Projects 1956 Pontiac Gasser 389 swap (Finally Running)

What a beauty. Most of us are now green with envy.

 

Seeing yours up and on the road makes me regret selling my ‘55 Chieftain. Oh well, life goes on. I’m happy for your success. You certainly have a nice ride!

 

Just discovered your build thread, and read through it all! Glad you decided to proceed with it, and it came out great!
I have a friend who owns a Pontiac that his grandfather bought new, and he got from his grandfather when he was in high school in the 60's! He decided to make his a gasser also about 5 years ago. I think he did a good job, except I liked it with the Pontiac grille better than the '55 Chevy grille.

 

Looks like nice work but yeah, not feeling the grill. LOL It doesn't really fit.

 

Just in case anyone else ever runs into this issue. My bellhousing is a 1964 Big Pontiac bellhousing. GTO's went with block mounted starters that year. Big cars kept bellhousing starters. Neither automatic bellhousing starters or block starters will work. The drive gear sticks too far out. There are NO 1964 Big Pontiac standard transmission st anarters available anywhere. (the joys of Pontiac).

The starter I had was put together with parts I'm not sure what all were. It is now no longer a viable option. LOL. They don't survive thousands of RPM.

We have cut down a Chevy drive and put a spacer on the other end and I think it will work. I really post this hoping that someone reads it that has a 1964 Big Pontiac standard starter lying around. I don't even need the starter, just the drive so the starter itself could be bad. Whether this works or not I would like to have the correct drive.

Before anyone suggests it, could I use a GTO bellhousing? Maybe. We built our clutch linkage around this bellhousing and I'm not 100% sure right now.

 

Congrats. Glad you stuck with it.

 

Running again.

 

We have a bit of work to do before it's track ready but we decided to take it to a show while getting there.

Anyway, we won for best engine.

 

great job. It is different how does it run on the street?

 

Much better after I got it aligned.

 

A much deserved award! Looks (and sounds) great!

 

Well shoot. LOL. Trans was noisy from the get go. Just didn't seem right. It is nearly 50 years old. 3 broken synchro keys, the mainshaft is all scored on the end as is the output shaft. Going to replace the reverse gears as they have some chew marks.

 

I don't know who all saw my trans issue post but it's running good now.

 

looking good, and running good what more could you ask for.

 

Happy for you that it's finally all together.

 

Very cool car brother

 

Cool car. Looks great

 

So I finally got tired of people asking me what year Chevy it was so I got the hood trim back on.

 

Looks real good! I dig the Pontiac with the hood!

 

What a beauty with the perfect gasser stance and attitude. Have you had the car at the strip yet. Any times for speed and E.T. at the strip. Continued good luck with your fine machine. Cheers.

 

We have had issues to deal with most of summer. Starter (more complicated than one would think), rebuild the transmission (both issues had car down for a few weeks for various reasons) and just general tinkering.

I don't live that close to a track so this may seem like a questionable route BUT it will get to the track next year.