Packard Forum Index » V-8 (1955-56)

i think thats a neat set up. even if its not exact, theres nothing like being able to watch it work and have easy acess for testing possible modifications.

I hate to say it eric, but i don't think the oil pump was the difference in your 320's not having the problems of the pure packards. it may be part of it, but not all of it. uncle changed the bearings only to the "hash" style bearing in the green dragon and it solved everything. 43 years later they are still in there and not a problem one. i do agree that the "packard" pump is troublesome. but i have known of people who put the amc pump in and didn't solve a thing either. I think if someone has a set of true "hash" n.o.s. bearings for a sample, that changing the bearings available now to match them and the olds pump conversion together would be the best bet.

What is the difference between HASH bearings and the Packard bearings???

A good question. I thought Packard built the engines complete and sold to AMC. Aside from the vacuum pump setup, assumed everything else alike.

Probably built to Nash spec's.

There is NO difference between the bearings. The Hash bearings have the same part numbers on the parts as Packard bearings. I've tore apart enough of both styles of engines to know this to be true. The only difference is bearing undersizes.

I thought Packard built the engines complete and sold to AMC. Aside from the vacuum pump setup, assumed everything else alike.

I've read (the Racer Brown article) that the camshafts are different materials, though the same grind. Hudson/Nash used cast steel and Packard using hardenable iron alloy.

To this date, no reliable contemporary source has conclusively proven the Hash engines actually had a steel camshaft. To use a steel camshaft would have required chilled iron lifters and distributor drive gear, thus three different part numbers.

Interestingly, the three details of Hash which were observably different, the oil pan, oil pump and fuel pump, were not mentioned in the Hot Rod Magazine article by Racer Brown.

thnx, jack vines

I don't know about other manufatureres, but Chevrolet since about 1955 thru 75 that i know of used somekind of an oil impregnation process on the V8 cams and maybe even the 6's. I am curious about Packard cams. Just don't have the heart or a scrap cam laying around to take a torch to inorder to find out.

To this day i will not wash ANY cam shaft in solvent or detergent but only wipe them clean with a dry cloth or power wire brush if rusty.

Quote: Can we have some reference reading on this? It's new information to me.

FWIW, I've spent a bit of time in cam grinding shops, from major aftermarket to one-man regrinders. The first stop for every cast iron cam, including those for Chevrolet, is the solvent tank, then the grinder, then the solvent tank again, then the last stop,, the bearing journals are masked and it goes into the Parkerizing tank.

thnx, jack vines