Thread: 57 Plymouth

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With everything going on right now the class reunion is pretty much up in the air, but I am still planning a trip back to Illinois later this year.

The weather is getting warmer and my hand healed as much as it's going to get so I've been working on getting the PS conversion done on the 57.

The conversion kit was designed for stock motor 57/58 Dodge and Plymouths with an automatic ........the test mule for the original kit design was a Poly powered 57 Savoy (with automatic). As my car has a 4 speed I went into this expecting to have to make a few tweaks to the kit.

Getting the original gear and column out was pretty straight forward.......PIA but straight forward. Because of the design of the torsion bar suspension and size of the steering gear it's pretty much impossible to get the gear out thru the bottom of the car so the 57-61(?) Mopars have an access panel under the peddles that allows the removal of the column and gear as a unit thru the passenger compartment.

PS 1 by M Patterson, on Flickr

I also had to remove the clutch linkage and cross shaft but I kind of expected that.


The next step was test fitting the new steering gear. The instructions call for using the adapter plate on the outside of the frame rail to use as a template for drilling a 3rd hole in the frame for the adapter to bolt to. As my car is HEMI powered with a 4 speed there was some question if the kit would actually fit so I went straight to bolting the adapter plate to the steering gear and test fitting the unit using the 2 existing bolt holes. Naturally the gear HAS to go thru the access panel in the floor, then mounted from under the car

I was very happy to find out the new steering gear did fit. On the initial test fit the top of the new steering gear was a bit close to the bottom of the aluminum valve cover but the clearance was adequate.

PS 2 by M Patterson, on Flickr


The test fit went well enough that I was ready to move on to making the necessary changes to make it work with the clutch linkage.


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