard to remove these.

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Tonight I was able to install the rear brake shoes on the backing plates. This is a fairly straightforward operation as long as you took pictures of everything before taking it apart. You can't always trust these pictures though. There is a right way and a wrong way to install the brake cams. I used my old photos to gauge which way the arrow on the cam was supposed to point and pics showed the arrow pointing in towards the axle so that's how I installed them. After double checking with the 1929 Bendix brake book I discovered the arrows on the cams are supposed to point outward. They are still backwards in the pics below but I will fix them tonight. They can be rotated 180 degrees as long as the drums aren't installed yet.

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Going backwards a bit again I wanted to show the cam housings before assembly. This also shows the newer wiper seals I used instead of the leather or cork that was in there before. I know that leather and cork are easy to tell apart when new but the old seals looked like petrified wood to me.

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Impressive work, really looks good.

I was staring at my car this morning and I think I have installed the rear springs backwards! Is anyone out there able to measure their 733 for a comparison? I need to know how long the spring should be from the front hanger bolt centerline to the center of the axle.

Scratch that last request, you're all off the hook. I found the information in the Packard Standard Service Manual for years 1929-1932. Indeed, the rear springs were installed backwards. If anyone cares the short side of the rear springs goes to the front. I also discovered that I installed my backing plates upside-down. I was using a photo of the axle before clean up as reference however the axle was upside-down in the photo! I have already reversed the springs and will get to the brakes tomorrow.