"Fixing An Oil Leak"


        What a way to end the Holidays - 0 degrees and snow and ice!  Even here in the South!  How did that happen?  You'd think it was winter!

        This holiday season seemed to really fly by, from cutting down the tree to Christmas Day, there were some great family times that were over too quickly.  Hope you had a great season, too!  New Year's day was spent in planning, and it looks like another Packard might join the family this year.  Details later.

        There is always work to do in the shop.  After driving our '48 Packard Custom 8, I noticed a puddle of oil under the engine on the driver's side.  When I opened the hood there was oil all over the lower side of the block by the dipstick and the distributor.  After cleaning off the oil, I test-drove the car, and we discovered the leak was coming from the distributor.  We first removed the cap and turned the engine over so that the rotor pointed toward #1 plug (that way, the distributor will go back on the same way it came off and the timing will not be off time).  The vacuum advance line was then removed, along with the coil wire and the clamp.  We could then remove the distributor (our car had its original "Autolite" distributor).  With the distributor out, we could see that the O ring at the base had been squeezed, and there wasn't an O ring on the groove on the distributor housing.  We put one on there and replaced the one at the base.  We had a MORS gasket set and no O rings came with it (many of these sets seem to be incomplete!), so we used some from an O ring set bought at a local parts store.  This was the first time we had removed this distributor, so it was thoroughly checked over before we reinstalled it.  When it was put back in the block, we set the rotor to point toward the #1 plug wore, then set the points and put the cap back on.  The vacuum advance line was plugged, and we left the clamp bolts loose so that we could set the timing to 6 degrees before top dead center (BTDC), the clamp bolts were tightened down and the vacuum advance hooked back up.

        We checked to see if the vacuum advance was working by revving up the engine.  The timing advanced to 13 degrees, showing us that it was advancing correctly.  The oil leak was fixed, and we were ready to go.