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Friday 2nd May 2008

Although no work on the '41, from Lee Bros, picked up various nuts, bolts and washers to replace the broken, destroyed and beyond repair originals.

Mal: This may sound like a dumb question but here it goes. Since all the bolts and nuts on your Packard are SAE and not metric. What do you do when you have to replace SAE bolts and nuts, find replacement SAE hardware or re-tap and use metric threaded hardware.

John F. Shireman

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John,

Not a dumb question at all! But that's why I went to Lee Bros, being a specialist, they stock UNC & UNF Hardware as well as British and Metric. Costs a bit more but it's worth it to retain the right hardware on the car. My fallback, if they didn't have what I wanted, was to search through the plastic and tinplate ice-cream and other containers of mainly Model A and early Ford stuff I still have from 40 years ago, but this wasn't necessary. Thanks for your concern.

Saturday 3rd May 2008

Couple of hours at the workshop this morning. Took the decorations off the Christmas tree, AKA the stand where the bits and pieces were hanging for painting and drying. Cleaned a couple more bits I'd missed and touched up some bits from painting the other day.

Then prepared for my next assignment, replacing some of the rubber and other material components including gas tank insulation strips, front floor material. heel rests material, some rubber grommets, the inner fender panel bottom rubber strips and the beading between the fenders and the body. On that note, currently there is beading between the rear fenders and body but none at the front. So I'll take the opportunity to replace or renew all of it. Took some time to compile the list, take measurements and gather samples so I'm fully equipped with less chance of a stuff up trying to do it from memory and will make the trip to Grippy Rubber on Monday.

Mal, Are you sure there is supposed to be beading on the front fender? My '41 limo has beading for the rear fender but not the front. I can't tell from the parts book.

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JD,

In taking the front fenders off the coupe there were small remnants of beading material still adhering to the fender and the body. So it looks like at some stage there was beading there and I'm aiming to purchase sufficient beading to do both front and rear fenders. Irrespective or whether it's "correct" or not, I intend to have beading on the front fenders as I think it looks strange without it.

Monday 5th May 2008

Gave blood plasma early, then dropped into the workshop for a quick tidy up of the bench in preparation for Wade's return in the next few days. Wade likes to keep as clean a work environment as he can and in his absence standards have slipped somewhat so catch up was required. But at least with Wade's set-up everything has its place and is in place so there's usually no searching for the right tool because it's where it should be!

Then off to Grippy Rubber at Silverwater, a specialist rubber parts manufacturer and supplier. There, with Carolyn's help and advice, picked up the rubber sheeting, strapping, grommets and beading I required for a total of AU$118.60, about US$112.00.

By the way, the nuts, bolts and washers purchased last week totaled AU$54.50, about US$51.00. I'll try and include costs when these occur and at the conclusion of this saga will detail and total all costs if I can.

Hi Mal

At the last PACA National Rally I was asking about restoration tips.
Three spring to mind -
Do something every day (which it looks like you have handled)
NO part costs more than $10.00 (if you are ever asked by your wife, or anyone elses)
NEVER keep receipts

Not my words (just in case your wife wants to shoot the messenger)

Regards

(Fred)

Tuesday 6th May 2008

Spent my time at the workshop today cleaning up the dash, instrument panel and glove box lid in preparation for woodgraining. My greatest fear before starting on this task was removing the dash plastic from the instrument panel and glove box lid without it suffering from my heavy handedness. So sat down with my trusty scraper, thin bladed flat screwdriver and a pair of flat-nosed pliers. Then very carefully prised the metal tabs up using the scraper, gently bent them closer to vertical with the screwdriver, and then straightened them with the pliers with a final step of gently tapping on the tabs. And viola, mission accomplished without mishap! The dash was fairly badly pitted at the Vee at the front where water must have been leaking through the windscreen seals at that point and there was also light surface rust in many areas. So all visible surfaces of the dash, instrument panel and glove box lid were taken back to bare metal. The reverse of the panels were also cleaned of surface rust, Marine Cleaned, Metal Readied and painted with POR-15 Silver. See pic's below.

A couple of things from today, in prising up the tabs on the glove box lid it is only necessary to prise up the ones retaining the plastic. There is another row of tabs immediately below the bottom row of tabs for the plastic, you can see them in the last pic, and these are for retention of the glove box lid to the glove box frame. There is no need to straighten these tabs for this job, but of course I only found this out after the act was done. You'll also see in the same pic that there is further row of slots but no tabs were in these. I'd surmise that these were for different plastic for maybe a 160 or 180. I await comments and, if necessary, correction of my reasoning.

And a question - What do you clean the dash plastic with? While the plastic has an aged patina it is not cracked, but while it's all off and accessible I want to take the opportunity to clean it before it goes back. Any and all suggestions are



During the course of all these Gina and Wade arrived in the '37 Super 8 to change over to Wade's Holden Crew Cab V8 SS Ute. The '37 had performed well on the trip, don't know how many miles were covered but probably over 2,000. It was a Hub Rally based at Ballarat in country Victoria and they went on a different run each day to wineries, museums, other points of interest, etc. During the course of the rally many participants wore period dress, culminating in everyone except Margaret & Ed ('37 120 Sedan also from Sydney) dressing up for the final dinner. The 2 '37's were the only Packards in the Rally. It was very cold, with morning temperatures of 32 degrees, climbing to 50/55 during the day. I hope Wade and Gina got some picture, but the reason they were changing cars was because Gina's camera was playing up, not to mention her computer has collapsed and she was having problems with her mobile phone. So the pit stop was to change cars to be able to get around in Sydney's traffic on this tech mission. The were a few slight matters needing attention on the '37 being the radiator siphoning to the overflow tank and the ignition switch playing up, this last part was coped with by switching the ignition on then under the hood and pushing the button on the starter solenoid, worked every time apparently. Wade will be fixing these before his next big trip at the beginning of June for the Border Rally, this will be even further than the Ballarat one just run.

And Russ, or is it (Fred), it's too late! I've been too honest with Kath about costs and doesn't that come back to haunt you just when you least expect it!

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Wednesday 7th May 2008

With other things happening, dropped into the workshop for only 10 minutes today to find that Wade had borrowed a "tube" spanner from, I think, Col at the machine shop around the corner. This "tube" spanner is like a a normal wrench in combination with a ring spanner but has five full faces and one vacant face. There is a pair of visegrips clamped to the head of the spanner to minimise the chance of the spanner slipping on the nut, see pic. When I left Wade, he was loosening the nut holding the temperature sensing unit and was working it slowly back and forth and hopefully it'll be free next time I see it. Just googled and found that Flare Nut Spanner might be a better term for the tool in question.

Because of other commitments wont be back to the shop until next week now. And one day next week will be spent going over the '38 to get it ready for its annual registration check. Shouldn't be any problems having done only a little over 2,000 miles since I bought it this time last year.

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