I was talking with a fellow up the road today and he mentioned that he had a LaSalle transmission behind a 265 Chev in his 49 Cad hearse. He is going to pull the engine and transmission and plant flowers in the Cad. I was wondering if that trans would work behind my 331 hemi? I seem to remember when I was a kid in the 50's that you always heard of LaSalle transmission being used in hotrods.
get it quick....for a flathead or sbc the Lasalle is okay....behind a Hemi....maybe not a good idea....but it will sell well - so you can upgrade..
Do a search and check out a lot of the info that is available here on the Cad-Lasalle three speed trans.
Lasalles are really beefy, itll be find behind the hemi. If its a side shift it really isnt all that hard to make a shifter set up for it. jeff
I ran a Caddy-Lasalle behind a 354 Hemi back in the late 50's and it held up just fine . The 1st to second throw wasn't that great, so I started out in second and just took advantage of the hemi torque to get off the line. The trick will be to find an adapter for a LaSalle to a hemi.
Tough as nails with an input shaft like a dump truck. Really fast shifting is kinda tricky, but can be done. Like mentioned above, the adapter for the Hemi might be tough to find, but not impossible. Hopefully it's a floor shift '37, that makes life pretty easy. A 331 Hemi won't bother it at all.....
Two things; 1. Hope the seller isn't on HAMB 2. There was a shifter back in the day called DRAGFAST (I believe) they made a really good floor shift conversion for the side shift LaSalle, probably hard to find though.
my bet is that it's the stock transmission for the car with a column shift vintage 265s do have some value and the adapter should too the transmission is worth a hundred or two by itself depending on condition of guts. if you got the whole package cheap enough you could sell the engine and adapter and have a free transmission, maybe even come out cash ahead. like said above they are tough but they do shift a bit slow there is no syncro into first and it will have a very long tailshaft.
A couple of years ago I was at one of those swapmeets that generally specialize in 80's Chevy truck parts and Chinese tools when I stumbled upon a 39 LaSalle trans. A younger guy had it in his booth and told me that his father had it in his garage since the 60's and told the kid to sell it at the swapmeet or he was going to scrap it. It didn't have a price on it and I couldn't turn the input shaft by hand so he took $10 for it. When I got it home I took the side cover off and it was nearly full of oil and everything looked nice. I was able to free it up within a few days. A friend who has a few toploaders as well as side shifts has taken a 37 shifter lever and adapted it to an aftermarket floor shift for a sideshift version. I don't think the placement of the lever is exactly like a 37 but it's a pretty slick conversion.
Hi-- 5 or six years ago I could get 1300 to 1500 for a nice 37 Floorshift-- today it seems like about 8 to 900 is tops- a lot of the younger guys are going to the 3-4-5-6 speed Chevy type trans-- easier for parts etc-the Cad-LaSalle trans was really ahead of its time-could take 3 to 4 times the torque of the car it came in-- thanks don
I knew a guy who had a Cad-LaSalle behind several Hemis. The only time I knoiw of him breaking anything other than the 2-3 shift "button" was when he reved it and dumped the clutch with the trans pulled only part way into first gear.
I paid a little over $600 for one last summer, 37 complete with the throwout bearing collar/input shaft bearing retainer. The one on eBay looks nice and if it is a freshly built one it's at a criminally cheap price right now. Although I didn't see the input shaft retainer........
there's one of those on the 'bay right now too the Cad-Lasalle is one of the simplest transmissions out there very easy to work on I posted a thread somewhere on swapping the Olds tail onto one, I'll see if I can find a link.. here it is; http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=185196
I have several 37-50 trannys that I have accumulated over the last couple years. Sold a rebuilt '37 for a grand, bought another for 500. Saw a '37 go for 1300 on Ebay last year so you never know what they will bring I guess. '37 will be a little slow shifting 1-2. Power shifts are hard on the shift button that is attached to the bottom of the shift arm. Been known to break off so you usually carry a spare with you. Someone is repopping the '38 + floor shift bracketry to adapt a floor shifter to the other column trannies. IMHO the later trannies will shift better or faster than the '37.
I see a lot of talk about a '37 trans, is my '40 LaSalle trans a different type? Is the '37 more desirable for hotrods for some reason?
The 37 Cad-Lasalle trans is a stickshift. The 38 and up years were a column shift, so you need an aftermarket stickshift to do your shifting from the floor.
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