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Karl,

The car and your work on it are absolutely stunning! I wish you were on this side of the Atlantic so we could see the car in person and benefit from your expertise.

George

Thanks George, I want to try to present my work here in the blog as extensively as possible. I was in the USA for some time and I still have my green card and social security card. It was an educational and interesting time. Especially when I was able to drive through NY in a Packard with seats that I restored myself.

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The body was in a restorable condition. All sheet metal parts of the body were only slightly affected by rust. The two main wooden planks running from front to back on the right and left were in a stable condition. The wood between the doors had rotted from moisture and could easily be replaced with new ones. I only replace structural wooden parts that need to be replaced with ash wood. I also optimized the gap dimensions of the doors. A very time-consuming job, as the doors can only be adjusted vertically by lining or removing wood in the hinge stop area. The problem is that the wood screws can no longer hold in the 100-year-old, dead wood and are spinning. I solve this problem by inserting dowels into the otherwise stable wooden parts. I drill the holes 8-12 mm depending on the screw diameter, fill the holes with expanding PU glue (Titebond PU 335) and hammer in a suitable beech wood dowel. The dowel forms an extremely strong connection with the old wood. I don't know of any other glue that forms such a strong bond with old wood and also fills possible gaps and smaller cavities.
The wooden frames of the doors on 3 doors were twisted so that one corner in each case protruded up to 5mm from the body line. In one case, so much so that it was necessary to completely remove the sheet metal paneling in order to straighten the frame and re-glue the loosened, glued corners with a special adhesive. For all other door frames, it was sufficient to overstretch them against the distortion when installed and fix them in this position. I filled the resulting gaps in the corner connections with an expanding special adhesive and immediately drove very thinly ground wooden wedges into the gaps. How this is done in detail is not easy to describe and it takes some experience to do it in such a way that it leads to the desired result.

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All of the wooden panels on the floor, which were originally made of boards, were replaced with the cheapest plywood. Likewise the front wall. I created this area with waterproof glued multi-layer beech wood (German name “Multiplex”). These multiplex panels are used here in Germany in various areas of vehicle construction. The metal tray under the rear seat was missing. I made a new one.
After the paint and filler were removed, the front fenders showed a heavily rusted surface but no rust through. These severe rust scars were also spread all over the frame. I reinforced the area where the connecting rod on which the headlights are mounted connects the two front fenders with a 2mm plate to prevent the fenders from warping the panels at this point. Because the rod and headlights have a lot of weight when this area is shaken while driving.
The rear fenders were in a sorry state. Apart from the severe rust scars, the rear parts were rusted through. Some areas were poorly welded over with sheet metal. Others, however, are “professionally” pasted over with fiberglass fabric and everything is covered with a thick layer of putty. All surfaces had probably never been completely rust removed. Apparently the surfaces had only been brushed by hand or possibly with a flex and cup brush. The remaining rust was simply painted over. I reworked the rusted areas in their shape and welded these sheets together.
I`show the restored floor later, because the body is at the paintshop right now.
The running boards were so bent and rusted through that I replaced them. I made the parts from 2mm stainless steel according to the original parts.
After their restoration, all restored sheet metal parts were sandblasted and primed with epoxy primer.
After their restoration, all restored sheet metal parts were sandblasted and primed with epoxy primer. In order to check the fit, all body parts were assembled on a test basis.

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Detail work on the Body

“Door Stops”
The original shape of the door stop timbers was damaged on all 4 doors.
Some of the protruding wooden parts into which, for example, the door guide parts or the rubber stop are inserted, had some of the wood broken out or was completely missing. Accordingly, the metal fittings were either missing or had been replaced by wrong parts from other cars in order to be able to close the doors at all. The broken wooden parts were recreated from ash wood. Since some of the parts are small, it is not enough to simply replace them with glue. In any case, they should also be pegged sufficiently deep into the old wood using metal or wooden pins.
I recreated the missing brass fittings. I made some tools with which I could press the parts into shape. After edging the brass and sheet metal parts, I closed the remaining open slots with silver solder. I know that the larger brass door guide covers can be purchased as replicas. The problem with these parts is that they don’t fit exactly into the existing mounts. Most of the time these have to be adjusted first. In addition, I don't want to pay the prices quoted for them if I still have to rework them anyway. All parts are nickel-plated. For screws I use stainless steel screws whose heads I polish. The color of the stainless-steel heads then matches the nickel very well. When using stainless steel wood screws in solid wood such as ash, oak or beech, be sure to pre-drill. Smaller screw diameters cannot tolerate high torque and tend to tear off.
Karl

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I very much enjoy your ingenuity in making parts that you need!

I would suggest that before you spend a lot of time making a part, check out a few of the suppliers to make sure they haven't already tooled-up and make the part you need. Blevins in Michigan, or Twin Six in Oklahoma.

Twin Six has a website:https://www.packardtwelve.com/shop?category=Appointments

Blevins I think is only available in print catalog.

Hi W. Peterson,
Thank you very much for your kind advice about the opportunity to save time. If I were still in the US I would certainly heed your advice. But on the one hand, it is part of my restoration philosophy to find all the solutions to missing parts myself, as far as possible. I just enjoy it. And this has been the case for over 45 years. On the other hand...please imagine you were restoring a 100-year-old German car and hardly had sufficient German language skills, especially not in the technical area. With these requirements you would then call here in Germany to try to order them from a dealer who offers parts online. But because he hardly understands anything you're saying, he simply hangs up because he doesn't want to waste a lot of time in such conversations. Or he says he doesn't ship outside Europe. Or the profit he could make is disproportionate to the effort he would have to make. This happened to me a few times when I started restoring my Packard. And there are still dealers in the USA today who do not supply customers in Europe. I was all the more grateful when I received help in solving such problems from Australia, of all places. And was that surprising to me after a few years in the USA? … not really …. But there is a lot of help from Australia. Incidentally, I already knew what Twin Sixx offers and wrote something about it in my introductory text. And I also contacted Bruce about another questions.
But thank you again for this kind note.

Karl

The door locks were stiff. Decades of dirt and rust prevent the striker from being easily moved. The springs on the striker were so strong that the doors had to be slammed shut to close the doors. I disassembled the lock cases and blasted the parts with glass dust. After blasting, I brushed all parts with a special brush with very fine wires (OSBORN company). These brushes (diameter ~ 80mm) will be used industrially for brushing freshly manufactured aluminum rims. These brushes do not produce sparks and are therefore approved for this industrial work. They're not cheap. As it turned out, all cast metal parts can be brought into an optical condition after blasting that makes them appear as if they were freshly cast. This applies to aluminum, zinc, bronze but also blasted steel parts. It looks particularly good on carburettor housings (pott-cast or bronze). (To be seen later in the photos of the carburettor restoration). I also tried stainless steel brushes, brass brushes and fine steel brushes. None achieve a result like these OSBORN brushes. I had two weaker versions of the spiral spring that was much too strong made. One of them then let the doors slam shut with the “Packard typical” “.. click.. click” that I wanted. The visible parts of the lock box are polished. All other parts brushed and then nickel plated everything together. Here, too, I later use stainless steel screws for fastening, the heads of which I polish in the visible area. Polished stainless steel parts match the color of nickel-plated parts very well. Their color is more “yellowish” like nickel than “bluish” like chrome. This also saves me the endless search for the right nickel-plated or chrome-plated screws. After assembly, the previously riveted lock boxes can either be soldered with silver solder or, after appropriate preparatory work, they can be screwed together with countersunk screws. I had the door handles cast in brass (nickel-plated) according to the sample that I made myself and presented to the manufacturer.

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As you can see in the first pictures of my blog, some components were not original. For example the rear and front bumper. The Sport model has rear corners and no full-length bumper. At the front, the connections/holders to the frame were also not original and one of the crossbars was too high, meaning that the additional headlights (Trippe Senior Speedlight) were mounted far too high and therefore too close to the main headlights. A simple conversion was impossible because the front, still original, continuous flat belts were very rusty after sandblasting. Also …. Remake all bumpers. What does this have to do with the body??? …. Well, the car was just too short…..the rear trunk was missing. And that also determines how the rear bumper corners/holders have to be designed. The only question was…..among all the suitcases I found in pictures on this topic on the internet…. and there were quite a few... there wasn't one that wouldn't ruin the overall picture of the "sport"... when viewed from the side. Simply hanging a suitcase on the back as seen on the “1924 Australian Original 136” (… I think everyone knows the vehicle that was recently auctioned…) was absolutely out of the question. We also had to find a case that wasn't too wide in terms of the body, fit between the two "Westinghouse Air Springs" and was only high enough so that the canopy rods could later be placed optimally. The chance to find such a suitcase was like winning the lottery. During the restoration period I searched the Internet from time to time. And… I found the jackpot.
I could hardly believe what someone was offering here in Germany. Because... not only did the suitcase fit in all dimensions, no, it also had a cutout in the area of the petrol filler neck on exactly the right side and at the right height and it would have fit exactly if it weren't for the “Westinghouse Airsprings” had been positioned. But that wasn't a problem because I quickly moved this access a few centimeters. I think this case fits this car really well and the spare wheel can also be installed in a visually good position. Maybe I should change the angle of the holder a little, because I don't really like the almost vertical position of the spare wheel. However, the lid should be able to be opened easily and the bottom of the tire should not protrude too far in front of the connecting line of the bumper corners. Once restored, the suitcase will look something like the one from the “Pebble Beach Winner 1934 Viktoria”. I already have the material for this here. They are the remains of the roof covering of a vehicle that I restored frame off some time ago and which was missing the original case, which I recreated based on the original template. So if I hadn't found a suitable suitcase, I would have probably built another one myself.
Karl

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