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Would like to hear from anyone who's replaced the front door hinge post weather strip, Lynn Steel's part # 30-0351-73, on a 1941-47 Clipper.
How, exactly, did you do it, and did you manage to somehow do it without loosening the fender bolts accessed by removing the kick panels? A veteran Packard friend cautions against touching these bolts if your hood/front clip/doors are in the same happy alignment as when your car left the factory, which my '47 Super Clipper is, being an otherwise rebuilt always garaged California car.

I hesitate to ask for concise insight because too many seem compelled to impress us making big productions out of everything, the inference being that readers will think their cars must be really swell and worth more money.

So please, spare us. We've done enough projects, just want the short version.

BTW, a veteran Packardite says unless you really, really h a v e to, leave the dried out old original alone.
He also dislikes the Steele replacement, which lacks the original's steel strip core, so the external, visible portion that doesn't slip between fender and cowl must be
glued in place. Otherwise, it pulls through the screws.

However, mine's hard as a brick and i want to replace it.
Amazingly, the weatherstrip around the doors' other three sides is still pliable, just the front door hinge pillar is rock hard. This same fellow says he used a foamier, spongier generic weatherstrip around the three sides of customers' and his own Packards than Steele's as the latter's is too stiff, you have to practically slam the doors. But this is an aside, as my focus now is finding out if there's an E-Z way to extricate the 67-year-old, petrified seals which time has bonded to the cowl/fender.

Decades ago, i got many parts for an earlier Packard from Metro Moulded Parts in Milwaukee, who are still around, make decent items and oft for less than Steele, who despite making many important bits we all need, takes us to the cleaners.

But for now, please, any insight into quick and nasty, crude but effective, replacement of the front door hinge weatherstrip. At the end of the day, much as i like this spoilt rotten gothic-grilled b__ch, i don't think Briggs bodies are as nice as Fisher. Briggs may've built to Packard specs, but then, look who was running Packard in the '40s.

Similarly, Pressed Steel supplied half the English car industry. But i imagine what they stamped for Crewe was a cut above what they whacked out for Austin, Rover, etc.

Probably shouldn't have posed the above, because i never got response to the questions on my post on the recent Packard Proving Grounds Certificate thread on the Postwar 1945-54 forum, and i've no interest in conjecture, "....just the facts, ma'am."


So, unless you've hard SAE, Automotive Industries article from the day or the like, perhaps better to stick with my simple front door hinge post weatherstrip replacing made easy request, because if you believe Packard drove EVERY Twelve

2 5 0

miles before delivery just because of some cute certificate signed by racing household name Tommy Milton, i've got real estate for you in Florida and a bridge in NYC. Get real. Especially since each engine had allegedly already been run for an hour by electric motor and six hours under its own power before being installed. It was supposedly then run for more than an hour on a dynamometer.

If those valve silencers hadn't run in by then, they never would, and what wealthy soul wanted to shell out that sort of money for a used car? There was this other company down the road on Clark Street, started with a C, Cad-something, whose products were priced tightly against Packard, model for model, competition in the luxe market as cutthroat as in Ford/Chevy/Plymouth/Essex trenches. But i'm repeating my above mentioned post.



Thanks!