i just bought a 1957 chevy with a 6 cyl engine ... i cant find a oil drain plug ,,oil filter ,, or a tranny drain plug on that thing anywhere .. anyone know where these things are on it ...

 

ok i guess a 57 chevy 6 cyl. never had a oil filter ,,or drain plug in the oil pan or tranny ..

 

I have never seen a drain plug for transmission fluid on any Chevrolet (or any other car) I have owned.

I remember that my '64 V-8 had a canister oil filter. Therefore, the oil filter did not look like the spin-on disposable filters we have had for the last 40 years.

 

most of the time the trans fluid drain is on the back of the trans.

 

Many older GM automatics don't have drain plugs. Removing the pan, allowing one corner to drop first to funnel the fluid out at one spot so you can catch it is the usual way to handle that.

I have never seen a car engine without an oil drain plug. Ever. Look again.

Depending on how original the engine is, there may not be a traditional oil filter...either spin on or canister. Some old chevy 6's had an external filter, with oil lines running to it. These are a passive filter, tapping into an oil galley for a small bleed of the pressurized oil to pass through a filter and return to the pan. My '53 had no oil filter, and still had the earlier style babbet rod bearings which picked up oil from little trays across the pan instead of through a pressurized passage in the crankshaft. The trucks had the passive external oil filter. Mine was a car, with one of the early 235's.

'57 should be a 235, pressure fed rod bearings with a canister filter or the passive external and an oil bath air cleaner. There is a possibility that it has no oil filter. The older 216 had the side cover (lifter access) extending all the way to the tappet cover, with the spark plugs passing through it. The 235 had the shorter side cover, not extending over the side of the cylinder head. I believe they quit making the 216 in 54.

 

thank you stuman 2 i think you are right on the money ..it has the oil bath breather and thats all i can find ,, that cant be good so i dropped a 350 in it ..thanks again everyone for your replys...

 

Hang on to the old engine though. It is worth going through. This is the "cast iron wonder". I would love to have one for a stationary generator application, as they are pretty rock solid. Adding a passive oil filter is not too difficult. If the valve cover has slots in it for ventilation (like my '53 did), you would want to put a filtered breather cap on it and close those. Crankcase ventilation was draft tube...drawing vacuum from air flow while going down the road.

If you don't want the engine, I can take it off your hands.

 

I know a 55 chevy 265 V8 did not have an oil filter. Many Chevy automatics did not have drain plugs back in the day.

"A shortcoming of the 1955 265 was that the engine had no provision for oil filtration built into the block, instead relying on an add-on filter mounted on the thermostat housing."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrol...l-block_engine

 

The 55-57 used the old paper filters in a canister. The canister has 1 long bolt at the bottom going into the block. As for the oil drain plug it should be in the oil pan on the passinger side. And the trainsmission you have to take the pan off to drain the fluid.