There is a mor door 1957 Buick available in my area. The owner says the motor starts but the car does not drive. What size motor should it have? Two or four barrel? Looks to be a stick shift. Any peculiarities with the 1957 motor? Does it share parts with other years? Thanks for your help, not at all familiar with Buick’s.
1957 would be a nailhead, I believe a 364 CID. Most Buicks of that era would have a DynaFlow automatic although they did make cars with standard transmissions. The nailhead is a really good engine, puts out a lot of torque. The only thing that's a bit different than other cars of the era is I'm pretty sure Buick was still using torque tube drive rather than an open drive shaft.
Standard shift would indicate a Special. Not rare but very low production. 2 barrel carb would also indicate a Special. Special was 250HP. Century, Super and Roadmaster all had a 4 barrel carb and were 300HP. Special and Century were “small” body cars and had the three piece rear glass. As previously indicated all ‘57’s were 364 CI and all had torque tubes. Not much commonality with other make/years. Some small series body parts are common with Oldsmobile and large series cars share some commonality with Cadillac. Commonality is minimal at best. Some mechanical parts are common with the 58. Ball joints are a one year only and troublesome. Engines are great and as previously stated, “torque monsters”. They are EXPENSIVE to rebuild!
Great info. Thanks all! One more question....if this is a torque tube is there an open drive shaft transmission (manual) that will interchange and fit the 57 bell housing? Plan would b3 to put in a mid 30s Ford sedan. But I’d like to go with a modern trans and open rear end
@hotrod1948 Oldsmobile manual trans from mid ‘50s is basically the same gearbox with open drive tail housing. But they are also ‘selector type’ shift linkage. An adapter to a more modern trans would improve your options. Ray
There have been new bell housing to use later GM transmissions and adaptors to early Fords. I don’t know what the current availability is.
Go to Russ Martin's www.nailheadbuick.com site. He has a tech section that will answer a lot of questions.
I've got a 401 in a Model A. The Buick engine is fairly narrow, but it is long. A lot of them were put in old Fords back in the day. As someone else mentioned, Russ Martin is a good resource for Buick information.
Tried that site. Russ’ site very informative and I got the answers I was looking for. Thanks again to all that took time to send answers. The HAMB rocks. As usual!
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