We are working on a 67' Skylark for my wife and I had been planning a 430 with TH400 swap for the car. The car is a 300 2 barrel 2 speed car. I have a TH400 ready and was just going to assemble the 430 but came across a stout little 350 small block Buick with bellhousing, flywheel, clutch and 3 speed Saginaw transmission for a price I could not pass up on. The engine looks like it is pretty much new but it is build for RPM with solid lifter cam high compression and ported heads. The only way that motor is going to work well with the TH400 will be with a high stall convertor and some steep rear gears. Being we are working on a tight budget that option will get costly fast. Since we now have the clutch and bellhousing we have decided to go with a swap to a standard. My Wife really would like the standard transmission. Here is a link to the post I already did on the 350 swap. https://www.v8buick.com/index.php?t...ill-be-swapping-a-350-into-67-skylark.382060/ I would use the Saginaw 3 speed if I had a shifter but that did not come with it. I do have a Saginaw 4 speed in my 55' Chevy that is in the back of the storage building. My plans for that car are a big block with a built drag racing 4 speed anyway. We are just going to grab that Saginaw 4 speed and swap it in with the 350. She can drive and enjoy the car for now and put some money aside for a Super T10 or Muncie later. The 2.84 first will work well with the 3.08 Posi axle we have for it. The bellhousing and clutch setup we have has a home built bracket with hydraulic slave cylinder setup to the clutch fork. Because we do not have any pedal and linkage assembly I decided to purchase a Mcleod Hydraulic clutch kit for the car. It has a pedal and slave setup. https://www.summitracing.com/parts/MCL-1434004QD I think it should work pretty good. The car is a bench seat so I think the shifter I have should work decent as the 55' was bench seat too. The Parts are still going to add up but I believe it will end up cheaper and have a shorter timeline to get on the road with the standard swap. It should make for a fun car to drive. Hopefully I will get to drive it once in a while. Greg
I know Summit doesn't recommend a Saginaw for more than 250 HP but I know people who put over 300 through them without a problem. Also, if you find a Saginaw 3 speed trans with overdrive, the overdrive unit can bolt to the 4 speed.
I was cleaning up the flywheel and clutch this week preparing for my swap. I blasted the pieces in my blast cabinet and gave them a coat of spray galvanizing paint. I noticed the flywheel had a raised face and I also noted the pressure plate had 3 washers zip tied to each of the bolt positions. That had me thinking that this might not have the correct clutch setup. After some research I noticed in the new clutch listings there are options for raised face flywheels and flat flywheels. I attempted to assemble it without the washers and sure enough it is obvious that the pressure plate is made for a flat flywheel. I was going to order the correct clutch but ended up deciding that since this was all working once before with washers shiming the pressure plate out that it would still work if I did something similar. The clutch is is like new shape so I measured how much the clutch surface was raised and found some steel flat bar that matched that to make some spacers for the feet of the pressure plate. I tack welded the pieces to the feet of the pressure plate. It should all work fine. The flywheel part number looks like it is from a 231 V6 application. Greg ATTACH=full]599235[/ATTACH]
I pulled the shifter off the Saginaw and blasted the bracket and rods then gave them a coat of paint. I reassembled it all with new bushings and clips from Hurst. All the rods are adjusted and the shift stops reset. It shifts nice now. While the shifter was off I cleaned up the transmission and gave it a coat of cast iron paint. I also blasted the bellhousing and gave it a coat of aluminum color paint. That short shifter was just used on the bench for setup. I will use a different one for the install in the car. Greg
Thats a strange flywheel. I doubt that the balance is the same between a 231 and a 350, it might bolt up no problem but I'd bet a cold beer that the balance is way out of whack.
I am not concerned. This flywheel is a late 231 even fire flywheel. The 225 and 231 Odd fire engines had their own balance. As far as I have researched, even fire V6 engines use the same imbalance as the 300/340/350. Besides that, this engine was custom balanced when built including the flywheel. This combination was already running in a local stock car with a 3 speed Saginaw. I am just swapping in a 4 speed Saginaw with it instead. Greg
I blasted the bellhousing and repaired the hacking that was done where the Pontiac/Oldsmobile starter would mount. The previous owner had an external slave cylinder and mount fabbed up and butchered the casting where the started goes on the left side. I ground it clean and made an aluminum cover over the opening. I was also going to use an external slave cylinder but when I started looking into fabing up a mount to set one up I realized I did not have a lot of room around the back tube of the header. I had 3 different slave cylinders I could have used and all would take up more space than I had. I decided to go with an internal slave. After looking at all my options I decided on the RAM clutches slave cylinder. It should work well. Greg
Nice work! The ST300 to 5 speed swap I did in my '66 Special was the best mod I did to the car, really made it fun to drive! I have a Hurst 3 speed shifter for the Sag if you want to go back to that plan. I used it briefly before I found the 5 speed. Cool that your wife likes the stick!
For the pedal I am using the McLeod pedal kit. https://www.summitracing.com/parts/MCL-1434004QD and I am using the RAM PN. 78125HD slave cylinder. https://www.summitracing.com/parts/RAM-78125HD. I have used the McLeod internal slave cylinder before on a build I did for a friend and while it was a decent piece, it was really expensive. It was over $600 Canadian. I was trying to find an internal slave that was a little lower budget but not crap. The reviews on many of the budget ones complained of quality and leakage. This RAM one had really good reviews and was still somewhat reasonable for cost. I am impressed with the quality so far. Rebuild kits are available to go through it and reseal if need be too. Greg
I was hoping to find a clutch cover for the bellhousing but the only reproduction ones are for use with a Pontiac/Oldsmobile using this bellhousing. They have the hole for the starter on the left side of the engine and not the right like the Buick uses. I was sure I saw a guy on Ebay that made the ones to fit a Buick. I thought I saved his sales post but it seems I don't have it in my wish list. I may have to make my own cover. Greg
Replied in your other post. Mike Garrison(RACEBUICKS) repros them. https://mrbuick.com/reproductionparts.html Under the 4spd parts section. mike@mrbuick.com or PM him here.
I have not updated in a while. My last time off I was busy with the motor swap and 4 speed installation. We did make some progress. Of course it was more work than planned and we did not accomplish as much as I had hoped. I did work on the pedal installation quite a bit. One major obstacle that came up was that the pedal support was different than any of the other A body ones I have seen. This pedal bracket only had a bolt for a pivot. The other ones I have seen have a big pin for a pivot and when swapping to the clutch pedal we have just pulled the pin out and swapped the pedal in as the clutch pedal has the pin attached to it. Thankfully I had an extra 66' pedal bracket from a previous project. I took off the large pivot bushings and welded them to the 67' pedal bracket to allow for the clutch pedal pin to swap in. I then used the plastic pivot bushings. I had to trim the pedal support some to clear the pedal and arm for the clutch slave. For the brake pedal I just trimmed the pedal down to the manual transmission size and added the rubber pad. I cut the arm off for the column shift linkage under the hood. On the inside I plan to trim the shifter lug on the column and mount the tach to it there. Greg
I have also laid out the hole for the 4 speed shifter hump. I used a Chevelle style 4 speed hump as it was easily available and was told most of the carpet kits are molded to these style floors if you order one for a manual. I am sure it will work fine. I ran out of time to get it welded in but it is fitted now. I will be back home in another few days for my days off so will get back at it soon.
I knew this floor hump was not correct for the Buick. We liked the look of this style better and we were picking up new carpet anyway. We liked it has more conventional boot options as well. It will be fine.
I am back on some days off and have had a couple afternoons working on things again. I managed to get the 4 speed cutout done. I installed the bucket seat mounts. The transmission is in. My wife worked hard to clean up the heavily undercoated, filthy and rusty crossmember. It looks a ton better now. The driveshaft was much the same. A crap load of undercoating on one side and rusty on the other. I have been busy on a ton of little things as well. I have the hydraulic clutch plumbed and need to bleed it now. The shifter lines up with the hole in the 4 speed hump pretty well but will have to trim just a bit. I don't know where the time goes but it disappears fast. Hopefully another couple days of work and we can make some noise. Greg
The engine and transmission are in and the car is insured and running. The clutch was a bitch to get bled but once I worked the air out it works great. The clutch is nice and easy to actuate and has a great pedal feel for engagement. We are really happy with that. The transmission shifts like **** though. This Saginaw needs some syncros installed. Up shifting is not terrible but it is really difficult to downshift 3rd to 2nd and often 2nd to 1st. I have another Saginaw 4 speed to swap in so next time home I will do that. Even though the transmission has a 3.11 first gear, it is quite tall in first and takes a fair bit of clutch work in parking lots or slow speed. I think I will do a rebuild on the transmission we have in right now. We also have a Super T10 for it but it has some broken gears so will need a full rebuild and some new gears. The Saginaws will do well for now. Greg
I'm really surprised you are having issues with with 3.08 rear with a 3.11 first gear. Could it be the clutch and pressure plate need some breaking in? I originally had an M21 (2.20 first) in my 71 350 GS with 3.08 rear gear. It felt like taking off in second gear. I swapped in an M20 (2.52 first gear) for a few years until I ran upon a good deal for an AutoGear M23Z (2.98 first gear). With the M21 I was going from 1st to 3rd a lot of the time because there wasn't much drop in the gears. With the rebuilt 350 and the M23Z, I don't skip gears and it doesn't feel like I'm taking off in second gear anymore. With 3.08 rear gears and an M21, I had a total first gear ratio of 6.67:1. With the M23Z, I have 9.18:1, which is the equivalent of 4.11 rear gears with the original M21. Your 3.08 rear and 3.11 first gear yields 9.57:1 and should be equivalent to 3.73 rear gears if you had an M20 or 350 automatic.
