Thread: 55 210 straight six

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Hi; I'm new to this forum, and I'm from England, so some of this may sound a little strange to you guys. I've just bought a really nice '55 Chevy 210, with a 235 straight six, with manual / overdrive gearbox. I'm in the process of tuning it, as it's such a nice car it seemed a shame to ditch the six, and put a V8 in. I finally managed to track down Clifford performance, and ordered [and paid for] a load of parts from them about 5 weeks ago. Amongst the stuff I ordered was an intake manifold suitable for a Holley 390 4 barrel. So far, they keep telling me that they're "waiting for it to be cast". Do any of you guys know [or perhaps you've got one for sale] if any speed shops in the States keep them in stock. Also, any tuning tips would be welcome. So far, I'm going for carb / intake /headers, and a mild cam. Stock output is about 136 b.h.p. Any advise would be welcome.

I am new to this web stuff so bear with me.

Forget abot the four barrel on your six. It wont flow right and it will be a dog until you wind it up, unless you have a good, and i mean GOOD cam. If you want a REal Cam for your 235 get in touch with Howards Cams in Calif. For a custom Grind (like I did). The 235 is especially unique mostly because of the cylinder head ports. Yes, the 260's and292's have more C.i., But if you look in the intake and exhaust runners there are NO head bolt bosses cast into them. Why Chevrolet did this to a good flowing head I have no idea. The 235 head can outflow those larger cid's any day.
back to carburetion, you'll be much better off with two or three single barrels on that 235 than you will with a single four any way you try to tune it. Trust me. I know guys who have been running these things since the early fifties. I have built plenty of V-8 hot rod motors and when I bought this '60 Apache i thought I would give this little 235 a go. I couldn't be happier. My truck weighs 4120 lbs. and that little six i built has more torque pound for pound than those V-8's. My key was the cam, the WELL BALANCED THREE SINGLE ROCHESTERS (with .072 jets) and a GOOD BALANCING JOB! Someone told mw when I was building this motor ( Idid all the macining myself) that all straight sixes are inherently balanced and i didn't need to pay the extra (200 dollars) money to balace it. Let me tell you, When I'm going down the 101 highway here in SoCal at 100 mph in my huge straight six behemoth Ive got a bigger grin on my face than when I drove any of my hot rod v-8's.
Do yourself a favor, find a good shop, make sure that crank and rods are straight, port and polish the head get a good cam and tune it properly.
One more thing, these 235's have shims in the main caps and its hard to find a shop that will build it right, make SURE that crank spins free bfore assembly.

If you are looking for alternate manifolds and other speed parts for 235 chev sixes, www.patricksantiqueparts.com or the classified pages at www.inliners.org are good places to start.
Especially inliners- they are mainly gm six racers and cruisers-join up and get their 6 per year magazine "the 12 port news" great articles and good tech.

Thanks guys;

Had a good chin wag with Tom at Langdon's, and bought the following. Bulldog cam, twin Offie manifold with twin Weber / Cater carbs, Fenton extractor manifold. While I've got the head of, as well as polishing, would a skim be in order, as we can get 96 RON gas over here, and standard compression ratio is about 7;1.

Sorry for bloviating about my 235. Clifford if a good choice and so is fenton. I dont know anything about Bulldog cams but you can get a lot of lift on the exhaust side. Mine is pretty radical. it lopes pretty hard at idle and most folks are suprised when they hear it's actually an inline.

Darn it! This computer stuff is hard to learn! I didnt finish what I wanted to say. A big improvement that a lot of people ignore is to have your distributor re-curved for that inline six. It really makes a huge difference. NEVER trust those rebuilders. I also gained a lot more oil pressure ( 60 lbs at idle) by working over the oil pump, shimming the spring and checking the gear clearances and so forth. I like this little six so much I'm going to build another one. Remember to have that crank checked for straightness and have EVERYTHING balanced. It will make it real happy. By the way, a friend of mine built these things in the fifties and said the reallyhot setup was FIVE carbs. He said they like to be rich.