Packard Forum Index » V-8 (1955-56)

I've gotten a laugh or two over the years listening to people tell "true" stories about Packard's T-L system.
It is not "air-ride" and no, it was never advertised that way.
It is not hydraulics.
It is so simple that some folks feel the need to embellish the facts. This lily needs no gilding. Its beauty lies in its simplicity.
How I wish 1957 had seen new production with the planned T-L enhancements.
Even if some fellow comes up to you at a show or cruise and swears his uncle owned one and it was an air ride, just laugh and tell him he is mistaken. Under no circumstances should you finally lose your temper and punch him.
No neighborhood kids ever played with the T-L system enough to wear the battery down. I demonstrate mine at the local cruises and lower it to the limit and watch it rise back to level. I do this sometimes all evening long, and have never run the battery down. Because of the gear reduction there is no great strain on the motor and therefore no large drain on the battery.
Does it provide a comfortable ride? An emphatic YES is the answer. An offer to demonstrate can be offered to attractive ladies. Although I personally have not had any success with this tactic, it is not to be considered a slur on the T-L system. It probably has more to do with my looks.
I consider the T-L system the premier feature of the 55-56 autos.

Agreed, the T-L was the class of the field.

Just wondering, since T-L was so good, why in another current thread, someone mentioned an advanced engineering project to re-engineer the front and rear suspensions for '57.

Only a bit off topic, I just learned recently, the '51 Studebaker IFS was designed to use torsion bars. For reasons not documented, they wimped out and switched to coil springs at the last minute.

jack vines

There is another thread somewhere mentioning several design improvements and simplifications envisioned for the 57 TL. I believe there might be even prototype drawings or pictures either here or perhaps it was in a PAC magazine article in the last year or so.

Quote:

The 1955-56 T-L needs more anti-dive in the front suspension geometry and more anti-squat in the rear suspension geometry. It could also use a thicker front anti-sway bar. Maybe that's what they were contemplating?

Craig

I knew Bill Allison socially, he spoke at a couple of Motor City Packards meetings. He said (I think, this is almost 30 years ago, and memories can get fuzzy) that there were improvements to be made yet to T-L and some reduction of production cost through the redesign. He never stopped working on suspensions, he once brough all of these brass-chassis models to a meeting, showing many different ways to interconnect front and rear suspensions, using leaf springs, torsion bars, coil springs--he brought at least a dozen functions demo models.

I envy you your memories of Mr. Allison. I often wonder about genius and what sparks the idea to do something no one else has contemplated. I believe Mr. Allison was a genius.
I also have read and admired Nikolai Tesla for years despite Edison trying to ruin his reputation and downplaying his accomplishments. How did the man conjure up alternating current? How did Bill Allison dream up a torsion bar that caused wheels to oppose each other? Such is the stuff of genius - creating whole new thought out of the mind.

Randy, re the Tesla/Edison pair, another that makes great reading is the Armstrong/Sarnoff feud over FM broadcasting. Though the courts finally ruled in Armstrong's favor, it was long after his suicide in despair over how Sarnoff had ruined his reputation and cornered the market, ultimating forming RCA, and leaving the Armstrong estate in a 30-year battle in the courts for what was apparently theirs. Armstrong's broadcast tower, the first FM station in the nation, is a local landmark here and still in use. It came to fame again after 9/11 when network TV in NYC moved their broadcasting there. It's perched high on the Palisades in NJ overlooking Manhattan and the Hudson.

From the V-8 engine castings thread:

Quote:

Going to a ball-joint front suspension instead of the king-pin style is following the industry trend of the era. Certainly ball-joints give more degrees of freedom of movement to the front suspension, so that is a good thing. More anti-dive would have been easier to attain.

"Complete redesign of the rear suspension..." can only mean fully articulated 4-link on a live rear axle instead of the trailing arms pivoting at the front and fixed on the axle. Since Packard already used an inverted Watts linkage to centrally locate the rear axle, a splayed 4-link would not have been required. Again, more anti-squat would have been easier to attain.

JMHO.

Craig

The big advantages of ball joint suspension were simplicity leading to savings in time and money on the assembly line, in other words quicker and cheaper to build, also a lot less precision fitting. Second was that it gave the designer more room to work in, and design in anti dive, and other geometry easier than with king pins.

Tesla had a couple of secrets in addition to his genius or mental powers. One thing people tend to forget is that he had the finest technical or scientific education money can buy. In his youth in the 1870s and 1880s Germany was the leader in this field and that is where he was educated. It is also worth bearing in mind that in those days ether or aether theory was the last word in physics, he learned this in his youth and never abandoned it. Later when Einstein's theory was all the rage he examined Einstein's work carefully and rejected it on the grounds that it did not explain the phenomena any better than what he was already using, and it had certain flaws or defects.

Today the latest thing in physics is "dark matter" and "dark energy". When they start talking about dark matter and dark energy it sounds a lot like aether theory LOL.

The second thing is the tremendous amount of independent research he undertook. The work of Herz, Marconi, DeForest, and many others covered ground he had already trod, sometimes years before. He was in a unique position to examine new ideas both from the theoretical and practical standpoint.

Another myth is that Tesla is some kind of forgotten genius or his work was suppressed. Not true. In his time he had the support of Edison (for a time) Westinghouse Morgan and other important people and any time he had something to say he never had a problem getting it in the papers in the form of an interview or article. He also seemed to have all the money he needed. Although he did not have a taste for luxury, he lived well and always had a suite in a good hotel in New York and he also maintained a laboratory for his work.

I once heard a story (rumor?) that Ford bought the patent rights for the T-L for the Lincoln, but decided it was too expensive. Anyone else ever hear this.