CHEV 216 VS Chev 235

[Phil Waterman]

Hi Alex

Your post is a very good one with lots of very useful information. I should have been more precise in my wording. What I meant was converting a standard left hand drive bell housing as commonly found in North America to one with the clutch fork connection on the right side (as looking forward) as used on Chevy CMPs is no big deal.

I have converted two standard housing over see the photos below. My reason for doing this in one case was that the existing CMP housing was badly cracked and in the other case was that when I re-engined from the 216 to 261 I wanted to keep the 216 engine unit complete.

The Patricks article indirectly points out another reason for keeping the bell housing and engine pair's together in that they are actually matched and pinned for alignment. It actually takes as long to re-align an engine bell housing pair as it does to add the clutch fork pivot and hole on the other side. (I'd lost my link to the Patrick's site so thanks for finding it for me, I've book marked it again.)

That nice clean orange bell housing was a NOS one that I picked up at a Flea Market, a real lucky find.

Cheers Phil