I got an inline Packard 8, 288ci and I want to know how it will fit in a Model A or car using similar frame... Anyone using one in their short wheel base car?
Use a 4 door sedan body and set it up to be driven from the back seat. The front doors will be used to access the rear spark plugs and such. Alternatively, stretch the wheelbase a bunch in the area of the engine so there's room for the darn thing between the stock firewall and the radiator.
i think i saw a modified roadster on the cover of a recent issue of hotrod magazine-i think it had a packard 8 in it
Saw the motor in half? Basically can't be done and look good, IMHO. But maybe if you move the radiator somewhere else (but where?) the motor could extend toward the front and you'd only have to extend the frame a bit. You know those motors are very heavy, right? I think they weigh more than a BBC or BBF V-8. A frame extended to fit the straight-8 would be cartoonishly long. If that's your goal, okay, but the proportions of the rest of the body would look weird.
This could be done a bunch of ways. With a regular coupe body. You'll probably need a decent recess in the firewall and move the radiator to the trunk like littleman's coupe. you could also lengthen the frame in the engine area a little bit without destroying the look of the car. Whatever you do, don't push the radiator way out in front of the wheels. There are few things that look worse on a hot rod.
you could sink into the cowl and make the top of the tank removable to access the last 2 plugs and to get the valvecover off tk
Move the rad in front of the crossmember (along with a grill sheel of some sort) Shove the engine back into the cowl as has been suggested. Or you are probably going to have the stretch the frame. If you are using a coupe body you are going to run into leg room issues with the stock or a stock length chassis. But if you use a roadster body you can move the seating area back into the turtle deck area like the Cummins '27 (see the latest issue of TRJ for a pic).
My first "build" if you want to call it that.. (personally I'd like to think of it as a learning experience) was a Model A sedan with a Buick Straight 8. It made an already long body seem to go on forever. Looking back it just never looked all that right length wise. Looked too aircraft for my taste. It was unique though. Like I said it was long looking but wasn't like super ugly or anything.
My '31 A project began with the calculation that a 12½" stretch in the engine bay is what would be needed to turn the A's upright proletarian proportions into the sort of aristocratic rakishness I wanted. That amount of stretch just evens it out; it puts the A-pillar nicely just barely aft of the mid-point of the wheelbase. Significantly more of a stretch would look odd. (That was the easy bit. Much harder was figuring out how to raise the fenders in relation to the body, so they look taller and more "majestic".) The upshot is that the hood length goes from about 30½" to about 43". I've got a suspicion that that still won't be enough for your Packard, at least without messing with the firewall.
If the wheelbase and front guards had also been extended to keep the front wheels up under the radiator, that would IMHO bring it back to having reasonable proportions. Here is a stretched '32 with the grille moved forward