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When I took the shackles off of my 115c, I think I found the remmnents of a cork washer of some sort between the shackle pieces and the leaf spring. Is there supposed to be anything like that? If so, what's it made of and does it go between the shackle plates and frame/spring bushing on both bolts and plates or just on one end?

Between the leaves on many springs there were various "buttons". These were used for silence, different ride characteristics etc. Several prewar bulletins and counselor articles mention various button combinations or composition changes and things to do, look for or change to fix or help various things. I think the shackle itself only had the rubber bushing. One common theme in the articles was to not lubricate certain areas between the leaves.

The interleaf "buttons" were both rubber and metallic alloy with the specific material varying with the application (chassis) and specific leaf. Normally at least one (the 2nd leaf) used rubber. As I recall the alloys were of bronze, antimony, tin and lead. Packard's U.S. Patent 2,221,488 gives specifics.

Is there a grease fitting on the shackle? The cork washer could be a grease seal. Many cars had this arrangement. Some Chrysler products had bronze shackle bearings that threaded in, until the early 50s.

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Ken,

I am a little confused. Is the organic material between the leaves of the spring, or was it between the side of the rubber bushing and the shackle pin links?

If the latter, could it be some junk that got caught up in there? The only parts in the shackles should be the two shackle links, two shackle pins, and two rubber shackle bushings.

Tom

In replacing the rear shackles on mate Wade's '37 Super 8 there were felt washers as part of the shackle assembly. Been looking for pic's to illustrate but can't find at this time. Probably not relevant to your 115C anyway. When I replaced the rear shackle rubbers on my '41 120, no washers that I remember. Flackmaster should be able to supply a definitive answer. The other though I'm having is, are your remnants part of a spring cover? Heard of them but ain't seen any. Were they metal, leather, canvas or what?

Tom, the latter. However, apparently in '37 Packard used a screw-together type shackle vice a rubber bushed shackle.

Mal, actually, the Super 8 shackles are the same as mine. I didn't find anything in the '37 manual I have, but when I took a look in the '38 manual that covers '37, it referred me to this illustration the Super 8 portion of the manual. It would appear that I need two grease seals on each bolt for a total of eight.

Since I don't have a fancy punch tool for cutting cork gaskets, I'm going to go to the hardware store and see if I can find something. If that doesn't work, I'll look into other sources.

Any tips or hints I need to know on putting these kind of shackles back together? It seems pretty simple, but it seems it could be easy to assemble the shackle incorrectly such that the rear suspension binds up.

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The part number for the cork gaskets is 315476, we have soem NOS, but of course they are shrunken, britle and unusable. I would suggest using a thich cross section O ring, not original but if a judge is looking that closely put your car in first gear and either go forwards or back at your indescretion.

Fred, thanks for the thoughts. I ended up buying a sheet of 1/8" rubber and using a hole saw, spade bit, and Xacto knife made my own. The caption of the picture says it all, but I'm trying to restore a driver that I can put in shows, not a show car I can drive from the trailer to the parking spot, so I think it will turn out ok.

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