Now before you guys start sending evil nasty vibes my way, This is not what you think. There is no chance of this car getting a 350 Chebbie while it is in my possesion. Now that I have your attention, here is the rest of the story.
Last October I saw an ebay ad for a 1955 400 for an opening bid of $5 (yes five dollars). There was no reserve and also no bids. The car did not look to bad so when the auction ended (early I might add) I sent the guy an e-mail.
He answers back with his phone number and that is when things started to get interesting. Long story short, I bought 6 Packards and a warehouse full of parts. One of the cars was a 56 Clipper. What makes it a hot rod is the fact that it has a Packard 374 twin 4bbl setup in it. Along with a carribean front end. At first I thought he just put the carribean hood on it, but the fact there are no holes on the front or back fenders for the radio antennea leads me to believe that it was an entire front clip. Now the guy that I bought this treasure trove from did not do this work, it was done by the original owner who was, as I was told, a Packard employee in Illinois.

As of today, I have had the brakes gone in to and only had to do the back ones as the fronts were already done. Four new tires, new shocks all the way around, gas tank resealed, installed a rebuilt starter, installed the left side muffler and resonator(that was in the trunk all wrapped up in burlap, checked out the torsion leveler motor and it works fine as the car is now level. It came back from where I got it with its nose in the dirt and the back end in the clouds. I have a much better lower front bumper from the parts stash so that will go on, I will have to have the rear bumper corners re-chromed as they are not presentable. When I get the car home this weekend I will make some prepratory actions to insure that the engine is free will try to start it. Now I know that some of you might say "why not see if the engine is free first" Good point, however if fate should blind side me, part of the parts stash were 4 engines, 1 of which was a complete 374(only 1 4 bbl) and 1 of the others was a rebuilt 374 short block. So I am going to take the easy way out first and hope I get lucky. I will try to take some pictures this week end and get them posted. The body on the car is not bad. I would say it is 98% solid. I has two holes in the left rear 1/4 panal about large and small fist size. The rockers are good. There are some surface rust spots all around the holes where the spring clips are that hold the side chrome to the body. The car had received a lousy paint job sometime ago, I really think I could have done better with a paint brush. The roof is cracked and peeling as are the sides. but nothing that a good painter could not handle. If all goes well I see no reason why this car cannot see the road by late summer. It will never be a 400 point show car because I have neither the time or patiences to do a frame off resto. With that in mind, I will be putting in an after market A/C. I am leaning toward finishing the carribean affect by putting in rear antenneas and maybe a hidden am/fm cassette/dvd combo, I should be able to find some room somewhere in there, after all in most Packards you could hold orgies in them, so a small sound setup should be no problem. I will keep everyone posted on progress.

AIK-there is a '56 Executive out there that is an exceptionally low mile, original car. It was discovered about 20 years ago by Dr. Art Burrichter, a well known dealer. The cool thing about this particular car is that it was ordered with the dual-quad Carribean intake setup and a three-on-the-tree stick shift. I saw the car at Hershey a few years ago and the new owner told me it hauls ass!
Is this car an Ultramatic car?

yes it is and if the odometer is correct it is low mileage. 33K

now for the big question --- how do I add pictures?????

Upload your pictures to a free service like Photobucket.

http://photobucket.com

To do that I simply put the Jpeg on my desktop and name it something I'll recognize. When you hit the Choose button in Photobucket it will grab that picture when you hit the Upload button.

It may take awhile but the picture will end up in your Photobucket album. You can resize or edit the picture in Photobucket by hitting the Edit button over the picture in your album. You can save it full size and web size if you'd like. If you post too big a picture we will not see all of it.

In order to get the picture into this thread you simply hit "IMG code" below the picture on Photobucket and paste it into your reply. Hit Reply and your picture will be posted.

Was that clear as mud?

step one, get them to the correct size, I find that about 600 pixels wide is good, dosen't run off of the page and make the thread hard to enjoy. If you can't re-size through your computer's photo-handling software go to www.ifranview.com and download their FREE photo software. I use it and like it a lot. After you get your pictures sized and ready remember what folder they are in (make them easy to find) and go to the full reply screen. Type in your text
then click on the file manager blue underlined text in the "'post options" section at the bottom. Click on it, tell us a little something about the picture in the top box (text only) click on the "browse...." box, select the photo, then click on the "add file" box to the right of the "Browse" box. You'll see the little arrows spin, indicating that it's-a-workin', then when it's done hit "done adding files and submit. Really consider the resizing thing, it makes a big difference, and makes less work for the mods, who have to resize gargantuian photos (which come out of every digital camera today). Try this, let me know how you do.

unfortunatly my computer here at work is very limited and I do not have access to photobucket. They are very tight security wise and if you key something in wrong that someone does not like you hear about it.

AIK--I use the method above and it works fine, Barry was posting pictures in the old days before the software/server upgrade when the site didn't host photos. They do now.

You don't understand, Photobucket may be the greatest thing since sliced bread, my company security firewall won't let me get to it, they consider it an unsafe site.

No, go to my post above, the one with a picture (East Grand Boulevard in 1956) pay attention to the method I describe there, not Barry's method using Photobucket (or other photo storage website).
It's all within this AACA site, no fussing around. Disregard what Barry's Photobucket post says (which works fine from home if you're hooked up with a photo storage site--and was the only way to post a picture before Petey fixed it so that THIS SITE can store and display pictures)and follow my instructions, all of which you do within this website. Just follow my instructions (Mrpushbutton's) on my post above with the picture and you'll be posting pictures in no time. If you can get on this site at work with no problem you can post pictures using the above method.

well the size thing is a bit off, but I can't download software here.

I reduced the size for you.

I don't want to hi-jack your thread, but went I was at the Studebaker Meet at South Bend last summer, a lot of us took our cars to the Osceola Drag Strip. There was a Packard Clipper that did very well. Not sure of what ET or speed it did.

It has two 4s and 3 on the tree.

very interesting. the air cleaner setup shows me what I have to look for. Thanks for reducing the photos, I can't download software at work and they don't let us use the floppy drive any more for writing only reading. i will delete my post with the large pictures.

thanks

Normally the Carribbean dual quad manifold uses a "batwing" triangular air cleaner with the cans that hang below it on the sides. Those are quite expensive when you find one. The setup in Leonard's pictures isn't factory, but a pragmatic (=cheaper) way to do it.

Mrpushbutton:

You are absolutely on the mark. The only one that I know for a fact that had it is one that traded hands for $1000.

The whole setup, air cleaner, carbs, and manifold could run as high as 5K or higher depending on correctness and condition. Not my bag for this car. I just bought 2 of the aftermarket kind.

Good enough--let the Carribbean boys have all of the expensive set-ups. I remember the year 1985-'86 at Carlsile and Hershey, all of the 2,3,4 and 6 carb manifolds that people couldn't wait to get off of their cars (so they would start, idle and not stall on an everyday, just-get-me-to-work-and-back-basis) so many of those cars got a junkyard 2bbl-4bbl manifold and carb set up a few years after they left the factory, and the urge to make cars original all came at once, there were manifold/carb(s)/aircleaner set ups everywhere.

some of them would have made good investments!

Of course that does not mean that if I found an original batwing air cleaner that someone thought was junk and I could get it for $5 that I would not jump on it, (yeah right, where is my head????). Hoepfully I can get back to trying to get it started by the weekend. We had rain Saturday, so the event I had planned for that day I had to put off until Sunday and as it was raining I could not get outside to continue working on it. That's how it goes.

Well in the words of that famous physician Dr. Frankenstien

IT'S ALIVE, IT'S ALIVE IT'S ALIVE
WWWHHHOOOO HAHAHAHAHAHA

Now that I got that out of my system.....

things have gone slowly due to weather, and other functions going on. In any event the initial attempt at starting the car resulted in it running only as long as I pourd gas down the carbs. After eliminating all of the other possibilities, I hooked up an electric fuel pump to the line and lo and behold no gas from the tank. So off with the tank and back to the shop where they discovered that the pick up tube inside the tank had broken off in the cleaning process. The shop put in a new one and I put the tank back in. The next attempt revealed the rear carb to be working but the front carb was spewing gas all over which demanded that I shut the thing down. Off with the front carb and into the workshop for cleaning. I am sure most people are screaming REBUILD IT. Under normal circumstances I would agree, but at $125+ a shot I figured I would try the simplest way first. Put the carb back on and IT LIVES. However the back carb now does not seem to be working so I will pull it off and clean it. Once that is back on we shall see. If all goes well I will be able to start gutting the interior and sending the seats to the upholstery shop to replace the rather crunchy foam in the seats. The vinyl is in need of cleaning with only the cloth inserts needing replacment. Some small parts of the door panals need some stiching. The overall interior condition I would consider as very, very good considering the length of time it sat. While the inside is being done I will take all of the chrome north and get it redone. Before I get the chrome back I need to make sure my iron lung is working perfectly so I can survive the sticker shock. But what the hey!!! Sometime around the end of summer I hope to be able to get it to the body shop for paint. More updates to follow as they occur....

Well sometimes your the bug and sometimes your the winshield. All carbs are functioning well and the car sounds good. While trying to move it around naturally I had to step on the brake and it was listepping on a concrete sidewalk. The booster that looked rebuilt and bench tested well sems to have have gone off the edge. So I have removed it and will be sending to south to be rebuilt by Ed Strain. Cei La Vie. However I can start the interior gutting and other stuff while waiting.

There was an article in the 1970s or 1980s in the Packard Automobile Classics (PAC) or Packards International (PI) magazine. The article was called something like "Beware! This Packard!" It was about a black 1956 Packard Clipper Two Door Hardtop that was fitted with a Dual Four Barrel set up like your car. It may have been a 374 too. The article was pretty specific about the modifications to the car.

I wonder if it was about your car.

Peter Tacy

Peter
Not sure but I kind of doubt it. My car was also seniorized with senior fenders and grille and a caribbean hood with scoops. Also the car was out of Illinois so I don't think that it was the car of the article. But I have been wrong before so who knows.

Sort of an Update:

Still tinkering with the carbs. Trying to patch up the floors and get it ready for the paint shop. All slow going. Doing what I can..