In Amish communities, when a neighbor needs a new barn, the whole community pitches in to help build it. Applying this concept to our world, we invited a bunch of friends over to help swap the drivetrain from our ’65 Chevy Bel Air wagon into our new ’65 Biscayne two-door sedan. The wagon and the two-door sedan body styles share identical chassis, so all drivetrain components are interchangeable. We added a twist by switching transmissions from a 350 to a brand-new Richmond Super T10 that we’d originally intended to put into the wagon—complete with a new Hurst shifter and Hays clutch and flywheel.
Despite our army of mechanics, we were a bit optimistic in our hopes of swapping out the engine, trans, rearend, and exhaust system from one car to another in a day—or even a weekend. In the end, the complete swap took closer to two weeks, accounting for rain delays, parts runs, and a few problems that we had to sort out when, as always, the routine swap turned out to not be as “routine” as we’d planned.
