Packard Forum Index » V-8 (1955-56)

Randy: The saying that Packard were built by Gentlemen for Gentlemen may have been true until the introduction of the Light Eight and the 120.

All Packard's were built by ordinary plain hard working men for any type of person that could afford to buy a Packard.

Just because a person had money to buy an expensive Packard didn't mean they were gentlemen.


John F. Shireman

GTO: You should be giving Eric, Craig, and Keith a lot of credit for coming up with a solution of a problem that plagued many 55 & 56 Packard's.

The Olds oil pump was a brilliant solution that no so called experts on 55 & 56 Packard's from any Packard clubs could come up with.

Eric for such a young person knows one hell of a lot about post war Packard's and will help any person that has a problem.

John F. Shireman

Quote:

There's two sides to this argument as well.

I'm a pragmatist - if the original equipment BTV, UM, pump, etc, can easily be made to work well, fine, but when the safety or hassle factor intrudes, I'm also fine with some smart improvements...

So this leads to an oil pump question - I'm aware of the issues - did the last 3-4 months of '56 production have the mods necessary to ensure proper oiling and reliability for NORMAL moderate usage (no drag racing, I'm not a leadfoot), since my upcoming Executive would have been built after March 1956. I'm under the impression that improvements were made by the factory late in the game.

With several V8s in my collection, I've experienced lifter noise in various forms - including the one discussed in STB 56T-20. However, although the car wasn't running when I rediscovered it in 1976, my dad said he never experienced any such noise in his Exec. Also, he never had it's engine apart for anything in its nearly 75,000 miles of service. It was repeated tranny trouble and general lack of parts that caused him to park the car in 1963.

While that car rests in piece some miles from here, I've never had time to go out and remove the engine and bring it back to perform an autopsy. However, I believe it falls within a time frame that it would have had the late design oil pump and related parts as disclosed in STB 56T-20. There may be other changes that Packard made WRT to that issue, but weren't disclosed to dealers (let alone the public).

Still, you may want to pull the oil pan on your car to inspect and at least clean any sludge from it and the pump pickup screen. While the pan is off, you can check the pump to see if the pressure relief valve bore has a threaded plug or one held in by cotter pins. A threaded plug would indicate the late design.

However, even the late design may eventually exhibit enough wear between the driving shaft and bore that air is drawn into the oil stream, causing lifter noise. There has been more than one fix promoted for this pump since we heard from Packard on the matter and a lot of discussion in the years since the advent of the Internet.

My personal choice of solutions will be to retain the vac pump, have an upper bushing installed in the oil pump body and the shaft trued (if not replaced with new), but I will also have a proper oiling groove cut into the interior of the pump body to provide lubrication to the bushing. (I'll detail that work, here, when I get to it, but I think it's gonna be a long, long time before I get to that.)

That last point is something the original pump lacks, but the Chevy V8 has (as noted by member PackardV8). Neither of those pumps had a bushing for the driving shaft to begin with - relying, instead on the pump casting. However, the bore wore prematurely on the Packard pump, and the lack of that channel seems highly suspicious in that regard.

Thanks for sharing that excellent knowledge.