After 41 years its running!!

[FLG]

Well guys.

My uncle had bought a 1941 Packard 180 in i believe the late 50's early 60's. Drove it from long island down here to Brooklyn. It then sat in his garage for awhile, then finally in 1968 it got towed to the family shop, parked on a lift, put in the air and left there to hang out for awhile.

Since my cousin was freshening up the shop and we had to move the car a couple of days ago. I called my uncle and told him i had nothing to do so i was going to play with the packard a bit. Sure enough within a couple of minutes he was there wanting a gas can and a battery.

We took the plugs out and put a little kerosene in the cylinders and let it sit overnight. Finally got our hands on a 6 volt battery, put it in, turned the key, and pressed the "crank" button. Sure enough the starter engaged and she started cranking with no problems. We put the plugs back in, dumped a little gas in the carb and went for it. NADA! No spark! Well it still has ALL (or in some cases, whats left) of its wiring from 1941. We cleaned up the points and tried again..alas we have spark.

Hooked it back up and tried again....after 41 years within 30 seconds she started sputtering...little more fuel...and there ya go, started right up.

Fuel pump is bad so i hooked up an external 12v running off a different battery. We started it again and not only did it run, besides a little smoke it ran WELL. I mean yes a slight miss every now and then, but the damn thing purred. That didnt last very long though, as we found out the radiator is just about clogged solid so we had to shut her down.

Tomorrow we might try to clean out the radiator and see if we can get it running for awhile, possibly moving a bit.

I'll have videos than!

[bordin34]

Nice, that is one big car. Any pictures?

[FLG]

Only ones i have at the moment. Will get more including a video tomorrow.

Really nice car, cool features. It is a limo of its time, Power windows (hydraulic), center partition (also power), rear heat, seats behind the font seats so people could sit in the back facing eachother..just to name a few.

[Charger440RDN]

That dashboard even looks like it has a modern layout, this car was ahead of it's time. Cool story.

[Brock Samson]

Wow! How satisfying it'll be to clean her up and cruise,.. alotta work too I'd imagine i but Awesome!  

[Johnny SixPack]

Holy cr@p, that thing is sweet.  

I had a chance at a '39 Buick Special back when I was 16, but my dad said it wasn't happening.  

Ever since then I've wanted something from that era.

The lil' woman has hinted that she would be 'ok' with pre-WWII car.  

I found an awesome 1930 Lincoln, but I'd have to sell a Charger for it.  

Not ready for that.

No matter, I'll follow your progress and live vicariously.  

[FLG]

Thanks guys!

Well my uncle is getting up there in years (77) and you can see he REALLY wants to start this but at the same time he's been doing this all his life and is just tired.

Im sure it will make progress..just quite slow. If he gets the parts im sure i can find time here and there to fix it. He ordered the shop manual so you can tell he's ready to get cooking.

[Finn]

Very cool! 

[mopar73]

Awesome!!!!  Have fun with it

[Tilar]

That's very cool.    I bet you made your uncles day when he heard that thing come back to life.