Twitch
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Posts posted by Twitch
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The only new car I ever bought was my 1973 Z-28 which was $4195 and included A/C for $397, TH 400 tranny $297 Z-28 option $598.
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Your key statement is the fact that you want to tour the entire country in your car. Would the Buick with all renewed front end parts be able to do that? Probably. Do you have sources for everything that would be needed? I am thinking that a big reason for the mod idea is to have coil springs and disc brakes up front which would be a big increase in peace of mind for safety.
It's pretty obvious you aren't interested in the show and judging circuit. You want to drive the car! The new wiring harness is a plus in either case. The 12v switch over has been done by someone else and we know it works along with an alternator to pump out juice. Guess even that could be changed back if someone ever wanted to. The suspension mod can't be easily reversed even though it is virtually invisible outwardly. But you have to think about what YOU want the car for not anyone here.
I certainly wouldn't care to drive around the country without a good electrical system- at least a 6v alternator if no 12v change was already made. Are you considering the fact that your van IFS front end will require less expensive brake parts, shocks and such in the long run? A/C would be a very nice option for travel in warm summer climes. The A/C stuff out there today lik Obsolete Air is quite unobtrusive and effective. Yeah some non-standard holes might have to be made to accomadate it but as a kid I remember vacations in the '54 Mercury without A/C and they weren't comfortable!! I wouldn't drive a 2005 non-A/C car thoughout the US in the summer either!
If you are planning to keep the car and pass it down to whoever, the intrinsic value has nothing to do with market value. Forseeably is someone else going to be bummed out if you sell the car? Yeah if they want 100% original. If your kid gets the car it doesn't matter. If you are going to use the car in California for club nights and cruises in good weather the Buick will get more use than most old cars in the nasty climates. If this car is a "keeper" and you can imagine 30-40 more years of personal use, consider the mod.
On the other hand if you can obtain all the parts you need to renew the car for probably $500 that's minor in the scheme of things to what has already been put into the Buick. A $4000 interior is some heavy bucks and I know a "driver" paint job at probably $3000 plus rechroming adds up to a hefty portion of what is in the car before turn one bolt. More than half of what the car is probally worth was spent on cosmetics alone. Give it a chance, if you do all the relpacements and the vehicle rides and tracks below your expectations by all means mod it.
For many years people owned original cars that were garage queens. They let them deteriorate for various reasons. Anything left outside for decades is pure trash. Anyone ballsy enough to rescue a junker and build a custom or rod out of it instead of a 100% original has my admiration. What's better, just let it rot? Better to see a modified car ON THE STREET than an "original" in the junkyard!
The car below is called Pack Rat. It looks good and was done with respect to enhancing the Packard distinctiveness and is not totally radical in reshape. Better this than the elysian fields of decay in a salvage yard.
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BTW- for those of with 22/23 series which use the 19" X 4" skinny batteries, the Interstate 6v with 615cca costs just $108- about the same as the Optima- but it is not a replica battery. There's Interstate dealers all over the country. interstatebatteries.com to find a dealer.
<img src="http://www.aaca.org/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />
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Nice 5 window coupe and very nice 55 Desoto!
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Try sending a private message to ddub. As I recall he asked back in November whether he should part out the car and the consensis here was try to sell it whole 1st.
It probably has a 288cid engine and a 3 speed trans. Could have overdrive or Ultramatic but not many atuo-trans Packard cars were done in 49. Got the impression the car was all there though.
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I saw the Ebay ones too. See the attached of the Standard red crown...
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Robin- when in doubt get an honest professional opinion. If you have a car that you use in daily service you hopefully have an independent mechanic that you trust to be honest. If not ask your friends. Pop by the place and get an honest opinion. You can tell mechanics that you're definitely NOT going to get it repaired there so you can get a more objective diagnosis even if you do later let them work on it.
If your left arm was tingling you wouldn't ask a bunch of yanks what was wrong, you'd go to the doctor, right?
Seriously, get a professional opinion- it may not be real bad.
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I saw a license plate light lens on Ebay within the past month. I don't think it sold so keep an eye out if it is put up again.
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Going through old junk I found something from my youth. It was a pair of red valve stem caps that Standard Oil used to sell in their stations back when they all had the crown atop the pumps and whatnot. We just called them 'red crowns' since they were crafted like the crowns on the pumps. We'd cruise around on our bikes and liberate them from cars that had them.
Anyone remember these? <img src="http://www.aaca.org/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ooo.gif" alt="" />
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Well every car built in a finite number has some sort of survival rate. I agree that a Packard may have survived better as you say they are better quality and cared for. When I began buying Cadillacs for transportation I reasoned that a 2-5 year old Caddy had depreciated nicely for my purposes and people that owned them new usually cared for them well, hence an good used car that I could afford.
I quit seeing Packards pretty quickly on the streets. By 1962 in St. Louis I recall ONE 1956 anywhere around my sphere of travel. They must have been garaged after about 10 years and left to slumber gracefully with care where other cars were continually used.
As traffic increased through the years I think more cars were in accidents relative to their models and parted out. I mean even around 1970 going to a junk yard showed mainly vast amounts of 60s cars and just a very few from the 50s.
I think anyone looking might be surprised at how many are on club rosters as a starting point. Wonder if there's a half-baked formula for that like X 10 on club rosters probably still exist, or what?
Certainly in the 60s and 70s no one was still keeping "that old car" protected in a garage and cared for because they were waiting for a boom in values. They just did it cause they liked the cars.
I know my 73 Z-28 is one of 11,000. Are half that many still alive? I'm getting the body cherried out and new paint, a new engine and interior. My youngest daughter loves the car- only reason.
<img src="http://www.aaca.org/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />
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I recently upgraded to the Optima from the next highest output Kragen battery for my Eldo. The old one was like 22 months old and went bad. The Optima has the most juice of any battery I've seen. Like 770 cca-cold cranking amps and 1150 amps. I had an alternator go bad on a trip to Sacramento. I was going up I-5 about equal with Bakersfield to the east when it crapped out. I turned around and got all the way to Burbank before the battery ran out of volts to power the computer to manage the engine. This baby has a great reserve capacity!
CCA should roughly equal your CID to be effective. If you have electronic goodies- and what car doesn't?- go higher. I have made a point of buying the most powerful battery I could for every car I've ever had. The point being that once a batt goes bad there is so much reserve left in it and you may need the reserve power to make it home or to civilization or just that one more start to get to the battery store!
I used to sell Gould-made batteries in the 70s and have seen it all. Some batteries will go bad in 3 weeks and another will last 6 years. Some get huge acid corrosion build up outside and all over the terminals yet continue to perform fine. Others will not function with a just bit of it on the post and so on.
When my old battery was done for a guy with a month-old Optima was there and got a new one since it was gone too. Warranties don't mean much as far as actually meaning you can expect a 7-year battery to last 7 years. If it lasts 4 years you go back to the store and they pro-rate it and put the amount of months=$ left on it against the new batt. This way you are a locked in as a customer.
My Packard has an Interstate 665cca battery! I see the logic too. The generator needs like 10 miles of higher RPM charging to replace the original starting discharge. So drive around a low speed in your area and start the car several times and your down on the juice. The generator is only putting out like 30-35 amps anyhow compared to an alternator's 60+ so notwithstanding the ability to charge at idle the alternator will recharge your batt faster.
Our piddling around in 6 volt drivers with powerful batteries allows us to never be on the edge. We can charge them up at home to replace drained juice from a 10 mile around-town trip with 5 start-ups.
Every time I've gotten a new starter on any car I could immediately tell the quicker turning RPM too. We don't notice over time as the thing begins to spin a bit slower until it is barely revolving one day and we recognize it.
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When I got my Packard I sent all the info on the car to the guy at http:// www.packardclub.org/ that compiled the roster for my year car. I figured sombody might be interested in knowing that the car had survived this long. Lots of people wonder "how many are left," about lots of makes.
Check them out and ask some questions.
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Dude, there are many good reasons to modify an old vehicle. Number 1 is parts finding. Depending on the condition of your Buick to start with it many make more sense to use updated parts as parts are hard to find and expensive. You gotta ask yourself if you are going to restore a car for shows and to be judged or do you want a drive-able, unique vehicle that you can find brakes and shocks for at Midas instead of scouring the country?
A recent episode of American Hot Rod had Boyd Coddington building 2 rat rods. One began from a lousey old rusted body but the other was commenced from about an 1915 Ford coupe that was restored! Blasphemy!
Look, when I was growing up in the mid-50s there weren't very many folks beyond museums and tiny groups of quirty old car geeks that "restored" cars of the 20s back to some form of originality. 1940 Fords were only 25 years old and not partliuclarly rare and many other cars weren't either. Why not chop and lower a 1950 Mercury in 1957? Would anyone balk at taking a torch to a 1998 Mercury today? It was all relative!
Suddenly in the last 20 years there are legions of people with enough $$ to buy collectable cars. Something from the 30s is now very old and rare-ish so people will wince at your idea. I bet your car could be a long way and lots of $$ from 100% restoration to 1937 factory standards. Now if someone comes along and says 'here's all the money you need to retores it properly' they should have some say in it. This is YOUR car and YOUR $$$. And the paramount thing to all this old car hoop-la, except for a few, is to actually have a functioning old car that can be driven safely. The few have museum-quality cars that shouldn't be driven.
If it means making the car drive-able on your budget with a dependability factor versus sitting in the garage decaying, by all means do it!!
The Tahoe rear end can probably be made to fit little or no narrowing the rear axle. The idea of using a truck/van fron suspension is good. It'll be more sturdy that something from a car for a heavy-weight like the Buick. The great thing is that all your mods are invisible. 99% of the afficianados would never notice the underpinnings unless they got under it any way. Technically you are restoring using non-original parts that leave the car stock from normal viewing.
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You are SO right. Part of my ownership reason is that my Dad sold post-war Packards and owned a 1940. He just got to a P-51 (Packard-built Merlin) squadron as the war in Europe was ending.
I write mainly WW 2 air combat tales and have relationships with lots of the aces though their ranks are thinning fast. They were from a generation of "can do" people. I am sickened that today GIs whine about not having high-speed internet access in a combat zone and their tours of duty are extended! What a contrast to WW 2 when our fathers went in not knowing how long they'd be in combat, and most of all not bitching about it!
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My 288cid straight 8 has a 6 volt Interstate battey with 665 cca- cold cranking amps. The rule of thumb is that cca should be roughly equal to you cubic inch displacement not figuring for power accesories. A high cca will crank a motor for a long time slow or otherwise.
My equally-sized 278cid Northstar in my El Dorado has something like 900 cca from a monster battery but it has lots more electrical accesories. Stay with high cci and it'll be OK no matter how much slow turning is needed.
The other thing is if your car is a driver a lot of turning brfore starting or several starts will require a LONG drive for the generator to restore the battery. The rule of thumb there is that it takes ten miles of driving to charge up what the starting took away. And that's steady higher RPM not idling at stop lights and putzing around for 4 miles in the neighborhood. The thing about having a high capacity battery is that it will allow you to do that- putz around at low speed and restart the car several times. If you pull lots from a hi cci battery it has more. The worst that could ahppen is that you'll have to charge the battery once in a while to bring it up to top output.
Back in the day of generators I recall lots of problems with balancing the then weaker battery output against having headlights, heater blower, radio and whatnot in 12 volt systems. You couldn't have survived in big city traffic commutes of today with all your accesories on in bumper to bumper traffic like you can today with high amp, cold cranking amp and high reserve batteries with alternators.
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It's possible. All there had to be was a minor misfire or something minor to detract from performance and the 283 could have smoked the hemi. Was the 426's valve lash adjusted right? Were the points set properly? Wa there a crosfiring plug wire? How far did they race? A true 1/4 mile= 1,320 feet or a "couple blocks?" Lost of actual quarter mile contests will have the loser out in front all the way to 1000 feet. In pro-stock where cars are pretty closely matched the car that makes the most HP will win at the stripe due to the extra power even coming from slightly behind.
Reaction times in pro drag racing has made more upsets than horsepower has won. It may not seem like it but leaving late off the line will spell defeat. And as others have noted, hooking up the HP to the ground is important. Be 4 hundreths of a second late leaving and get a half second of tire spin where the car isn't moving forward and you lost.
I had a 371 Olds in a '57 98. No lightweight but 277HP. A guy in a Chevelle with a 283 stick beat me one out of 3 races where we raced which was as close to a 1/4 mile as we could figure.
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I'm your age and have a snow white beard but I haven't heard that one...yet. What I get from parts store guys is 'who made Packard?' My reply is 'Packard made Packard.' I'm amazed that more guys don't know that there were actual non-big 3 companies out there like, Reo, Oakland, Hupmobile, Studebaker, Nash, Hudson, Pierce-Arrow and so on. <img src="http://www.aaca.org/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />
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This is TOTALLY a manifold for a flathead Ford/Merc and Stromberg carbs! I've got a 1953 book"How to Hop Up Ford & Mercury V8 Engines written by the legendary Roger Huntington and it has several pics of aftermarket manifolds in it. There were many makers- Offenhauser, Navarro, Tornado and more back then.
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This is the place that makes a really great 6 volt alternator:
http://www.fifthaveinternetgarage.com/alternator_gazette.html
And I found the place that makes the 12 & 6 volt alternator built INSIDE of a housing that looks like a generator at:
http://www.gener-nator.com But bend over cause it cost $795!!! <img src="http://www.aaca.org/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />
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There is an oscenity at work in many cars that have crazy prices attached. Just because a guy actually spends $40k on a car that commands $25k in # 1 condition doesn't mean the car is worth $40k. If you want to do that for yourself and to yourself, fine. Don't try to foist the artificial value off on others in an attempt to sell it.
I've seen a few on Hemmings for sale at stratosphere prices too. What it does is start a trend where other really nice, normal #2 or #3 cars are elevated by their owners as well making all collector makes bump up in perceived value.
This is where I found most 57 Olds 98s to be when I was looking. Hey they're 57s so like the venerable 57 Chevy these guys price them up there when there is no evaluation guide supporting it! <img src="http://www.aaca.org/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />
Rubbish! <img src="http://www.aaca.org/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" />
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Yes, just theorizing as such. Back then 89 octane was quite adequate octane for the compression ratios so the eternal question is whether premium actually does anything beneficial to an older engine. I am using 89 and no problems.
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The oldest car I own was recently purchased. It is not as safe as my 96 El Dorado or any modern car. Anyone that believes a lot of metal surrounding them is safe is wrong. I've used 3 point seat belts since the mid 60s beginning with my 63 Volvo 122S. I have purchased lap belts for the Packard and will install as soon as weather permits.
I know that no club deducts points for seat belts if that is a concern for anyone. Other updates must be looked at on a case by case basis. If you are going to regularly drive an old car it should be as safe as possible. If that means modern split brake master cylinder and brighter lights so be it. If anyone wants totally, totally old time original I believe they should think about trailering their car if they feel unsafe in it.
Driving speeds around town are somewhat less in the Packard but not a crawl either- 45MPH where posted. The same a--holes that go wizzing around and cut you off would be doing it no matter what you were driving. Acceleration is more sedate, akin to a 2 ton truck.
I've toyed with the idea of putting a non-permanent third brake light in the window like new cars have with lots of brightness but not yet. I decided I will not drive in the rain. I've got a heater/defroster but the wipers are the vacuum type= slow and quaint, but so were the ones on my 57 Olds I had in the mid 1960s.
My 73 Camaro and 65 Nova both can and have been repaired more easily than unibody type designs. One can strip off sheetmetal and front clips and rebuild older cars. It's impossible on the new stuff.
Hagerty insurance had a questionaire about older car safety recently that asked lots of leading questions about what is more safe in your classic over your modern car. For my part it's nothing.
I'm not going to fret and go crazy though for 100 or 200 miles a month of driving.
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Yeah it ain't easy and only the best of the best paint masters can do it. For my part if it was a driver I'd re-paint it. This is exactly where my Packard is. Old owner painted it but interior is original. Engine is re-painted but all components under-hood original. For a driver if you don't have a good paint job it just looks like a crappy old car, akin to many 10 year old and older "beaters" seen daily.
I've never seen a Dusenberg with 1930s age paint. If a Dusey should be repainted why not an Oakland?
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Good to hear thet're all doing better. Wow- 2 of everything from now on!
1965 Mercury Maurader (Park Lane) - info please?
in General Discussion
Posted
Condition it's in now it wouldn't be more than like $1000 if someone really wanted one. If it has a 427 figure 135% above that. Friend's parents had a black on black in black one back in 65. It was a great cruiser and great for drive in dates. The 390 could get up some too.