The stumble at, or around, peak torque is due to fuel distribution in the intake manifold. The end cylinders, with the long runners, are a bit leaner than the center 4. The main bearings were resized from semi finished .060 under bearings. When you resize the shells on the Tobin Arp bearing sizer there is a specific plate for the Packard 356 bearings to get the exact eccentricities at the parting line. If you don't use the specific plate, but use one for a similar shaft size, you end up with a tight bearing at the parting line. The design of the 356 was closer to the six cylinder introduced in 1937, which was an outgrowth of the 120 straight 8 that started in 1935. Of note, the six cylinder and the 356 used the 3 1/2 inch bore size of the previous 384 Super 8. This bore size would be used through 1954, and also enlarged slightly for the final 359 straight 8. Design work on the Packard v8 actually started in the 1947-48 time frame. It was a design typical of ohv v8 engines of the time. It could have been in production for the 1953 model year, maybe 1952, but there was resistance from many in engineering. In 1951, the v8 engines were not more powerful than the Packard straight 8. There were many that felt the torque of the straight 8 and the smoothness were worth holding onto. Improvements in fuel would eventually allow engine speeds and compression ratios that made v8 designs shine. That wasn't realistic until 1954-55 though, and the Packard v8 entered production in 1955. In 1956, it's 10:1 compression ratio was quite high. Thanks for posting the video.
thank you for answering the question of why Packard, after making all those Merlins, was so far behind Cadillac with its OHV V8. I had heard resources were spent on the new automatic transmission. They couldn't do both simultaneously, so given what you explain, it made sense to wait a bit longer. But I surmise that Cadillac was so dominant by then, it was already over.
@@roberthoffhines5419 Had the merger with Nash, Hudson, Kaiser-Willys, and Studebaker gone through, likely Packard would have been the source for the automatics and the top V8 engine. But Nash and Hudson, which had been friendly to such a mega merger that would have made this hypothetical American Motors the second largest auto maker in the USA, had a new CEO at the helm by the name of George Romney. He and his backers were wary of that proposed merger, and backed out of it at the last minute, instead formalizing American Motors as we knew it for 33 years.
An additional reason the V8 was the future engine of choice for car manufacturers in 1949 was economic - a car with a V8 was shorter from the firewall forward and therefore cost less to build, and V8 engines used less raw materials than an inline 8. When Packard designed its first V8, however, the engineers, as they had with the inline 8, did not attempt to make a less expensive engine, and designed a block that could have been comfortably enlarged to 500 cubic inches in later versions. And they designed a large car for their V8. Packard did not cut corners. Anyone that rides in a Packard with an inline 8 in proper condition will understand why Packard continued to use the inline 8, and why it had, and has, a loyal following.
Most of the flatheads of that era, straight eights included, were built to "lug" along. As "Uncle Tony" with his own channel explains, that would have been pre-interstates, and we fairly much lived in a 50 mph existence. Not that in open country, especially out West, folks didn't go as fast as their rides could handle it. A popular option, offered in some makes, an aftermarket installation for others, was an "overdrive" unit, which was an add-on gear box, with planetary gearing, that gave an OD ratio, usually 0.70 to one. By dropping the rpms considerably, one could bomb down the roads at 75 mph or so, with the engine turning 2500 to 3000 rpm, where it was "happy".
356 engine NOT the same as 120 series engine. Also, 356 engine dropped after 1950. The 288 and 327 (later 359) series engines went until 1954. Again, COMPLETELY different engines than the 356. Only similarities being the 'flathead' in-line eight cylinder configurations.
So, so, glad you’re posting videos again. You guys really are at the very top of classic car restoration both in terms of knowledge and technical skills. Your return from a bit of time off has really brightened up what had been my somewhat gloomy demeanour. Need to discuss my Auburn with you sometime but can see you’re happily very busy !!
Thank you so much for this video. Great information on the Packard but by far my favorite part was the dyno. Yours is the best explanation of the working principles of a dyno I have seen so far. Great work, you earned a sub.
Between Packard's delays in updating their engines and car bodies after WWII, they were "left behind" by the competition. It's truly a shame, because they made a great product.
Actually, Packard DID update the cars for 42, (In 1941 the brand new Clipper was introduced. Clipper styling went line-wide for 1942 and was fully competitive with the 46 - 47 GM and Chrysler luxury cars, which were also restyled for 1942, but for 48, they restyled this car and missed it on that. It looked like a fat matron of a car. People called it the Pregnant Elephant. What truly wrecked Packard was that 110/115 6 cylinder car. The 8 cylinder 120 was a great idea and a great car, but the 6 should have never seen the light of day. At least not as a Packard.
It seemed that the Packard engineers never understood what the future of engine design was. They were always at best very conservative designs and the Packard V8 was stuck with a restively long stroke and small bore which made it heavy and small valved. The secret of the post war V8 engine was that they were built to take advantage of high octane fuel and Oldsmobile and Chrysler designs showed that they took advantage of this. Larger bores allowed bigger valves and better fuel helped this out with compression ratios that would never have worked with pre-war fuels. While there were many over head valve engines before WW2 they all were low compression, small bore and small valve engines and they never had a big performance advantage over flat head designs like the Packard, Chrysler and Ford designs. I'm talking about average production cars here, so don't confuse this with the racing inspired designs that did show up in premium cars.
My vocational diesel technition teacher , back in 1988,was in his early seventies,loved the Packard,and hemi engine.he was one of those guys forgot more then you or I learn in a lifetime, WW2 fighter pilot,helped design research develop ford's early small v8 ,rest his soul
The best big 6 cylinder I ever built was a GMC 302 two-barrel carb 3in exhaust beautiful sounding engine when I was done lot of smooth horsepower I put a real nice heavy duty muffler on so would have good flow and sound quiet? With original oil bath air cleaner also if you're still using that type of air cleaners used dextran transmission fluid and you can fill it up a little bit more it just keeps the valves lubricated but it filters three times the more dirt out of the air.
More than what Pontiac had (in the Straight Eight) Pontiac's not as large cubic inch wise and not as much torque/power but would still run rings around same year Plymouths and Dodges with their humble Sixes.
The starter of the 356 sounds so great. It’s has a reduction gear set up and sounds like no other. A neat modification my father made to his 41 160 Limousine was to add a dash pot to the carburetor. When driving up the ramp to the garage it activates and gives extra throttle to climb the ramp in ease.
Government contract=tight profits (if any profits at all). All in the name of patriotism of course.. Unless you are Ford or GM building for both sides in the War.....
Sir, as a Engine Builder/Engineer, I would try and find someone with a distributor machine. You MIGHT find a commonality with the ignition curve that's equating to the issue during dyno testing that you mentioned. Once you have eliminated that possibility, the fuel curve would be next, as in the TRANSITION from the intermediate circuit to the main circuit fuel flow. On our motorcycle engines we often need to install a external jet which becomes in essence a new main jet. Now I have 4 circuits to tune out a potential flat spot, and I do this through a air bleed principle. Less air/smaller bypass jet equates to more fuel ie richer mixture, and so forth. I realize this might be a hard sell on a restoration type of build. The concept of thinking outside the box is often conducive to curing a age old program. Excellent video Sir. T.S. RACING
I hear internal parts such as oil pumps are hard to find and aren't reproduced. I have my eye on a '50 but it has the small block 327 straight 8 which parts are no problem. My favorite vintage car engine will always be the Buick straight 8, the big 320 block. Buick catered to mostly the older set and retired folks and saw no need for a V8 by 1949 (yet)
Does that carburetor have an emulsion tube? If it does, I have a lot of experiences with Weber and Dellorto’s that have emulsion tubes, and you can play around with the whole sizes along the length of a tube and basically adjust the “fuel mapping” at different RPM ranges and loads If it does. I learned a lot about carburetor tuning from David vizard During a weeklong course, I took of his
Pierce Arrow was the first auto make to us modern conventional hydraulic lifters in 1932, for 1933, all PA engines used hydraulic lifters. The 1929 and forward Pierce Arrow also used oils delivery integral with the crankshaft-Packard used copper pipes and plumbing up until the 356 shown in this video. Great video, thanks for doing this series!
If you want to know how good a PACKARD engine is all you have to do is drive one. I was in love the first time I drove one! You could drive anywhere with one just make sure your Brakes are good if your going to drive them in the mountains!! I was going to buy one for my first car but I got talked into buying a 66 ford Mustang. What a turd!! it was uncomfortable it hogged gas it had shit for brakes! It went through ball joints about as fast as a teen goes through shoes! I made wish I would have bought my great uncles 1931 Packard 840!! Imagen how much that car would bring today. He would wash and wax that car so often You might think the paint would be gone. He and my great aunt drove that car everywhere They spent summer's on the road visiting family all over the country. My great uncle was a engineer for the Union pacific R.R. When he was right out of collage. That guy had it made very smart new what he wanted to do! A man with all the right stuff!
THE 2800 LAG? Only one thing popped into my mind, and that was the lifters. Seems the engine “catches up” where the lifters are not bleeding down as fast as the revs increase. That’s my best guess. The only other thing that could cause this is the jets in the carburetor not being designed correctly for the power increase where it may be leaning out at that RPM for some odd reason.
I believe your perceived hang at 2800 rpms is a function of the dyno sweep rate and its control combined with the power curve of the engine. Your peak torque is actually at 1300rpm at 345ft-lb then it falls from there. To test this theory you should perform dead head pulls at every 100rpm increment and plot the HP and see if it doesn't yield a different curve than your sweep. I believe you might be down 50ftlbs at 2200rpm over what it actually makes because the dyno is allowing a flare. It is jumping like 600rpm/second then the dyno gets control and the sweep rate appears to be about 150-200rpm/second
this Packard is very similar to my '37 Studebaker President. my engine has 9 mains and an x frame. Ironic how Packard and Studebaker eventually merged being so similar in design already. who are you having line bore your engines? i've had my mains re-babbited by Pauls Rod and Bearing, but nobody in Utah will line bore it for me.
You mean overhead valve not overhead cam the strait 6 is as good as a v8 but not with out a flow through design and overhead cams the v engines more about packaging how to fit a bigger engine in a smaller car.
I absolutely love these videos, the history, mystique, elegance, of these old cars is so intriguing, the work you guys do is second to none! Do you use a certain blend of engine oil, high zinc-phosphorous, old school or full synthetic, I would really like to know what you have found that works the best?
Synthetic is fine with a brand spanking-newlike engine, but I would stay away from the super thin oils. Clearances are probably too large for it. If you use modern Multi-Grade oil, do not use 5W anything or 0W anything. Use 10W-30 at first, then after it is broken in, you can use 10W-40 or 15W-40 if you want. I would stay away from 20W-50 though, until you have over 100,000 miles on it. If you use single-grade oil, start with SAE 20 or 20W. After it is broken in, you can switch to SAE 30 in the summer, stay away from SAE 40 until you have over 100,000 miles, and even at that, only use it in the summer if your area has consistently hot weather - 80 -100 degrees every day. Otherwise, SAE 30 should be think enough, but see if you can find a lubrication chart for your year Packard just to be sure. You probably don't need the zinc-phospherous if your engine has factory-correct valve springs, but it won't hurt anything if you use oil with it.
I have a question you may be able to help with on another engine in the Packard family, the Super 8. When balancing the Super 8 crankshaft or any straight 8 crankshaft for that matter, do you use bob weights like a V-8 and if so what balance factor do you use?
Great video! love it all! and the lag you were mentioning (only my guess/valuation of the fuel system, probably wrong) could be a FUEL problem, for some reason the design probably sucks air and fuel (at the same time) at that 2800 to 3000 RPM. Kind of like a "Boat Propeller cavitation" when it spins at a higher RPM range it starts to make AIR BUBBLES/ meaning for that slight RPM range until the fuel can fill the air gaps
I own a 1955 Packard Clipper Constellation with a 352 V8, Packard's first V8. It is a good, solid engine; but it's mated to Packard's abysmal Twin Ultramatic transmission. This transmission had been developed for its straight-8 and it really couldn't handle the horses put out be the V8. I think it's performance would have been much better with a manual transmission. The Packard V8 was actually pretty conventional, so I don't really think Packard invested that much in its development. The company did waste a lot of time and money on its Ultramatic, instead of just buying GM Hydromatic or Borg-Warner automatics. What really would have been interesting would have been if Packard had come out with twin overhead cams and four valves per cylinder.
Packard really messed up with that Twin Ultramatic. The idea actually came out in mid 54 and was called "Gear-Start Ultramatic". It, Packard felt, shifted too abruptly and hard, very out of keeping with Packard's ideal of Total Smoothness, but the way they fixed that was to shrink the Direct Drive clutch. That is what ruined it. They should have kept it the same as 54 and fiddled with an Accumulator valve instead. The Packard V8 would have been fine, but they used a double-action oil pump, one side pumping the engine oil, the other side generating vacuum for the wipers, like Buick did in 57. The oil pump side and the vacuum side supposedly weren't very well isolated from each other and the engine oil would get all foamed up, and foamy oil doesn't lubricate well and gets blown out of the breather. Buick also had their share of troubles with that concept two years later. You can fix the Buick by using a 58 - 61 single-action oil pump, but I don't know about the Packard.
@@michaelbenardo5695 I guess that is a little detail that specialists in working with these classic cars need to keep in mind. I think there is a work around for that.
That lag around peak torque speed can be one of two things - a manifold design defect or a poorly plotted distributor advance curve. I always thought that the 327 and 359 engines from 1948 on were larger versions of the 288 cube job that also came out in 1948, and the old 356 was a larger version of the 282 engine that came out on the 2nd year 120, (The first year 120 used a smaller 257 cube version of it), and the 1937 6 cyl was also based on that 120 engine.
If you look at the prophet made by GM and Packard during wartime production, you see they made quite a bit of money however Packard paid too much money out to shareholders in the form of dividends and I think they didn't have enough left in their war chest
Is the 9 main bearing 327 from 1953 a derivative of this 356? Was the 5 bearing engine used in the Clipper a different engine block? Didn't the top Packard Straight Eights run as well or better than the early Cadillac overhead valve V8? I thought it was really the early Chrysler "Firepower" V8s that really obsoleted the Packard Straight Eight (although the Straight Eight,especially the 9 main bearing on,was probably more expensive to produce and required more metal,at least after the initial high cost of setting up the production lines for the overhead valve V8s was amortized.) Were the Packard top of the line Straight Eights better balanced than their competition from Buick and Pontiac? Did Packard have fully counterbalanced crankshaft and the others didn't? Did the "giant" Buick Dynaflash Straight Eight have 5 main bearings? Was the Packard automatic transmission when used with the new Packard V8 in 1955 horribly failure prone and a major cause of the collapse of Packard sales that extended to the 1956 models even if some of the problems with the transmissions were ameliorated?
Car business has always been cash hungry. A lot of great American brands just couldn't keep up. GM and Chrysler both needed cash infusions from the government to survive and keep a lot of people employed.
Would be interesting to put this engine side by side and bottom ends up with Pontiac Eight of about the same vintage for comparison- would the Pontiac crankshaft (only 5 main bearings) be more of a "wet noodle" ?
Exhaust makes a big difference in getting dips out of a curve , of course you can not change much on an antique engine (meaning changing primary length or secondary tube lengths etc), and believe it when a sharp dyno tuner tells you that you can go broke investing in exhaust changes to remove that dip ....
check distributor counter weights/ springs re curve it and put a the vacuum advance on the distributor that you can adjust see if the flat spot moves or goes away
Packard seasoned their engines for 2 to 3 years before machining them. This means that after the casting was made they would let them sit outside for a period of time before machining them. My grandfather bought in 1935 Packard 120 nearly new when he retired from the military. My mother was a little girl at the time. They drove from Pennsylvania to Arizona. The entries in my mothers log of the trip said they averaged 95 mph while crossing Texas. Keep in mind that this was 1937. They were driving on gravel highway much of that time pulling A small trailer. These were not fast accelerating cars but their engines were incredibly smooth.
@@De19thKingJulion A richer mixture might help at that load/RPM if indeed it is leaning out, but then it might be pretty rich everywhere else. It could be a carburation defect endemic to that particular make and model carb, but it could also be a poorly plotted advance curve.
Hmm, yeah I noticed the similarity of the struts of Fords Twin I-Beam, but after that there are a lot of detail differences. In the Ford system the beams overlap with the pivots for the I-beams anchoring on the opposite side frame rail (the beam for the left front wheel anchored on the right frame rain and the right wheel beam anchoring on the left frame rail) which reduces the camber change from movement and eliminates the need for an upper A-arm and all of the extra pivot joints that are required with the Packard system.
Great video - I think the money issue with Packard was due to huge dividend payment to their stock holders. They made $3 million in 1949 and sold everything they could make. Just bad management of both money and styling after the war. Almost every US company was spoiled with huge defense contracts - Have you dyno'd the 288 ? That's what I have in my 1949. Thanks for the great video and discussion.
I hyperfixated on these for a bit when I saw a 2-door coupe for sale near me. That and a 50 Buick- I really wanna see an old straight 8 turbocharged. I have two bets on that lack of power at 2800 RPM- the first like others have said, is fuel isn't getting to cylinders 1 and 8 because the manifold is too long, which is even a common problem on the 6 cylinders. The OTHER problem however, which I really think might be legit (in my limited knowledge too!) is soundwaves causing backpressure! The opening and shutting of the intake valves at that point are just perfect enough to propagate back through the simple log manifold, and for that brief ~150RPM blip pushes the oncoming fuel/air wave back into the air path.
Good afternoon, that engine machine work looks just beautiful. I like to watch the AMG Mercedes V8 engine assembly videos. Yours looks like their craftsmanship. I do like the engine stand that you have that big Packard engine on. What brand and model is that. It really looks good and beefy constructed. Thanks for another great video and take care.
Your break in procedure sounds a lot less risky than Subaru’s engine testing. They fill the crankcase with 5W30, start the engine, run it at full throttle during the 15 minute test cycle then change the oil and filter for the 5W30 break in oil and send it to the assembly line.
Would love to have a custom manifold with cameras , could be the resonance that gives peak torque does weird things to mixture and such . That being stock, I wonder how much it would be worth in hp doing a custom head , maybe porting, larger intake/ custom valve seats ? I don’t know how much anyone hotrodded them, but remember Hudson , imagine if that was a straight 8 / four deuces
Thanks Mark. I appreciate the video. I currently own a 1946 Super Clipper. Its 356 is entirely brand new inside now. I even found a guy who had NOS lifters including the bodies. The crank regrind is always an expensive pain in the rear. But it runs so well. The car seems to like 65 mph best. I had a 1941 years ago that could easily do 100 in overdrive. Maybe someday after it gets a few more miles on it I'll attempt that. Keep the videos coming.
Great Video! I enjoy watching and learning the old ways and you're very good at presenting. Thank you. I discovered your channel when searching for info on the Elmore automobile and you had a good video showing some of the engine internals. Please, PLEASE Revisit the Elmore and, if possible, let's see a teardown and reassembly of the engine
The straight 6 motor always has a cylinder on the power stroke. That dramatically increases smoothness of torque delivery. Concomitantly it idles with very little vibration.
