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Three Sons, a Packard and a Wedding(One day it might become a movie).

A few weeks ago we had a wedding in our family - pretty special, because as well as being just a lovely event, there was a very nice Packard involved.

Here are a couple of pics of our son Matt and his bride Renita on their wedding day. They loved the car, it added a shine to the whole event which went beautifully. I was told there were people all along the route snapping the car and walking out onto the road to get a better look.

The Groomsmen are our other sons, Ben and Clayton - the three are great mates. Our daughter also attended so the whole family was there. Surely was a great day, and our capital city - Canberra - was a nice place to get married. My motto is - everyone should be married at least a few times . . . (just kidding).




My Three Sons . . . Matt in the middle, with the big smile

Over the last few weeks I haven't done much on the car, just a few minor jobs. Lots of other matters to attend to, including our son's wedding.

It was a real treat to spray my first lot of colour (Matador Red Metallic) even though it was only the firewall that got sprayed this session. I was keen to try out my new gun, an Iwata W400. They've been around for a long while and have a very good reputation although there are dozens of other guns that get good write-ups. But the Iwata doesn't have any detractors, so I got one. The regulations that govern solvents and the use of 'high volume, low pressure' guns (HVLP) that apply in the US are not applicable in Australia (yet) and that is helpful because HVLP usually means an upgrade to your compressor so that you have the larger volume of air available that these guns need. My old 2HP compressor is OK for a standard gun but not for a HVLP gun.

Hadn't tried the gun before I sprayed the Packard firewall, but I discovered there wasn't any need to - it did a great job, and changes to pattern and paint / air volume were easily made during operation. Great gloss, not much overspray - unlike the other suction feed guns I have had for years, which can flutter and don't atomise well if you reduce pressure (to reduce overspray etc).

The ability to change from vertical to horizontal pattern (or anywhere in between) while spraying (no loosening of the head) is a really helpful feature. Now I'm keen as mustard to be spraying the rest of the car, but that is a fair way off yet.

Primed and ready



Matador Maroon metallic goes on



Camera doesn't render the Maroon accurately - it's darker than this






One of the other things I have been working on is applying schutz to the inners of some panels, like the doors and rear quarter panels. That stuff really is 'mobile' and despite a lot of masking the schutz drifts all over the place. Even though I masked really well, I still needed to wipe a lot of surfaces around the car to clean the mist that had settled.

A good way of masking large areas with little work is to use the rolls of 'cling' film you can get that has one edge taped. It's around six feet wide. The next time I spray this stuff I will use it anywhere and everywhere nearby. Schutz drifts many yards so lots of care needed. Even if you mask widely be aware that drift will happen.

Sound deadener on rear quarter inners



I decided to put it over primed and painted (2-pak) metal for maximum corrosion control . . .Originally it was over bare metal



Got onto stripping and cleaning the hood hinges as well, which took quite a while as there was loads of old black grease stuck in under the mechanism, meaning a lot of swabbing with petrol to clean it out before painting. After a final polish with a stripper disk and some ScotchBrite hand work I etched them with MetalReady and etch primed them, ready for painting.

Original finish was apparently Cad plating although there was no sign of any remaining. I'm painting with a bright metallic silver that hopefully will be an acceptable substitute.

Special fancy gasket to prevent water ingress . . .



The hinge is just about clean enough



Hinges get the metalready treatment before priming and paint

Looking good! I have been leaning toward painting my car red as well. So far...I like it!

Looks really good Larry!

One note on the hood hinges. While the mechanism of the hinge is cad plated, the springs are not. They are supposed to be black. I removed the springs from my hinges, painted the hinges with cadmium paint and waited for the paint to be fully cured, and then reattached to the firewall. Then I painted the springs semi-gloss black, and while they were still tacky wet, and reattached them to the hinges so they could partially expanded while they cured. No cracking so far.

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Also I was thinking about your speaker situation. Have you tried the local junk yard? The reason I ask is that some of the Big 3 manufactures used 6x9 speakers in the rear deck. Also I know Ford liked to use 5x7 speakers. I've replaced a lot of factory speakers when I used to install Car Stereos and Alarms in a previous life, and I can tell you they were low wattage, and had very small magnets on the them. Possible perfect for use in the Packard radio. Something to consider.

The Boss BRS69 at 3" is the smallest depth 4 ohm I find in new speakers. They must be ashamed to show the back though. Of the gazillion stores that sell the thing, not one shows the magnet side.

If you have no luck finding one, wonder if there is any chance of buying an inexpensive speaker like that Boss or maybe the one you have and carefully transferring the cone to the old frame. It's precision work but should be possible for careful DIY types -- if they are reasonably close in size.

This company sells a lot of stuff for the purpose and has how to videos and printed instructions which make it look to be not too terribly difficult -- at least with new materials.simplyspeakers.com/ Even though they are geared to higher end products in the how to material, would think the principles apply.

You probably have it already in your schematics but here is speaker specs.

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Thanks for your comments gents, very helpful about sourcing a suitable speaker via junk yard or maybe adapting a 7 x 5 (which you would think would be more likely to fit).

I made enquiries at Simply Speakers and was told they don't even have a 6 x 9 reconing kit (and that was the case elsewhere). That is a shame. Like you say Howard, it seems these companies are targeting the high end speakers, which sure makes it difficult for us...Will investigate the BRS69 to see if I can get very accurate details on size. The DVC I bought was quite small and less than 3" deep but although it had a smallish magnet the frame and lugs were just totally in the way of the radio chassis. (The original speaker magnet is tiny compared even with the DVC magnet).

If I could only find a recone kit I'd certainly try a DIY recone.

BigKev, I've left the hinge springs unpainted for the reason that I didn't know what colour they should be! So thanks for info, and a means of reducing the chance of cracking the paint. I'll give it a go.

Regarding the Matador Maroon Charles - I can provide a formula for a match if you decide to go for that colour - just PM me. . .

Painting the window garnish trims

This was a really enjoyable part of the resto. Nice to be getting some paint on some bits again.

The local paint shop did an eye match on the colour for the interior window trims which on the '51 are a metallic silver-grey. There are about seven pieces done this colour - dashboard, four side window garnish trims, and the screen and rear screen trims. They were all badly scratched and had paint worn through, but were very straight and with virtually no rust on them. One small kink had stretched the metal on a trim and it wouldn't tap back to shape with a slapper. After heating the spot (cherry red) and quenching the metal shrank back perfectly to its original shape.

Used a stripper disc to clean the parts right back to bare metal. A new stripper disk on the grinder works so much quicker so when they get down to about 25% I replace them and get the stripping happening much faster.

After a degrease and etching with MetalReady the hot air gun was used to just take the chill off the parts before priming with single pack etch. It's winter here so I like to get a slight amount of warmth into parts before I spray them and the hot air gun works well (-otherwise lamps for warming the bigger panels).

Broke out the new spraygun (which I've only used once). Spraying these trims in metallic silver would be my first job on some high visibility parts so I was wondering what quality of job I could do with this gun. The metallic is fairly coarse - would it lay properly? Needn't have worried as the paint went on beautifully and result was nice.

While the gun was 'smokin' in my hand' I couldn't resist spraying something else . . . anything. The dog had sensed trouble and gone missing, so the grille surround plates (or whatever they are - I'm sure you'll recognize them from the pics) got sprayed, in the Matador Maroon. These also turned out nice.


309 - Most of the parts to be sprayed - stripped and ready for priming



314 -



316 - Needed to shrink out this small kink



322 - After the metalready has etched them



326/7/8 - The metallic grey went on well and is a really appealing finish for the interior window garnish trims









324/9 - These grille surrounds got a coat of the Matador Maroon as well

Great work Larry! Keep on rockin'!

Hey Larry,

You're quite a hand with that spray gun. You are giving me courage to do some of the same myself.

My '51 was originally Matador Maroon and I plan to go back to that at some point (the car was repainted a lighter red and given a white top) so if you have a formula for that I'd be very interested.

One note though, on my '51, the metal pieces behind the die-cast grill are a silver - which I think is original to the car. I'll post some pictures later today if you'd like.

Great work on the window moldings - mine needs that redone too and to be honest, so does the dash.
Good work!

Jim