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Prewar replica Speedster Build

page under construction June '25 - refresh browser for latest update

Being an old school Land Rover owner, enthusiast & modifier, my attention was caught by the Bentley-ish Land Rover 'Special" that Bill Hayfield built a few decades ago and I thought to myself I might like to build something similar one day.

Packard Engines

Fast forward 30 something years and I saw some 'condition unknown' Packard Straight Eight engines advertised locally on Facebook marketplace for a price too good to ignore, now being a Land Rover & old Chrysler enthusiast the last thing I ever thought I'd go shopping for was anything Packard , but when it comes to anything "straight eight" beggars can't be choosers. -.

I decided strip the engines to see if there was enough parts to build one engine without an expensive rebuild. All engines had standard bores & cranks, The third engine had a reasonably good crank and bearings and the fourth engine had reasonably good bores. I chose the best eight STD pistons & ordered a new set of rings, timing chain and head gasket from USA. There was no Starter motor or water pump in my stash so I used what I had on hand and adapted a Holden Red water pump & modified a Toyota Hilux starter to fit ( Toyota 9 tooth starter pinion gear was copied from Vintage Chrysler and as is a match with Packard too) .

While working on the engine the build direction was evolving. Reading through various regulations including ASRF (Street Rod) and VSB NCOP (Vehicle standards bulletin) using a Land Rover chassis would be a straight forward path but needs VASS engineer consultation and expense, not really any viable option in Northern Victoria. So I decided to build to VSI-33 which pertains to pre-1949 Cars , the rules are more relaxed and allows the construction of a Replica on a period chassis using period parts without the need for engineer consultations and expense. (no modern engines or disc brakes) .

I now was keeping one eye open for a PreWar chassis to use and knew of a few in the area, I went to check out a late 1930's Fargo and 1929 Chrysler 75 on farms each of which provided some parts but the chassis I ended up with was another '29 Chrysler 75 series from Matt Lack in Dubbo & kindly dropped off enroute to the Bendigo Swap meet. .

Railton Replica

Now the goal is to end up with a car that is somewhat similar to the Railton pictured above. The Chrysler 75 chassis is 121" wheelbase only an inch shy of the Railton. VSI-33 allows for the build of Replicas but for Registration purposes the car will identify as a 1929 Chrysler, not that VicRoads would know one from the other

The Chrysler 75 has racing pedigree & was very competitive up against the Bentley of the day in 24 hour endurance races at Le Mans & Mille Miglia, so I'm happy to use the Chassis as the basis of the cars identity, and so it should be .

The Spring Cushions

The most distinguishing and unusual feature of the 27 to 31 Chrysler chassis is that there are no traditional spring hangers. The Springs do not have spring eyes or shackles , instead the spring ends are contained in 'Spring Cups" with rubber cushions. This is problematic because the rubber spring cushions have not been available for decades. This is something I need to address before getting too far into the build, one option is to convert to traditional spring attachment methods, but I do not want to lose the identity of the chassis by altering this remarkable feature,

When I say the spring cushions are not available, well, Steele Rubber USA list them on their website for around US$1000, but the will not supply them nor will they answer email enquiries about them.... Great way to run a business, There is nothing on any of the Chrysler user groups or youtube on how to make them though I do believe someone in Australia has moulds.

In all there are Eight spring cups on the Chrysler 75, Four one each side, Each spring cup is a different size for whatever reason and the rubber cushions are non interchangeable except for the same position on other side

Note: I'll go into a little more detail in this section of my build summary only because there is nothing out there in Internet land about these spring cushions & it may be useful for owners of this era Chrysler.

Fortunately Matt Lack provided me with a pair of rear springs with the bare chassis and I recovered a pair of front springs from a farm dump. The Ends of the springs have a sheet metal housing riveted to them, these were rusted beyond repair so I made new parts , and replaced one broken spring leaf by cutting down a Land Rover spring leaf. I also removed a few leaves from each pack & made new centre bolts. Per the following photos.

To make the Rubber cushions I put the chassis on jack stands , coated the inside surfaces of the spring cups and spring ends with melted candle wax (as a release agent) I cut some pieces of Shore65 EPDM rubber & placed in the hollow of the spring cups . I placed one spring into position & preloaded it with a jack and ratchet straps to simulate the weight of the car settled onto the spring then filled the spring cup with rubber compound. Its a very messy job.

I tried 2 different rubber systems. The first was 3M 08693 aka 3M Windo weld (from Amazon) - this is a one part Shore65 Eurathane that cures on contact with atmospheric humidity. By design it is a flexible Auto glass adhesive, but in the youtube repair hack world people make engine mounts & suspension rubbers from it. I though it worth a try. In practice its a very slow cure - it takes about a month. I simply squirted it in & around the spring cup cavity then taped the visible holes to stop it leaking out

The other system I tried was a 2 part Polyurethane called Flexicast 65 from Barnes , again this is not a recommended use of the product. I mixed the Part A and B in a paper cup & decanted into a caulking gun. Work time is 20 minutes, One 300ml caulk tube holds enough product to do about 2/3 of a spring cup. This time I taped all around the spring cup & around the spring with duct tape & filled the spring cushion void through the lower bumper bar mount holes . This is very sticky & very runny stuff, & you constantly need to keep re-taping over the duct tape to stop it leaking out. It cures overnight.

I don't know which method works best , if at all, The spring cushions seem very solid & the suspension does not have much bounce to it. I will need to drill holes in the cushions so that they have some give , but will wait for road testing to determine how much, or of any at all, is needed.

Building The Engine

I touched on the Engine earlier in this page, basically I bought 5 x unknown condition, incomplete, Packard 'straight eight' engines, Luckily they are all the same series 288 cu inch so parts between them should be interchangeable. Unluckily all the engines are seized solid. Two engines had been canabalised and were missing some pistons & rods. I was able to free up & dismantle 4 engines & chose the best of the parts to build one engine.

To make one good running engine I needed one good block, one good crankshaft, 8 pistons & conrods, A good set of bigend & main bearings, Camshaft . lifters, Inlet & exhaust Valves & springs and one good cylinder head, Oil pump , Sump etc. etc. .

Obviously the best way to build any engine and expect great results is with a Rebore, crank grind, new oversize pistons & undersize bearings, which are available (and very expensive) ex USA, but for the purposes of this build a running engine is all thats necessary. A DIY Cylinder hone, crank polish & fresh piston rings & timing chain will suffice & new head gasket should be the bare minimum that's required.

For the most part the insides of the engines were very good for their age, All bores and pistons were standard at 3.50" bore, And all crankshaft journals & bearings were original. There was environmental damage (rust) . The rear main journals on 3 engines were rusty & need regrind - One crank was good. One Con rod was bent and some pistons were in really bad condition.

Below are photos of the worst of it.

Below are photos of stripping, cleaning and reassembling the engine that I determined to have the most potential to rebuild without machine work. I did need to remove the top ridges & hone the cylinders, After honing the piston to wall clearance was between 7-10 thou, that's well worn, about double a fresh engine which should be about 3 thousandths of an inch.

The first photo at left is taken looking inside a welch plug hole. The engine is completely free of rust and scale, to the rear the brass water distribution tube is visible. This directs water from the water pump onto the exhaust valve seats before distributing it around the rest of the engine .

In the next photo an arrow points to the front of the distribution tube. The tube runs all the way along the engine. Also note the new timing chain.

Manifolds and Exhaust

Amongst the parts that came with the engines were a number of exhaust manifolds and 2 barrel inlet manifolds. The style of car that I'm building lends itself to a set of Laker style pipes with an exhaust that runs along the side of the car rather than a concealed exhaust under the car as would be dictated by the original Packard manifolds.

I made the plates that bolt to the block by copying an old manifold gasket into CAD and then plasma cut from 10mm steel plate. I used 1-1/2" exhaust pipe for the runners and make the tapered collector pipe by cutting a wedge from from a length of 2-1/2" exhaust pipe then closed it up with hose clamps & welded back together.

Inlet manifolds made the same way & mount a pair of Weber IDF40 carbs. The inlet ports are siamesed so each cylinder breathes through a 40mm venturi - effectively the same as having one 40mm carb per cylinder with equal length runners.

Clutch & Transmission

One of the engines had a Packard Ultramatic transmission, That's a very heavy (engine and transmission together is over 500kg) ) early 2 speed Manual shift 'Automatic' with a locking torque converter. A Speedster really needs a manual transmission and I was lucky enough to have a query in a Facebook group answered by a bloke in Sunbury who had a Packard 3 Speed with R9 Overdrive that was no longer required. $200 well spent. Luckily one of my Packard engines had a Manual bell-housing and flywheel so the Packard 3 speed would be an easy bolt up.

I needed to remove a crossmember & replace with one I fabricated which incorporated gearbox mounts, The original Chrysler gearbox was mounted to the chassis with brackets each side of the bellhousing. VSI-33 allows for new mounts and crossmembers to be used for mounting alternative engines of the era.

There was no clutch or pressure plate but I read online that a 10" V8 Ford Flathead pressure plate might fit so I found a seller on eBay who measured up the bolt holes on his pressure plate & it was a match. The Gearbox input spline is the same as a Holden V8 so I am using a Commodore clutch plate

The throw out bearing is Ford V8 , and I made the bearing retainer to fit the input housing sleeve & the Packard clutch fork. And using what I have laying about as an unlikely accompaniment I have used a Series 2 Land Rover Clutch Master & slave cylinder.

Radiator

A lucky find on local Facebook Marketplace, just 10 minutes down the road. 1928 Packard Radiator for $50 - WTF , The seller said his father paid $50 for it in the 1970's as a spare for his Packard and its been in storage for 50 years , still has the original $50 chalked on it & thats all he wanted. What a deal.I had to change the bottom outlet to the right side to suit the holden water pump so I could inspect inside , it appears free of rust & scale.

Radiator sorted, but I needed a shell and not confident about my sheetmetal skills to make compound curves I bought another radiator and shell from Marketplace, Seller said it was on a Dodge but he didn't think it was original to the car . The Shell fits nicely over the Packard radiator , Turns out its from a Jewett , quite a rare car in Australia, its a big American car from the late 1920's which evolved into the Graham Paige.

3 months progress

I gave myself 10 years for this project, at the rate its coming along it will probably be done in 3 years.
Here we are at 3 months, The engine and gearbox are mounted in chassis, we have a radiator & I can give the engine a proper run . Its running much better than the first start video as it had a few inlet manifold leaks and distributor timing was out a wee bit. I have all the tappets at 12 thou so they are a bit rattly, a noisy tappet is much better than a leaking valve. Once the engine has had a good drive I can set them & quiet them down.

Handbrake Lever

At this point I have a clear idea of what I wanted the car to look like, 2 seater , boat tail, open wheel speedster with external handbrake lever and exhaust along the side. The body sides will be vertical & in line with the chassis edges so that gives me a seat width of about 36" , a bit squishy for 2 bums, similarily there will not be much leg and foot wiggle room , thus an external handbrake is a necessity rather than just fashionable.

The Bentley of the day had the exact handbrake lever I was envisioning and one appeared on eBay UK for £1200 , yep AU$2500 for a flipping handbrake lever. Many thanks to the seller for posting nice detailed pictures as I was able to copy into my CAD software and had the flat pieces plasma cut . I machined the end of the handle on the lathe and made the release catch from a piece of exhaust pipe. I used a VW stub axle for the pivot . The whole shebang cost me less than $100.

As a side note, when you plasma cut steel, as by-product of the cutting process the edges are heat treated, sometimes a nuisance especially if you need to drill a hole larger - you need an expensive carbide drill, but in this case a bonus as the ratchet & pawl teeth are toughened.

Gearshift Lever

The 3 Speed Packard gearbox I am using in this build is from a car with a column shift, thus it has a lid with side shift linkages rather than a shift tower or top loader style. A Speco or Aussie 3 speed floor shifter could be adapted but it will necessitate a big lump in the floor to cover the linkages and the realestate is as at a premium so I decided it best to find a top loader lid to fit. I drew a blank at finding an earlier Packard shift tower, most of them were used up in the pre ASRF hot rod days.

Not a straight forward job. The old adage measure twice cut once, for me means measure four times, then mix up the numbers, mill the detents in the wrong place, weld a bit more metal on & cut it again, , repeat . It needs to be right, because If its as little as 0.5mm out of whack, it could jump out of gear... I saw this '36 Ford shift tower on Marketplace for $60 so grabbed it, I have heard they can be adapted , but no details or photos found so I'm reinventing the wheel.

I made a adapter plate from 12mm as the Ford lid is smaller than the Packard hole. Made new shift forks & grafted the new 2-3 fork onto the Ford selector needed checking for fit, grinding to shape so it did not interfere and rechecking was the most time consuming part of the job. Lid - on Lid -off about 47 times. The Ford 2-3 fork was close to fitting the Packard 1-R slider so I adjusted it and grafted it onto the Ford 1-R selector. Then made new selector rods as the Ford throws are wrong for the Packard box. That needed to be millimeter precise .

I had to make a new Gearstick, these early Ford gearsticks are about US$250 so about AU$600 by the time they get here. I made it from a trailer stub axle - nice bit of steel , not going to bend in a hurry. It was easier to make it in two pieces with a lock nut, bonus is I can fine tune the position Seems to work OK & no jamming sitting in the shed.

Firewall / Scuttle

I first made the firewall & dash from wood templates & adjusted the height to organically match the radiator shell, The rounded curve at the sides matches the radiator shell. I then copied the template into CAD & had the parts plasma cut so that I could fabricate the firewall.

more to come- still working on uploading content for these sections

Hydroform a body blister

Rear Axle

Front Axle

Brakes

Steering wheel

Wheels & tyres

Electrical system & wiring

check back later , refresh browser to get latest version. im uploading this work in progress as I add content. Slow going as its all hand coded I only know the old school internet stuff