Found this car on Kijiji abut a year ago and paid 1K, the new owner wanted to flip it to make a few bucks and what I got was a solid car, floors, trunk and frame. Column shift, bench seats with one big tear, good headliner but missing the chrome trim, mirrors, carpeting and for some reason the parcel tray. He told me it was his neighbors car and this guy would not winter drive it and would winterize it by removing all plugs, hoses, belts etc and stuff with rags. Not sure how true this was but it did have a small block Chevy lots of old school chrome goodies like breather, valve covers, alternator bracket, chrome reverse rims and no exhaust but came with a set of headers and four barrel carburetor. Makes me think that an engine swap was done at some time and never completed, oh yea it still had a single exhaust connected and transmission was not connected.
Long story short, did a compression test and all was within specs., got new plugs, valve cover gaskets, exhaust manifold gaskets, installed the headers and she started (loud of course with just headers) and ran without me adjusting timing or trying to keep it idling, in other words just purred. Tried to find out if it is a 283 or 327 so I checked the heads and the serial number says it could be a 283 or 327. Looked for a block stamping and still looking, I was told to look by the distributor but still cannot find, any suggestions?
My plan is to keep this in primer black ,the way I got it with rusted roof, a daily driver with attitude LOL.
So first question with more to come I'm sure, with the headers installed it will require a sharp S turn to get the pipe in the correct location for the exhaust, is this Ok, I mean can a shop do this or should I install stock manifolds and simplify the exhaust install.
First, as to the question about engines, if it's original, it can't be a 283, they ended in 57.
On the front of the engine, passenger side, just in front of the cylinder head, scrape that pad on the block that is about 3/4" X 3" and copy down all the numbers and letters stamped there. With that we can possibly decode what it is.
The exhaust is your option I'd say, do you want to keep the headers on?
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1966 Strato Chief 2 door, 427 4 speed, 45,000 original miles
1966 Grande Parisienne, 396 1 of 23 factory air cars (now converted to a "factory" 4 speed)
First, as to the question about engines, if it's original, it can't be a 283, they ended in 57.
'67.
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Prince Edward Island
'64 Parisienne CS "barn find" - last on the road in '86 ... Owner Protection Plan booklet, original paint, original near-mint aqua interior, original aqua GM floor mats, original 283, factory posi, and original rust.
The block casting number may be back by the distributor, but on the block itself and likely hard to see with the engine in the car. The stamping number should be on the passenger side, where the block extends forward from the head about 3/4" as Carl described.
