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Sure you will gets lots of conflicting opinions on this! As you can see from my post a couple messages down I have a Backyard Buddy. It is the extra height, extra length version so that I can put the 70″ high Packard above the 70″ high Pierce-Arrow. I am pretty happy with it, but it isn’t foolproof. When I first started shopping I looked at some of the cheap imports and they were reasonably frightening. I tried to imagine being under the lift when an earthquake hits – not paranoid or anything! Are you thinking 4-post or 2 post? My 4 post sometimes is inconvenient for working on stuff, the ramps do get in the way at times, but I need it for storing an additional car as well. No matter, it is a huge help and beats by a long ways crawling around under jack stands. As you can see from my post, the lift has some definite advantages over a pit for things like pulling bodies off frames.
There are two basic philosophies, the solidly enclosed square tube around a totally enclosed tube column like Backyard Buddy, or the open channel. Open channel bugged me because if things get to rocking the channel can flex and open a bit and the locking ratchets can slip. This is what can happen on the cheap and flimsy ones. If I were to design and build a lift I would use the enclosed column concept from a basic structural integrity standpoint. What I also liked about the BYB was when the locks are in place they are totally trapped in a hole like an overbuilt jackstand.
Having said that probably the best is Bend Pak. It may have the open channel design but it is totally certified for commercial use, and hard to argue with thousands in everyday use in shops. They get by with the open channel design by making it beefy enough to allay any problems from channel flexing. If I remember right, the lift cables are totally enclosed in the tubes rather than exposed as on a BYB, which is a nice feature.
There was one more thing that besides price/quality that led me to BYB, it is built basically across the street from where the first Packards were built in 1899. Maybe that’s a reason for true Pierce buffs to choose something else! Good luck, and enjoy your shop when it is done! Jim
Thanks, not exactly how the factory handled a body. I am getting more conservative in my old age. When I did the same thing to the Packard in the background 30 years ago I used nothing but single 2×4’s, this time 2×6’s and doubled up 2×4’s.
Jim
My question is maybe a bit premature. This restoration is strictly “touring” so originally I was not going to take the body off. Problem with restoring cars of course being where to put stuff after you take it off! However it turns out the most reasonable way to repair some body damage on the back end is to pull it off the frame, which I will be doing soon. Before that decision, I looked at the doors and hinges, they are quite tight and the wood is still good, so I fussed with one of the front doors a bit and after adjusting the hinges to get a good match to the front door post it took some shimming of the pads (and body bolt torque) to get alignment to the center post. At any rate, since rubber creeps over time I was thinking it probably requires something stiffer than reinforced rubber to keep from “settling” too much over time. Actually, the body had settled on its rubber pads over the rear door enough that the wood cross-member was sitting on the frame rails. Thanks for the suggestions, I’ll do some searching.
Jim
Thanks! Jim
If the ’32 has the “kick shackle” on the left front spring hanger, then first I would double check that the front hanger bearings are free, the two kick shackle coil springs are not broken and the bolt through the small spring compresses the springs – but not too much. Through the 20’s, cars were prone to shimmy. It was found that engineering some carefully controlled give in the steering side fixed shackle greatly reduced shimmy on solid axle cars. Since it is there to control shimmy, I would first check on that. A few months back I asked on this sight whether anyone had the specs for tightening the bolt on the small spring. I got no answers so I assume no one knows exactly what the proper setting is. By the way, my smaller spring inside the frame was broken and had to buy 10 to get one, so I have an extra if you find yours broken.
Jim Chase
Greg, one of the things I think about as I lay awake at night these days is how that goofy thing works, and whether putting a screen around it will keep it from working. I think I have it figured out and it is definitely non-intuitive. One of the PASB’s had a decent cutaway and description. It is a monometer, but a bit like a diving bell it relies on the air trapped in the little canister at the bottom to provide the air pressure to move the column of fluid in gauge. If as things slosh around the canister loses its air charge (trying to imagine again how that happens) it won’t read properly. The little tubes recharge the air supply. Basically as the fuel is burned the average fuel level drops below the level of the little tray on the sending unit and the fuel in the little tube coming up through the tray drops below the tray as well. When the car moves and the fuel sloshes around it refills the tray with fuel and traps a little air bubble in the tube. as it does that it keeps slowly transporting little air bubbles down the tube and they emerge at the bottom where the air is trapped in the upside down cup shape below the canister. The bottom of the canister has a little tiny hole that lets the air trapped underneath bubble into the canister and replace the air trapped in the canister. So basically if I understand it, when the fuel level is in the vicinity of the trays it is continuously pushing air bubbles and fuel down the tubes as the fuel surges up and down with the motion of the car. I don’t think it is from splashing into the trays as much as surging like a tide into the trays, so I have convinced myself that a screen surrounding it shouldn’t keep it from working.
The odds are that none of the pieces left in the tank would ever plug the tubes, but hard to say. The bottoms of the tubes and the vent hole in the bottom of the canister were plugged by goo, so my first concern was getting the goo out as it can get past a strainer. A couple years ago one of my ’66 Chrysler’s strainers was pretty restricted from 40 years of service and I back flushed it to clear it. The tank itself was amazingly clean without particulates. In the first instance I am concerned about keeping the fuel pickup tube clear to not starve the engine, but while I’m at it may as well put a fine enough mesh to protect the KS “burp”” tubes. It doesn’t appear there was any kind of screen or strainer on my ’35 originally.
Jim”
Don’t want to be disagreeable, but I think I have what’s left in the tank down to a manageable level if I protect the sending unit/intake pipe with a strainer. The black goo is out thanks to the lacquer thinner and what is left are particulates that a strainer screen will keep out. No matter what I do it will never be completely free of bits that could clog the King-Seeley burp tubes, so I am building the strainer regardless. Deconstructing a sound tank, cutting holes in the baffles and re-soldering seems to me like a lot of cost and work with the likely reward of creating worse problems than it solves. I had fuel tank sealer originally in my ’36 Packard decades ago and had to drop it and clean it out when the sealer failed. The “solution”” became the problem. I have been operating it sealant free for about fifteen years now.”
Greg, that’s what I did, put the blobs in shot glasses, lacquer thinner the obvious winner. Based on that I’ve already done a round of cleaning the tank with lacquer thinner, it seemed to do the trick as far as the blob goes (grounded it with a pipe and copper wire – paranoid about sparks and explosions!). The black tar had plugged the tiny holes of the King-Sealy sending unit riser tubes, the vinegar actually worked fairly well on that combined with blowing them out with compressed air and more lacquer thinner.
Now I am done to rust and sand particles, vacuumed most of them out. As I mentioned a few months ago, I’d never get rid of all of them and worry about blocking those tiny ~.030 riser holes, so today I designed an over-elaborate brass screen strainer to envelope the whole KS sender/pickup tube assembly. It will be a few weeks before I can get to it.
Mike, I had the same question a few months ago – there should be a thread still on the site – and there were plenty of suggestions for vendors for leather but no metal. Don’t know if you still have useable originals but Ed suggested that the originals could be unbent and removed and replaced. He was right, they are very soft steel and survived being unbent and bent back when re-installed. I cleaned the old ones up, painted them individually first, then repainted them once installed as they scratch as you slide them back and forth into position. They don’t look perfect, but they weren’t perfect when new either. I don’t think they would be terribly difficult to make, mainly take a fair amount of time and patience fabricating a series of dies out of hardwood to put in the bends. Personally I would not put any graphite lubricant in the springs, graphite (carbon) induces corrosion in steel and aluminum with the slightest moisture.
A quick google search indicates the material -including the light cotton like material – is Kapoc. It is water resistant but highly flammable, so presumably Seapak (correct spelling) may have treated it with some sort of flame retardant for aircraft 9and P-A firewall) use.
Roger, I removed the same batt from my ’35, packed behind the upper firewall a few months ago, and just removed the front firewall and packed fiber type insulation sandwiched between the front and rear firewalls. I knew I had seen a reference to it somewhere in the literature and finally did in Arrow 95 Model 2 (1995)in the re-printed dealer data book for 1935.
“Costly all-fibre Seapac insulation from the Javanese Ceiba tree seals the dash from motor compartment. Waterproof and fire proof, this latest insulation is the result of airliner soundproofing and heat insulation developments”.
Must have been the stuff used for cutting the cabin noise down on DC-3’s!
Mine looks like yours, and it did indeed survive water without rotting, but unfortunately wicked water to the firewall and created lots of rust on the firewall and the free-wheeling control lever.
At any rate, there isn’t a lot of difference in heat transfer coefficients for packed insulation material, but the sound deadening role probably favors a relatively dense packing of fiber materials. Probably some sort of dense packed fiberglass product, or take fiberglas batts and compress them down. There are probably products out there but haven’t looked for a while. Maybe this post will bring some more responses.
I also have the looser low density cotton like material packed in the corners of both sides as you describe, so seems with two votes it likely is original. It does resemble a short fiber fiberglass, maybe rock wool? I will probably use fiberglass batting for that. Other brands besides Owens_Corning that aren’t pink!
Another bit of trivia – as Greg says, the stretch of the bolt is actually the preferred measure of torqueing for extremely critical bolts, a torque wrench ft-lbs value having a fair amount of inconsistency depending on lubrication, surface finish etc. The WWII Rolls Royce Merlin head/cylinders were done by “feel” by craftsmen with years of experience. When Packard took on the task of building them they tried to adopt US auto practice of setting definite torque values but had lots of failures with such a high performance engine designed at the margins for minimum weight. They had to measure strain to get a consistent enough build to stop the failures. Fortunately, our old auto engines aren’t that finicky! Jim
Peter, its not that the tension disappears, it just goes to a constant value once fully compressed, and just becomes equivalent to a flat washer. If you put a coil spring on a bolt, the spring will provide increasing tension as the nut is tightened until you reach the point where the spring is fully compressed. Then it becomes a solid thick washer, and further turning of the nut will increase the tension on the bolt and the spring will act as a solid washer, without any difference in the stress level than if it were a solid washer. One of the odd calculations your son may have done in machine design is that the tension on an adequately torqued preloaded bolt such as a connecting rod is nearly constant despite extreme variations in load on the rod, its the reason such a highly stressed bolt being pushed and pulled with such heavy loads can be torqued up to ~75% of its ultimate stress and not fail from fatigue. Another Mr. Know-it-All! I have actually done a little bit of bolt stress analysis on aircraft structures but we never use splits in aircraft, so never dealt with them beyond throwing them in on car and home projects. I had vaguely understood split washers weren’t supposed to be re-used, they clearly provide a resistance to backing out once they are loosened, but I had always had my doubts about their effectiveness in the first place when fully torqued. I didn’t go looking it up until this thread. Jim
Pete, the tension supplied by the split washer falls out of the equation once the torque is sufficient to flatten the washer, the torque determines how much the pre-stress is on the bolt, pretty much independent of the washers underneath (except for surface finish and lubrication of the surfaces). In other words, once flattened, the tension supplied by the split is not additive to the total bolt tension. Note that splits are never used on cylinder head bolts, they stay put by virtue of the tightness and stretching of the bolt, which the engineering sources cite as the prime method for joint tightness. Loctite has been shown to be much more effective. Aircraft often use permanent thread deformation which requires tossing the nuts/bolts when removed. Jim
Split lock washers are another debate, with perhaps a consensus in the engineering world that when torqued properly the lock ring is useless, being crushed flat without any ability for the angled edge to “bite” into the nut as intended until the nut has backed off so far that the preload is lost anyway. They are there basically for show on a restoration. The following link will download a NASA fastener manual which may be of interest on the subject: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19900009424_1990009424.pdf
I don’t think certified aircraft ever use split washers.
Double “jam” nuts as used on the rear axle are also apparently problematic, not being very effective and being difficult to torque to properly preload the bolt. Whether it seems to make sense now or not, I have a theory for why the front would be single and the rear would be doubles. The springs are mounted above the front axle, meaning the weight of the car bears directly on the bottom spring leaf rather than via the U-bolt. This was done I think to accommodate the front brake torsion bar going through the middle of the axle and below the king pins. The rear springs go under the axle and this means the weight of the car is hanging on the u-bolts. The clamp-up pre-loads should render the difference meaningless, but might explain what was going through their heads. Packard used cables to the front brakes, the springs are under the front axle, and used double length nuts. This little exercise has led me to fuss over whether I might have over-torqued the front U-bolt nuts, I think I will re-do them.
Sorry, for the “Cliff Claven” impression, I am a designer by nature and I find this stuff interesting, and somewhat more grounded than the speculations of “ancient astronaut theorists”
Jim
well, I think Tony brought up the question of how to lubricate the springs in the middle of earlier dissertations on spring breakage. In the midst of my research of ancient engineering scrolls I came across a statement that the role of friction to provide damping in leaf springs was greatly exaggerated and not assumed in suspension design – unfortunately I can’t find it at the moment. I think the main reason for greasing the springs is to prevent squeaks and wear.
I also do drivers, not concours cars, you can tell from previous pictures I am committing the heresy of not doing a “frame-off” restoration. A car should be judged from the drivers seat doing 60. I am reusing the original metal covers which means I couldn’t tolerate the increased thickness of adding plastic interleaf pads. I cleaned and painted each leaf to prevent more corrosion, “slathered” the springs in grease when assembling, and after the above picture was taken wrapped them in canvas and replaced the metal covers as was done originally. My metal covers all have odd rectangular holes in them which I can only guess were some ones attempt to grease the springs by poking holes through the covers with a screwdriver. I decided it was a bit silly to do body work on spring covers , so the holes are still there on freshly painted spring covers, mute testimony to who knows what! It makes my restoration a willy-nilly combination of Smithsonian style preservation of original parts where functional and replacement where necessary for function (Smithsonian restored airplanes are never flown again).
At any rate Tony, I think the answer is that the leaves on your older exposed springs were probably greased between the leaves and wiped down to keep them looking sharp. It takes so little grease to coat the surfaces that you might be able to re-grease by putting the grease on the edges and ends and drive it around for a bit to work it in and then wipe the excess off- I imagine it is a ripe topic in AACA.
Jim
For what its worth, and for other potential repairs, I looked up the numbers for high temp aircraft fuel tank sealants mentioned above.
The MIL-S-8802 spec Class B is available as a PPG aerospace product number PR-1440 Class B. “Class B” is a thixotopic paste (thick and doesn’t run) polysulfide that cures to a dark grey rubbery consistency with very high adhesion. It is used for aircraft applications exposed to hot fuel (oil as well) to 250F continuous 275 intermittent. That temp range should be adequate for an intake manifold, but there is an alternate formula PR-1750 Class B good for intermittent excursions to 360F. Peak temp on an intake manifold would most likely occur after shutting down on a hot day and heat soaking from the exhaust manifold. I would prefer the polysulfide over epoxy adhesives for repair because it is more flexible over time and better able to accommodate the flexing from the manifold’s expansion and contraction with heat. A thin steel “Band-Aid” patch would probably be better than aluminum in order to better match the thermal expansion rate of the cast iron.
Companies supplying aircraft repair supplies should have it, my distributor is Bergdahl Associates if you want to google it.
For using in fuel tanks, I don’t how resistant it is to alcohol – will try to find out as I will want to use it in my future fuel tank screen.
I used PR-1440 very successfully (still works 30 years on) on a number of items including sealing a cracked cast aluminum oil pan. A retired chemical engineer from the Mare Island Naval air repair station put me on to it.
That’s a pretty big hole! Personally, being a “function over form” guy, I wouldn’t risk a rare manifold with welding that has a high risk of creating more problems than it solves. An intake manifold only has to resist about 12 psi vacuum max, on the same order as the pressure that an .032 thick aluminum skin resists keeping a 5ft diameter light business jet fuselage from exploding when pressurized. My first idea would be to use a thin strip of .016 aluminum or even thinner .012 stainless glued with high temp aircraft fuel tank sealant (used to be MIL-8802) to seal the leak. I think it would be pretty innocuous appearance wise after painting black to match the porcelain. Apologies for second guessing, as they say, free opinions are worth what you pay for them!
Jim
Bob actually what you can’t see in the photo is the front engine stand, I put together a double ender engine stand from two “cheap and cheezy” engine stands. It is pretty awkward but works. Attached is a picture when I first pulled the engine out almost ten years ago before putting it back in because I moved to a different house. The wood supports are needed to support the engine before the transmission comes off allowing the aft engine stand to be attached. I have used the rear engine stand by itself for 383 and 440 Chryslers in the conventional way, but never left them just cantilevered off the mount when fully “dressed”. Thanks for the concern!
Jim
My ’35 845 will take a little longer than winter. The goal is to get the front axle re-installed so I can roll the PA off the lift and put the Christmas tree back into its spot in the attic above the Packard in January.
