'38 8/60 Gearbox ????????

[danhar1960]

This in currently on ebay.

1938 BUICK TRANSMISSION--OPEN DRIVE--60 SERIES: eBay Motors (item 220667543024 end time Sep-17-10 13:29:40 PDT)

Rare open shaft ??? Anyone heard of an open shafted '38 before ??

Not sure how this box would hold up behind a big V8.

And what about the price ???

What do you make of this thing ????

Danny

[Thriller]

Olds 371? So, it makes me wonder what the seller is thinking in the first place. To my knowledge they were all torque tubes then - whether the manual or the (genuinely rare) self-shifter transmission. Either this guy doesn't know what he has, doesn't know what he's talking about, or is speaking a different language than we are (I know "open" gets used in respect to rear ends, but that shouldn't be directly applicable to Buick transmissions.

I don't know how rare one would consider this. I don't know if different transmissions were used behind the big 8 as compared with the smaller engine in the 40 series, but 1938 Buicks are relatively plentiful (one of the most common years in the BCA roster).

[sean1997]

This was a very common hot rodding trick back in the day. Take a '36-'38 Buick floor shift trans with the top shifter and 6-bolt cover, then add later ('49 and newer) Buick gears with the Oldsmobile ('51 and newer I think) mainshaft and rear bearing retainer (tail shaft) to get an open drive trans to use behind your naihead or other V8. Almost as strong as the LaSalle trans if you used the 6-bolt top cover trans from the 60/80/90 series. The small series Buick used a 5-bolt top cover trans which is too weak to put behind a V8. Buick used the 6-bolt top cover 3-speed through 1960 and Oldsmobile used it through 1963. There is an article titled "Big Gears for Any Engine" in the August 1956 issue of Hot Rod Magazine that describes how to do this. You can get the article in the book "Best of Hot Rod Magazine, 1949-1959":

Amazon.com: Best of Hot Rod Magazine, 1949-1959 (9780760313176): Primedia: Books

[sean1997]

By the way, this particular trans has been for sale for a long time. His original price was $1500. The hardest parts to find are the Oldsmobile open drive stuff. It does take three transmissions to do this, but even the current price seams high to me.