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I have been quite happy and impressed with the site, it is easy to use and reliable given the volunteer nature of maintaining one. I am one of the people on it pretty much daily.

I think before talking about completely gutting and rebuilding the website based on statistics of use it should be born in mind what percentage of users will use it regardless of how easy or intuitive or “good” it is.

Many – probably most -members are passive and the PAS is not their daily interest. All clubs end up being driven by a relatively small number of individual volunteers with the majority being passive. I doubt a significant website change is going to move that needle dramatically. I am not opposed to improvements, just saying expectations should be realistic. The “curmudgeon” factor must be applied. Many are not good at computers or even interested in using them. For example, there has been an effort to get interest in the PAS Facebook page, but after watching my wife deal with facebook and all its distractions and privacy problems I don’t want to have any Facebook account (she has stopped using Facebook herself). I am a curmudgeon like many and only acquiesced to getting a “smart” phone last year.

I have been a member of PAS for over 30 years, have owned my derelict Pierce for 28 years. I have been a passive member and quietly collected PASB’s, Arrows, and other information until I finally started working on it a few years ago. I have been a member of Packard Automobile Classics for longer, I am much more active in it going on many tours with my Packard, but rarely visit the PAC website. The PAC website is large and impressive, but it simply is not my focus at the moment.

I am spending so much time on the PAS website primarily because it is my current project and at the top of my mind.

Jim

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I would be less concerned about breather filtration, it is primarily there to allow the dirty blowby from the rings to escape the crankcase, so it is generally blowing out not sucking outside air in.I would worry about a filter on the breather plugging up with carbon and sludge. Pierce’s system of dumping the breather blowby gasses between the air filter and carb inlet makes sense. The slight pressure drop of the air filter helps induce the breather flow (which actually shouldn’t need any help) and if for some reason the pressure goes negative it is drawing air through the main air filter.

A PCV system would be nice – it would ventilate the crankcase and reduce the sludge and deposit formation, but would be a non-trivial task to calibrate the flow and adjust the carb mixture to compensate for the ventilation flow bypassing the carb.

As a trivial aside, an engineer in the ’30’s determined that cooling the crankcase atmosphere by positive ventilation with outside air was significantly more effective at reducing con rod bearing temperatures than an oil cooler – most of the rod bearing cooling was via the rod thrashing around in the crankcase. He proposed drawing all of the carb intake air through the crankcase, which was pretty much the appropriate amount of air to cool the crankcase air. The first (unsolved) hurdle was how to separate all the oil flying around from reaching the carburetor and avoid rapid loss of oil – not to mention the smoke screen.

Jim

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This topic was also discussed in a lengthy thread a month or so ago. To add to the discussion, another point about temperature and engine wear. Studies way back showed that coolant temperatures of 160 and below kept the oil thicker and led to more oil getting past the rings and burning, leading to more deposits which increased piston ring, piston ring groove, and cylinder wear. Thick weight oils have the same effect, and of course engines during warmup. Ironically, the trend in piston ring design through the years shows that the problem for most engines is scraping the excess oil down, not too little oil on the cylinder walls. Moot testimony to this is the Packard senior engines. Before 1936 they used 3 compression rings and one cast iron oil ring, same as Pierce. In 1937 they replaced the #3 compression for a second oil scraper ring, so it had two compression and 2 oil rings. Customer complaints of excess oil consumption were to be dealt with by adding springs behind the rings to increase pressure.

Once pressurized cooling systems came into play coolant temps were raised to 180 -195 and above. One study found that wear was minimized with 20 weight oil and coolant temperatures above 180. The rings were less effective at scraping the excess oil down when thicker.

Years ago I had my shutter thermosylphon recharged to have a 180 opening temperature instead of 160 (it was an option on some cars) – which also helped the passenger heater effectiveness.

Compared to the air filtration issue this factor is probably more academic than practical given the really low miles any of them will likely ever see before it becomes illegal to self drive your car without computer. Meanwhile, it underscores the goodness of getting engine temperatures up by driving them (not idling or puttering around at 25 mph) and not using thick oils.

Personally I do not put my cars away for winter, I try to drive them at least once a month to avoid “death by museum” syndrome. Not always possible depending on the weather of course (like this week with a mix of heavy snow and rain). I like to get all the lubricants splashed and worked around a bit to keep the seals from drying out. The tires also develop flat spots from sitting that are annoying at highway speeds, unless you jack the cars up which makes it very inconvenient to drive them somewhat regularly.

Jim

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Thanks for looking! Yes, converting to real units makes it .63″ wide (slightly wider) and .59″ ~9/16 high, so probably the same as the slightly too tall cross-section used on Packard and some Fords.

It looks like my choice will be having the channel stick into the window opening a bit too far or using a black cross-section that will be close to flush.

Jim

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The Tatra’s were designed by Jaray starting in the 1920’s. He was an engineer who did much of the pioneering work on auto streamlining. You can see the elements of Jaray designs before the Silver Arrow. The Silver Arrow took some of the principles of Jaray’s (and others) designs and made them more aesthetically pleasing. Interestingly (to me), he did his pioneering automobile aerodynamic work in the same wind tunnel that the German Zeppelins were studied in.

“Streamlined” cars are usually ugly to our eyes. A truly well streamlined shape requires a long tapered tail to keep the flow from separating off the rear facing surfaces, but the length of that taper is usually quite impractical for a car that must accommodate passengers. As a compromise the back end gets lopped off usually in some unfortunate fairly blunt shape. Famously, Carl Breer’s early work on streamlining at Chrysler learned that the basic late 1920’s shaped cars had less drag going backwards.

A car design that inspired my interest in Classic cars was Virgil Exner’s theoretical 1966 Pierce-Arrow design, I thought it was the best looking fastback design, (I like ’66 Toronados too). However, while just being a basic five passenger car it’s total length would have been a whopping 22 feet.

Jim

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Tom, I have removed and replaced my original spring covers successfully. I pried the folded over sections one by one along the bottom with combinations of a putty knife and a wide blade vise grip. The metal is pretty soft and did not split when unfolded and refolded back.

Originally the springs were greased between all leaves and wrapped in canvas underneath the covers. The issue of greasing boils down to whether there is enough grease left that isn’t just all dried up. You might be able to assess this after removing some segments.

To completely grease I removed the axle u-bolts and the center bolt holding the leaves together and removed and cleaned all the leaves before re-greasing. (actually I removed the springs from the car but that shouldn’t be necessary of the leaves and shackle bearings are in good shape). Removing the leaves may not be necessary if you just slather in the grease at the edges of each leaf as you work the spring up and down with a jack. I replaced the canvas with new before reassembling the metal covers.

There are plastic strips available in lieu of the original grease, this would entail taking the leaves apart.

I will leave the question to others whether anyone has successfully lubed the springs without removing the covers.

When I did this several years ago I could not find new replacements for the metal covers (often referred to as “gators”, I call them crab legs), but I believe a year or so ago the subject came up here and there is somebody reproducing them now.

Good luck!

Jim

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Bob, my ’36 Packard originally had a radio and did (does) have a condenser mounted somewhere around the circuit breaker behind the dash – I imagine it doesn’t function anymore but didn’t know what to replace it with. Since I don’t listen to AM anyway I didn’t spend much time chasing it. It would be worth an experiment to put one across the regulator. I wonder if it would suppress the sparking of the brushes and improve brush life?

Sorry we have gotten a bit off track from the original question. My dome light is in very good condition with essentially no corrosion – except the tiny wire sockets do appear to have some surface corrosion and certainly could be a connection problem that could lead to overheating.

Bill, you will appreciate my problems with my Jaguar electrical a few years back. Despite the Lucas “Prince of Darkness” reputation, they all seemed to stem from slight corrosion on the fuse and connector surfaces.

Thanks for the help!

Jim

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I will add a ground wire. Certainly scary to think of the connection smoldering to the point of causing the bows to turn to charcoal!

I have debated about using the chicken wire for the antenna. I did that on my ’36 Packard – keeping it isolated from the metal body and coax to the radio. I am not sure if it was too good or simply bad, the end result was that AM reception is completely trashed by the engine, even when switching to resistor spark plug wire. It doesn’t really matter since there is nothing “authentic” to listen to on AM anyway. To listen to authentic music I have a AM/FM/USB hidden in the driver side glovebox so that I can play authentic music – queue Tommy Dorsey.

The negative ground stereo is isolated from the positive ground car and powered with a 6/12 upconverter. FM reception is okay but pretty marginal -it will pick up engine sparking unless the FM signal is strong. I suspect the chicken wire was convenient but probably not really a very good antenna, and while fussing over how to do the top I am thinking of putting a dipole wire antenna between the batting and top above the chicken wire. I don’t know if the proximity of the conductive chicken wire to the dipole would defeat the system.

Radio and electromagnetism is black art to me, anyone have better ideas?

Jim

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That answers the questions, thanks for the responses! “Opera”” lights seems fitting given their design.

Jim”

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My ’35 Pierce has a gasoline fired Southwind heater. It was in Wisconsin until I bought it. It was dealer installed and was a bit of a crude butcher job cutting a rectangular piece through the firewall for the gas, exhaust and electrical. The Southwind is in poor condition, but doesn’t really matter since it is too scary to think about installing a gasoline fired heater inside the car!

Not as crude as my ’36 Packard, which had a dealer installed hot water heater. The holes they cut in the firewall took out a corner of the serial plate. That heater was a generic without any brand. I later found a dealer unit with a Packard label on it.

Packard had provisions for plumbing a hot water heater coming out the top of the cylinder head and back to the temp regulator. Pierce did not. In anticipation of installing a hot water heater in my P-A, I cut down a brass pipe fitting that replaces some of the radiator upper hose, and soldered a smaller tube into it for a hot water takeoff. I also soldered a return tube into the large brass lower fitting between the radiator and water pump.

For years I ran the Packard hot water knee scorcher, it was very effective and with the thermosylphon shutter system it would warm up the car faster than any of my later cars. Then I added an under dash evaporative “swamp” cooler and was cooking my dear wife on hot days. The reason was I hadn’t installed insulation between the dash board and firewall, the pockets in the sides of the footwells, or most importantly, the floors above the exhaust pipe and mufflers.

After rectifying that and getting it much better insulated, it no longer was as comfy warm on cold days, but we don’t cook in the summer.

Jim

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Thanks for the responses. 12-15 is more in line with what I have been anticipating for a good quality local shop (we just closed a local business and very much in tune with giving local business first shot. It is still a few multiples more than I paid to have my Packard done in 1986 (multiples above basic inflation). It was done from pictures – I had nothing left except the rear seat squab.I am surprised that a sedan would be significantly less than an open car – seems like there is more detail and as much total yardage involved.

I already have the woodgrain done, I won’t send the last bits of door hardware chrome out for replate until I have finished repairing and refitting the doors.

Paul, thanks for your response on the striped pattern. I was going to ask for pictures but remembered your car was featured in an Arrow. I am looking at it now – Series 11 Model 2. That subtle stripe pattern is clearly what my car had, I think it is more subtle than the Packard striped but will start getting samples from where I can.

Jim

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The upholsterer I have used in the past has me provide the material. The discussion below about 50-75k for an upholstery job has me looking at what options I have for cost as I am not going to spend more on just the upholstery than the car will be worth. It may show up for sale for parts if that is the case, although it has always been just good enough that it shouldn’t be parted out provided someone like me is willing to put in the sweat equity at zero dollars/hour in lieu of sitting on the couch watching football.

I am jumping the gun a bit here as I am a long ways from the upholstery shop, but if the material isn’t always available I may need to buy it well in advance of needing it – like so many other parts.

Jeff Hirsch got back to me immediately and is asking if I might be referring to Packard striped material. What I have in mind I have seen on several Packards. The sad remains of my Pierce-Arrow fabric appears to have been very similar with a visible vertical striping pattern. Attached is a picture of a friends beautiful ’37 Packard with what I have in mind.

I am extremely picky about colors – I have mixed at least 25 paint samples for the exterior and still haven’t settled on the final combination but they will be blues with a gray or blue-gray upholstery fabric being appropriate.

Jim

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Tony, in the paper I have been referring to Sparrow cut down the surface area of his bearings in half and improved their life at 4500 rpm. There is more than enough surface area at higher speed, maybe not so much at idle speed. At speed the large bearing surface area just adds a lot of heat and friction.

Blade and fork designs allow the cylinders of each bank of a V engine to be in the same line instead of offset by the width of the connecting rod. On a V-8 such as early Lincolns, this would have prevented a rocking couple slight imbalance unless counterweights were added to the crankshaft. It is theoretically a more elegant design, albeit less practical for an auto engine.

There are two ways to do the fork and blade, I am not familiar with how Lincoln did it. The first is to have two narrower bearings for the forks and a wider bearing for the blade. The bearings and crankpin can end up having the same total area as if they were offset with two con rods bearings of equal width. The narrower bearings actually tend to have fewer problems than wide bearings. The Rolls Royce Merlin used on Spitfires and Mustangs used this approach, and I imagine was what Lincoln did.

The Allison V-12 used on P-38, P-39, P-40 and the last P-82 Twin Mustangs had a single bearing for both. The bearing was fixed to the forked rods in the conventional way, while the blade oscillated on the outer diameter of the bearing bushing similar to how the articulated rods attach to the master rod of a radial engine. This arrangement allowed for a smaller total bearing area needed and a reduction in weight. Some air race engine rebuilders retrofitted Allison rods into Merlins because they were stronger.

Jim

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Yes, I think the lack of actually needing to be lubricated was part of the reasoning. A ball bearing at very slow speed such as oscillating doesn’t really need any lubrication since it is mainly rolling not sliding, so the grease really wouldn’t be critical, its purpose partly to help the seals keep contaminants out. It was probably believed that the balls would actually last longer even if neglected.

The notion also seemed to be that it reduced the friction of the slight rotation of the spring as it deflected, but since the leaf spring system does not have enough damping a shock absorber is required anyway to introduce a much larger friction force to control deflection. Simple oscillating journal bearings with bushings can have a slip-stick problem if not well lubricated (which also creates wear). Perhaps one thought was that eliminating the friction at the shackle made the total damping of the shock more consistent. Many of the more expensive cars of course had the Bijur lubrication system to keep the shackles oiled.

The obvious problem of course was that non-rotating ball bearings aren’t great at large static loads where they constantly get hammered in the same location and pounded indentions into the pins. Larger size bearings would have helped (as I noted the larger diameter bearing on my rear spring hangers were fine) or the obvious solution looked at by many latter day restorers of changing to tapered roller or needle bearings that have much better static capacity.

My theories. Jim

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This is an “UBA” – Unsupported Broad Assertion – but I would question whether improved understanding of metallurgy has been applied to babbitt and small obsolete engine rebuilding shops since WWII. The technical attention was shifted to more advanced materials – copper lead was old hat by WWII with exotics like silver-indium coming into play on aircraft engines. I believe it mainly boils down to quality control and processing that was very well understood by the manufacturers who were doing thousands per day with qc, research and test departments to back them up. I would bet a lot more has been forgotten than has been learned.

If I had to get new con rod bearings I would probably find a way to convert to a later copper lead insert, with the complication of having to figure out how to replace the side flange material. I know it has been done on Pierce-Arrows. Side flange clearance is important for limiting oil flow out of the con rod and overwhelming the oil control of the piston rings.

My skepticism comes generally from my aircraft engineering career where you might be amazed how much past technology is unknown and dismissed. In spite of their incredible performance and reliability, aircraft and engines are designed today making basic mistakes that were learned in the 1940’s. Actually, much of my career was spent trying to get engineers out of their complex computer programs and look at basics and what was done before. Often I would be in meetings where some feature was dismissed as unworkable and I would say – “but you guys did it 50 years ago”. Of course “those guys” were long gone from the company. Apologies for the soap box!

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What I would like to separate here is the damage and wear caused by the actual operation of the engine, a corrosion process from being exposed to water or acids over time, or babbitt protected from the elements actually has some process that causes the characteristics of the metal to change from some internal process independent of external factors.

If one sees damage that has to be fixed it is a moot point. In my case, the picture of the cast babbitt flange is from my 845. It was rebabbitted in the 1960’s and run for a few hours then parked again until I went through it and started running it recently. My bearings all looked very good, but I have no way of knowing if the 1960’s rebabbitt job was good. Likewise if I were to get them rebabbitted now “just because”, I don’t have any reason to believe the new babbitt would be applied better than it was in the 1960’s when it was a more common practice.

In general I give the original factory the benefit of the doubt and only replace or repair if necessary.They had the processes and tooling established in a systematic way that a latter day restorer does not have – me in particular. I always ask the question of whether my or a professional shops repair work is going to be actually better than the original with some wear.

Jim

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David, it does seem a bit puzzling. Does it maintain 50 psi even with the engine warmed up at idle?

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An additional thought on the pictures of Greg’s rods. Thick babbitt does not have high fatigue strength particularly at high temperature. It could be that the failure did not need to be from a complete breakdown of the oil film, but simply fatigue from the high stresses in the babbitt from the high gas load of the piston.

Jim

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Greg, your pictures look like poster children for one of the problems/worries on P-A con rod bearings. Studebaker engineer Sparrow in 1935 “Problems in the Development of a High Speed Engine” noted:”The first rods had babbitt flanges on the sides and cracks in the bearing surface proper would frequently extend to these flanges and cause large pieces to fall out. This would permit the cracks in the remainder to spread and bearing failure would soon follow. Considerable improvement resulted from the elimination of the babbitt flanges and a further improvement from the adoption of the copper lead liners.”

In a previous 1934 report on bearings Sparrow also noted that at the high speeds he was testing (4500 rpm) cracks would appear first at angles of about 45 degrees off center in the cap that corresponded with the point where the load on the rod switched from tension to compression (gas load on the piston versus the centrifugal force in the opposite direction due to the inertia of piston and rod). He theorized that at high speed this is where the oil film might break down as the rod shifts slightly with the change in direction (SAE 34009).

The rods you show above look like a failure initiated near or at the side flanges at top dead center which corresponds with where the oil film would be most likely to break down under conditions of low rpm and high throttle when the gas pressure would be near maximum pushing down the rod with little inertia force acting opposite. This would be from low speed lugging.

I am sure that there are definite thermal expansion issues with thick babbitt. That would probably manifest as fatigue cracking added to the cyclic fatigue of the reciprocating loads. The thermal expansion would primarily be a function of hot and cold cycles (cold start/run/shutdown cycles).

Babbitt – like concrete – apparently always develops cracks. One of Sparrows comments on a set of his tests (he undercut portions of the babbitt surface to extend life) was “The cracks are slightly more numerous in the bearings with the undercut edges, but the undercut portion has served to as a barrier to prevent the cracks from spreading and permitting the babbitt to escape. As a result, although these bearings are marked by lines of ‘worry and care’ they are still serviceable”.

Jim

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Back to the original question of how long it lasts and things to look for. One of the wear issues on 1930’s Pierce-Arrows is the ball bearing spring shackles system. Since I never drove my 845 in an “as-is” condition I don’t know if mine would have given any noticeable problems when driving, but they had definite wear issues. Others with actual experience driving them might be able to chime in here. Rechecking my original speedometer it was parked in 1948 with ~59000 miles.

The ball bearings of the upper hangers and shackles had pounded significant indentions into the pin races on the loaded side. The exception was the fwd end of the rear spring hangers that has larger diameter pins and balls. The aft bottom shackles of the front springs were complete toast – corrosion severe enough to literally turn many of the balls into red dust. I suspect this was more to do with sitting for decades with salty water in them. Before being retired this car would have been driven on salted Wisconsin roads in winter/spring and those shackles would be the most exposed to slush and water kicked up by the tires.

As I said, I don’t know to what extent the level of indention would have effected the noise or handling of the car.

Jim

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