Early 1960 Bell Housing

[Thomas H.]

Picked up an aluminum bell housing today dated 4-14-59. There is an "X" cast in the housing near the part number. I don't recall the one on my 60 having this "X".

Does this "X" have any significance?







Tom

[Loren L.]

Re: Early 1960 Bell Housing

It's an early casting, inviting comments from users about defects and problems. There's more than one...........

[Joe L.]

Re: Early 1960 Bell Housing

Picked up an aluminum bell housing today dated 4-14-59. There is an "X" cast in the housing near the part number. I don't recall the one on my 60 having this "X".

Does this "X" have any significance?







Tom

Tom------


I have no information on the "X" suffix except as Loren mentions.

Something I've always wondered about, though: the C1 aluminum bellhousings were a sand casting, Aluminum sand castings were rarely used on Corvettes. The only examples I can think of are these bellhousings, T-10 and Muncie main cases, aluminum intake manifolds, and aluminum cylinder heads. The intake manifolds and most cylinder heads were out-sourced to Winters Foundry and thus cast at their foundry in Canton, OH. The T-10 main cases were supplied to Borg-Warner, either by some in-house operation or an outside vendor. I wonder where the C1 aluminum bellhousings and Muncie main cases came from? I know of no GM foundry which produced aluminum sand castings at the time. I don't think they were manufactured by Winters because Winters usually included their foundry mark ("snowflake") on their products and no such mark is seen on these pieces.

[Loren L.]

Re: Early 1960 Bell Housing

By the way, don't go rushing out to install it on your 1959 - The Engineering Change Order specifies usage at "Start of 1960 production".