Packard Forum Index » Post-War (1946-54)

I've been saying this for years now: There are some people's children that should never, EVER, pick up a hand tool. Just replaced the plug wires and coil wire on my '53 Cavalier today, talk about a mess! The coil wire didn't even match the others and was so loose I'm suprised that my car ran at all. It DEFINATELY wasn't made for my vehicle! To make matters worse, on a couple of the spark plug wires, the guy before me had actually taken a carburator linkage clip, jammed it into the center of the wire, and then pushed it into the distributor! Third, he had run number eight wire under the air cleaner housing. It was squished so flat as to be BARELY one eighth of an inch thick. I'm thinking that I've been running on seven cylinders this whole time. I have often wished that people who don't know what they are doing, do it to a toyota or something like that, not a classic vehicle! I'm going to re-time her and re-adjust the carb tomorrow. More to come....

A Cooter's shade tree special straight from Hazzard county. Seen them before and unfortunately, we'll see them again.

A few years back, I had a little gal that I worked with come up to me and ask me if I could take a look at her car (It was a '76 Ford T-Bird). She said that every time she turned on the blower fan, the smell was so horrible that she couldn't stand it. Got under the hood and started laughing. Of course, she got a bit angry... I asked her, "Were you having some problems with your A/C?" "Yes" she replied, "How did you know?" Well, some idiot had figured out that there was a leak in one of the lines, so he "repaired" it with about four tubes of super glue! (The top of the compressor was filled with the stuff). I had to tell her that, barring replacement of the entire system, it would always give off that nasty chemical smell. Needless to say, she had a different vehicle within about a month. Aren't dummies just grand?