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You'll now see a "Packard Decoder" option on the Main Menu now. It should work for Vehicle Numbers 1932-1956 and Engine Serial Numbers 1899-1956.

This is in complete 'beta' testing mode, as I'm sure i'll find more gotchas and things I have to still account for. I still need to add some more info for that gets returned with the Engine results to show relative models for which that engine is applicable. But that's code to write on another day.

Give it a try and let me know if it works or what doesnt.

This new tool seems to work flawlessly on my two 1954 Patricians! As expected, I’d could not tell me anything about the obviously replaced engine in one of them which has a non-standard number (N230874CAL) but the other and both VINs brought the expected results. Very nice and welcome feature and I’m anxiously waiting to hear the results from others with earlier cars.

Kev, that decoder looks to be a great tool. One question would be how to slant or steer the results to the correct car if an engine is not original and that number was found and entered instead of a vehicle number.

On your post announcing the decoder you mentioned more work to be done and that may be something you are considering. In the way it works now, just bringing up the year the engine was supposed to be in is not much help but I can see where too many model selections might really confuse someone not very familiar with Packards if a range of cars was presented without a lot of photos.

One suggestion is maybe no space for the engine number in the original call request page but then once the vehicle is identified by vehicle number have a space to enter the engine number to verify if the engine is correct. Have the engine to year and model use page come up after the car is ID'd.

If the engine number is the only one available and no other way to ID the car then I don't see how the tool could help without a full listing of all the models and years that particular type engine was used in and some way to narrow down the search such as at least having a single representative photo by year with a list of other models of that year the engine might be found in.

Another way might be to list the engine number range when searching by model but when searching by engine, maybe make it clearer that engines get changed and that it may or may not be the proper one for the car.

Incidentally, though not surprisingly, it was unable to find anything for my 2413 (2413-2165).

As for the comment on the error page for my 2413 that the term VIN is incorrect, it is not in spite what others have said. It is the number that identifies the vehicle (Vehicle IDENTIFICATION Number) just as VN is. The proper term, though, is VIN but when you say Standardized VIN, then you are talking about the modern 17-character VIN which is not necessarily as standardized as one might think and not used on all vehicle around the world. As a VIN Verifier, I have come across modern cars with shorter VINs from other countries.

For the Engine Number search it, if found, it will show the applicable models:

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Yes, indeed it does and that works well. However, by now engines have often gotten swapped, possibly with a similar engine for another year or model. As Howard suggested, people with limited Packard knowledge might view this data as meaning that their car is one year and model when it was really only the engine that was.

Here is the update Vehicle Number Decode:

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That’s excellent! Maybe dispense with the word “Serial” but otherwise perfect.

Slightly off topic, I thought I would check to see how the decoder works with my 1951 Henney-Packard engine so looked up and added the engine number to the roster. For 1951, the chassis is 2413 but I noticed that I had originally posted it as having the model of 2413 when the model is actually 5194 and with that corrected, it no longer comes up when searching 2413! Any way to resolve that short of changing it back to 2413 which is incorrect?

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Interesting to see that my 1951 Henney-Packard is actually a 1951 Packard 300 Touring Sedan! I doubt much can be done about that, though, other than perhaps a note that the same engine series was used on the commercial chassis coaches.

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This doesn't use any of the info in the registry, but rather the model info db table and a new engines tables which was imported from the Engine Serial numbers document that was put together a few years ago.

I'd have to add the specific custom chassis Packard model numbers (Henney, etc) to the model info table, and then add the corresponding chassis numbers to the engine table. So just a little data addition on that and it should work. When the Model Info pages were being built we skipped over the custom chassis models for the sake of expenidency at that time. But we would add them under the Packard chassis number, not Henney's model number. Hence your VN.