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Not formally schooled in automotive technologies, I've heard and seen distributor vacuum advance function and effect described a few different ways. Yet, the more I try to find the definitive answer, the more confused I get as to what is correct.

If the burning rate of the air/fuel mixture is a constant, as engine speed increases, spark must occur sooner. Too late and the expanding gas of combustion will be wasted on the downstroke of the piston = loss of torque/power. Too soon and it actually works against piston travel = detonation/ping.

What I do know from practical experience is that a leaky vac advance diaphragm is often overlooked, and the engine is tuned around that problem, at idle. However, when you give it some throttle, the engine stumbles. Perhaps this is due to a combination of a lack of timing advance and a leaner air/fuel mixture - both due to a vacuum leak in the vac advance diaphragm.

Wikipedia seems to have a reasonable descriptionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignition_timing as to when/what/how the vacuum advance functions.

I will take a look at the distributor and advance to see if that is the culprit.


Today was a running errands day with the family. Also in the process I took the battery hold ring with me to try to locate a battery that would fit perfectly in the tray. The battery I was using was to small for the battery tray. I ended up checking batteries at 5 different part stores before I found one. Any battery that had a handle on it protruded to much from the sides and the hold-down wouldn't fit over the battery. When I found one that did fit, the terminals were in the wrong orientation. grrrr.... finally I found a Die-Hard group 24 battery at Sears that fit perfectly and had the correct orientation.

I also picked up some stripping discs to finish removing the rest of the paint and surface rust from the rest of the body.

Today was a bit of an adventure.

I went through the and did the throttle adjustment per the 1955 Service Manual (yes, the 1955 manual. If you have a 1954 Gear Start, ignore the 1954 Service Manual in regards to the throttle adjustment, and use Gear Start adjustment section in the 1955 Manual). First the kick down rod was the wrong length. After bending it back to the correct length, then I had to make the throttle carb linkage longer.

With all of that sorted out, I filled the oil bath cleaner with oil for the first time, and then took the Packard on a longer test drive around the neighborhood. Keeping to local streets as the car isn't registered yet, and it has a 1986 DMV tag on it.

Everything was going good with I was about 3 blocks away from the house on the way back, and the engine just died on me. I coasted over to the side of the road and the car would not start again. Up went the hood to have a peek. Electrically, everything looked ok. Then I noticed the Carter fuel filter glass bowl was empty. Hmmm.... I wasn't getting any fuel. Clicked on the electric fuel pump, and I got one little squirt of fuel then nothing. The leaves only two things. Out of gas, which I wasn't, or clogged fuel filter.

So I locked up the Packard, and walked the 3 blocks back to the house as I had left my cell phone in the garage. With some hand tools in hand, a jack stand and a jack I drove back to the Packard in my truck. The fuel filter is located up inside the frame-rail, right above the rear axle. So with a jack stand under the rear axle, I squeezed myself up under the rear of the car.

As I was half hanging out in the street I didn't want to be up under there any longer than needed. So I could see that the fine mesh in the see through filter was covered in very fine grit. A simple shaking of the filter dislodged the grit from the mesh, and I was able to restart the car. Being Johnny of the quick, I pulled the jack stand out from under the car, tossed the tools and jack in the back seat, and locked my truck and drove the Packard back to the house. Once it was parked safety back in the garage, I hoofed in back to scene of the breakdown to fetch the truck. It would have been a lot simpler if the wife wasn't out running errands at that time. But I guess a little exercise wont kill me.

I was more worried about the Packard sitting alone on the street and the rain clouds that are moving in. Since half the car is in bare metal, and none of the door weather seals are in, rain would not have been good.

Kev, those first few miles are always full of life's little surprises. Glad it wasn't to big an issue. Just curious, did you get enough miles on her to get a sense of how the Ultramatic was behaving?

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Practical experience is about all that seems to work with old-time breaker-point-rotor- distributor ignition systems.

The condition that Big Kev described--black smoke and bogging on initial acceleration or low speed acceleration--is sometimes caused by not enough initial timing advance. An actual vacuum leak would probably be noticeable by a rough, lean idle condition.

If the vacuum advance itself is not working correctly, I believe it would most likely affect gas mileage and high-speed performance.

A good, easy test is to advance initial spark timing a bit and see if that helps clear up the smoke and bogging/roughness.

Also, is the heat riser working and pulling the choke off properly?

Well it's not black smoke. White/Blue smoke more than anything. I wonder if I have a ring that is sticking. Yet the compression is good across all the cylinders. When I got the car the motor was stuck. Some ATF in the cylinders and time freed it up. So I wonder if there is still something a bit sticky in there that is letting oil blowby.

Much less smoke today. So I think the longer I run it, the less smoke I am seeing.

On another note, the oil sure got dirty quick. I guess the Rotella is flushing all the crap out of the motor. I only have about 2 hours of run time on the motor (most of it at idle) and the oil is already pretty dirty.

I got under the car this evening and pulled down the fuel filter to clean it out. The first problem was that I put the element in backwards. So grit and rust was getting caught on the small inside of the element, instead of falling to outside of element and then bottom of the glass tube. DOH! So I cleaned out the element, and reinstalled with the element the other way. This should help to prevent the issue I saw today.

The Die-Hard battery fit in the tray very nice, and by removing the sticker on top, it give it a nice black-box no name battery in the tray.

I also pulled out what I think is the original rear passenger floor mat that came with my car. It is die cut, and has a small raised pattern. Also there was a rectangular patch of jute on the bottom side of it. Can anyone confirm this was the original style mat? I think the Deluxe Clippers only had limited carpet with it just in front of the car, but none in the back. So this may be what was used instead. The mat was in the car when I got it, and I pulled it out and stored in when I was doing the initial year out of the old carpet and upholstery many years ago.

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So the DMV nightmare begins of trying to register the Clipper....without a Title.

I called and spoke to one of the local AAA offices that also does DMV services, and the lady was nice enough to explain the root canal the DMV was going to put me through. She suggested if I got the last known registered owner in the state of Calif to sign the Duplicate Title/Transfer form that things would be far easier.

So I sent a note to Doug, one of the previous owners, and last known registered owner from 1986. Hopefully I can get him to sign the duplicate title paperwork, and that would for sure help to make things less of a nightmare. The car passed through at least 3 different owners after Doug, and none of them every registered the car. So I think armed with a Bill of Sale from the party I bought it from, and a Duplicate Title/Transfer signed by Doug that should help to grease the rusty wheel at the CA DMV.

Got a reply back from Doug, he is signing the release, and will be popping it in the mail to me in the next few days. I love it when a plan comes together! I can only hope the DMV side goes as smooth.

Good Luck! I hope yours goes smooth but-----be prepared. Root canal is a nice term.

When I bought my first 56 it had also gone thru several hands unregistered although I had a title and a bill of sale. Piece of cake right? Wrong!!

Problem was the last registered owners had signed the pink slip on the lien holder lines instead of the registered owner line. Our beloved DMV would not accept that because there was no lien listed and as far as they were concerned, registered owner had not signed it. Bill of Sale was almost worthless for registration because of the title--although I had to have that for use taxes (and that's another thing entirely).

Wound up having to send a registered letter to the address on registration. Of course, it being about 15 yrs later, both owners had the nerve to pass on in the meantime so it came back as undeliverable. Took that back to DMV, which they were not happy with but with the letter at least had found a daughter in law. Wrote her back and she was kind enough to sign a DMV form as to when and where they died. DMV accepted that but still had to post a bond for double the cars worth according to some list they had. Took months so compare it to a root canal without novacaine.

I am firmly convinced a lot of our DMV personnel do not care, know procedures or give a damn half the time. Lets all keep our fingers crossed they have gone mellow in the last 30 years and yours sails thru but one suggestion--if it takes multiple trips ALWAYS go back to the same person. I found they each seem to have their own little ways and wants.