Antique & Classic Cars Blog

My wife styles it “embarrassing junk,” but she hasn’t been in the trenches, the mud and the weeds foraging for lost automotive treasures. Those in the know can appreciate that Bigfoot appears more frequently than 4-speed bellhousings for the 215 V8–though in photographs of the two, he’s always blurrier.

To mount an equally rare ‘63 4-speed gearbox to my V8 Triumph project, I had sourced a 3-speed bellhousing (left). This is probably as rare, which is fun, but it requires modification or an adapter to fit a four speed. I had planned to modify it but stumbled across a sale for various 215 parts including a 4-speed bellhousing. I fired a quick email offer to the seller just for the bellhousing and he accepted. Here it is (right).

This version of the 4-speed bell’ (named for its shape) also has the 3-speed holes, which you can see are narrower. (Gearbox photo below demonstrates wider 4-speed holes.) Shouldn’t take too much effort to cut and file some aluminum stock in the shape of the “missing” pieces and weld them onto the 3-speed for the same effect. But this is a genuine 4-speed housing for a genuine 4-speed gearbox and that’s even more exciting. (”More irrelevant,” my wife says–she’s just envious of the automotive Indy Jones, prowling the boneyard with whip, hat, leather jacket and fuzzy photocopies of obsolete parts.)

An intriguing mystery here is the date-stamp on the “new” part. Ten years of seeking and studying 215 parts has never disclosed anything to suggest this bellhousing was still produced in 1964. Its engine-side bolt pattern is unique to the 215 V8 and 198 V6, neither of which were produced after 1963–at least no known production info says they were. Production years for the cars made with 215s (Buick Special, Skylark; Olds F85; a few Pontiac Tempests) are 1961 to 1963.

Was the 215 (with 4-speed) still available as a forgotten option on the 1964 Buick Skylark and Special, for which Buick built a new 300 cubic inch cast iron V8 to replace the 215? (The 300 bell’s bolt pattern is different.) Did GM keep making them as replacement parts? Did they build a few for performance entrepreneurs like Carroll Shelby, who supposedly considered the light 215 engine for his Cobra?

Anyone with a clue on this, please let me know! Every other part I’ve seen for the 215 or 198 has been stamped from ‘61 to ‘63, like the 3-speed bell, which is stamped ‘61.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 18th, 2007 at 12:49 pm and is filed under Car parts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.