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First order of business was patching the gaping hole in the cowl where the top most fender bolt mounts.




Not my greatest welds or grinding. It's an awkward place to work. Also, really I should have found a large patch panel from a parts car to replace that entire corner of the cowl. Metal was its pretty thin in areas.

Once the hole was patched, I drilled a hole for a nursert to be installed. This replaces the long just away caged nut. Also need to use another nutsert on one of the other holes that was missing its caged nut.

Bob J:

Your added fender support mod will definitely add strength to the fender support, but it makes the attachment of the entire fender/hood/radiator assembly to the chassis frame too rigid.

Packard attached the fender brace / radiator harness assembly to the chassis frame with a single bolt and rubber pads at the center of the front frame cross member to allow the chassis frame to flex without stressing the radiator and sheet metal. I'd try to find a way to brace the fender mount back to the radiator support, rather than the chassis frame, to preserve the original designed-in flexibility.

Can someone take a picture of how the lower fender brace attaches to the front fender?

Those areas of my fenders were rotted away.

The one behind the wheel?

Yes, the one goes from the bottom of the fender to the frame.

Thanks!

Mine has a single bolt attaching the brace to the bottom of the frame immediately ahead of the radius rod ball socket. The brace is a straight, light sheet metal channel with flattened ends. The flanges go down. The fender has a flat lower flange behind the wheel opening about 3/4" wide, and about 5" back of the wheel opening, it widens to about 1" for about 2". The outboard end of the brace attaches there with two small bolts.

The installed brace makes a 90 deg angle to the lower edge of the fender, or close to it. If you have a stock brace, attaching it to the frame would show you about where should attach to the fender.

Thanks!

I got both fenders welded where the bottom flanges were rusted away where the fender brace mounts.

Also the left fender was missing the bracket tab for the radiator fender support.

Before I finalized all the sheet metal I needed to finish up some engine tasks. It's pretty much impossible to install the lower radiator hose with the passenger fender installed. It's pretty tight in there.

So I got the hoses installed and refilled the system. 4-1/2 gallons it took.

Then I wanted to start the motor and make sure everything was good while I still had full access. That where the issues started. I had some clearance issue with the fan grazing the lower water neck on the radiator. So I needed to lower the radiator a little bit.

So with that sorted and kicking the motor over, that's when other problems arose. First there is now an obvious exhaust leak between the manifolds and the collector. So something is binding and not tightening down all the way. I'll have to loosen everything up and sort that.

On the other side it was leaking oil around the oil filter. So that just needed a little tightening.

The bigger issue was the hard fuel line splitter do-dad that feeds the carbs has developed a pin hole leak in the middle of one of the feed lines and was spraying a fine mist of fuel under pressure. Yikes. So I'll have to see if I have a spare one of those in the box of Jag carb parts.

Good thing you tested before putting the getting the front end back on. I did the same with my dad's and it made life much easier. Having direct access to the engine without the fenders in the way is nice.

Sounds like Packard straight 8 time.