Packard Forum Index » V-8 (1955-56)

Gents,

I was in my garage this weekend changing out the oil pan gasket for the second time. I experienced a small leak at the front and before I went to the trouble to install the steering linkage, I wanted to button up the oil pan. That work is now done and after starting the engine a couple of times and letting it run for 10 minutes each time no leaks. That job is a real pain in this heat but now appears successful!

The reason for my post is that while being under the car all weekend, the TL suspension seems to be putting undue pressure on the upper control arms. (TL switch is in the off position.) So much so that the new passenger side bumper stop is crushed and the drivers side is seriously mashed.

I do have the entire front clip off the car so there is not enough weight to bring the car to level. I was previously planning to allow the car to remain up until I am able to begin putting weight back on the front but now I am very nervous that the upper control arms could be damaged in their current position.

Is there a definitive way to lower the front using the TL motor manually? If I was able to lower the front with the TL motor would it just rise back up again due to the lack of weight on the front end? Again, this just has me very nervous.

Thanks in advance for your advice.
Robert.

Robert -

IF the electrical components on your Carib are wired up correctly, you should be able to use a jumper wire to ground the solenoid terminal with the orange wire, which should spin the compensator motor in the UP direction.

After a few seconds of "wind up", you should notice the rear of the car coming up, and since the interconnected suspension pivots on its center of gravity, the front of the car will begin to come down - though much less, proportionally and alleviate the load on the upper jounce bumpers.

Yet, with so much weight presently removed from the front end, the rear may have to come up several inches above normal to make the car appear to be level.

Work carefully.

BH

Thanks Brian! I will very carefully give that a try at my next opportunity and report back.

Best Regards,
Robert.

Robert, After having been through one debacle I would prefer to see you disconnect the compensator control rod (15.907) by removing one nut and the washers and manually moving that rod to activate the T/L system. I believe that pushing in on the rod will cause the rear to raise. This can be seen rather quickly and the action reversed if not true. In any case you will be going thru the limit switches and won't hurt any thing mechanically. Let us know how it works out.

There is NO significant load on the UPPER control arms at ANY time. Even in hard cornering most of the load is in the LOWER arms.


Even if there was heavy load on the upper it would not damage it. To damage either control arm would require tremendous forces like maybe a pot hole 2 feet deep and 2 feet in diameter at 80 mph.

Randy -

Yes, I should have reiterated that my approach bypasses the limit switches, which were put in the system to prevent overtravel and damage to the levelling system.

Yet, I have even bypassed the solenoids and used a good old heavy set of jumper cables to make a direct connection from the positive post of the battery and to either one of the field terminals on the case of the compensator motor to "manually" level a car in a pinch.

If you keep your hand on the jumper and an eye on the position of the rear bumper, the system does not react so fast that you can't break the circuit and avoid a problem.

In fact, when using a jumper cable as noted above, I always have to experiment a bit to see which way the suspension is gonna go, but I've never had a case where the system got away from me. However, if the system is already run to its limit, experimenting is no longer an option.

More often, it is from the driver's seat that you cannot tell when the system is about to go too far and cause damage. The rear bumper of my '55 Patrician had to be over 3 feet off the ground before I realized there was a problem and hit the cut-off switch. It tore up the limit switch and bracket in the process, but appeared to stop short of bending any linkage or twisting the splines. I find the changes that Packard made to the system for the 56th Series to be a welcome improvement

As such, I've no doubt that this is why the factory wired the manual control switch retrofit through the terminal board of the compensator oontrol switch.

Keith -

I suspect that Robert's concern is that the system somehow got run the wrong way, raising the front end even more than it should be and the resulting load is damaging the new jounce bumpers that he installed.

Brian, Randy and Keith,

Thank you for your responses. I appreciate the collective experience you guys have on these cars.

I was able to get into the garage late last night and decided to very s-l-o-w-l-y jumper to solonoid to see if the main torsion bars would activate after raising the rear to level the front as Brian described. The result was I can raise or lower the rear of the car 4-6 inches manually with the jumper but not enough to make the compensator activate to lower the front. Heeding Randy's warning, that's as much experimenting as I will do.

I agree with Keith that under normal load the upper control arms are simply along for the ride. My issue is with the several hundred pounds of weight removed, the frame simply wants to float up and that is exerting force on the jounce bumpers which at this point are toast. (See picture) If the remnants of the bumpers were not still there the upper control arms would be pressed against the shock tower.

I am hoping that no damage will occur and I just need to get the front end back together sooner than later. Thanks again guys as I always appreciate the help.

Robert.

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You can better see the split jounce bumper on the passenger side.

Robert.

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Bob Stoltzfus has those rubber parts at a reasonable price.