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Topic: Packard V8 supercharged engine

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Rusty O\'Toole

Re: Packard V8 supercharged engine

#21

Home away from home

$Rusty O\'Toole$

The McCulloch people would put a supercharger on anything. They even made installations for heavy trucks, they did several for use in the Rocky Mountains. A truck that would barely pull a steep grade at high altitude, would breeze up it with a supercharger.

If you brought your car to their shop in California, and there was not a kit available for your car, their engineers and mechanics would make up brackets and fittings, welded together from steel plate. When they had a satisfactory installation they would use these parts to make patterns for cast aluminum parts that would be used for subsequent kits.

They had a shop big enough to work on a dozen cars at once. They converted hundreds of cars, possibly thousands.

Posted on: 2014/3/16 9:02

Leeedy

Re: Packard V8 supercharged engine

#22

Home away from home

Quote:

Let the ride decide wrote:
Where was this black 55? California, mid west, east coast?

On this site is a picture of Clark Gable looking over a super charged engine. Is it along the lines of the pictures you saw/have?
http://vs57.y-block.info/pin_ups.htm

I took a look at the site linked. They state that the pic is Clark Gable looking over the supercharger in HIS T-Bird... but Gable's car was actually sitting a few feet away when this photo was taken and his car was a dark color, not the light one shown. In my photo set he parks his dark car (I think red) next to this light car and sits there with a starlet while he smokes a cigarette. BTW, Gabe loved Packards too!

Posted on: 2014/3/17 14:19

Owen_Dyneto

Re: Packard V8 supercharged engine

#23

Forum Ambassador

Gabel? Gable.

Posted on: 2014/3/17 15:10

Leeedy

Re: Packard V8 supercharged engine

#24

Home away from home

Quote:

Owen_Dyneto wrote:
It's a "creation". Last legitimate Packard-engined car with supercharger was the in-line 8 1954 Panther which did use a McCulloch unit. For 1956 their "new performance" thrust was was to be fuel injection which was researched but abandoned. No legitimate kit for dealers for a 55/56 V8 supercharger on a Packard block but of course a dealer could have done any thing whether it was factory-authorized for not, they could have put a Cummins diesel in a car if they wished and the customer was willing to pay but you could hardly call that a dealer option.

Prior to the Daytona, the 52 Macauley Speedster was supercharged and there are some very nice photos of that installation courtesy of the Marano Collection. Prior to that the only other legit supercharger installation on a Packard that I'm aware of was the 1929 experimental installation and there is also at least one good photo of that installation.

There were still other supercharged Packards that were postwar straight 8s. According to Nat Dawes' book "The Packard 1942-1962" on Page 105 he shows a good photo of what is claimed to be a 1953 supercharged Packard convertible. The caption reads that four 1953 convertibles were done by McCullagh Division of Paxton to demonstrate how supercharged straight 8 Packards could perform. Perhaps this is where the idea of supercharging the first two Packard Panthers came from.

Posted on: 2014/3/20 4:18