Bellhousing Question

How many different bellhousings were on the 1966 C4? Anyone have pictures?

8) should only be one bell housing for the six cylinder C4 automatic.

Thats what I thought but my shop is saying otherwise. They're saying the starter will need shimming to fully catch the ring gear, and comparing it to another 66 200ci mated C4 they have in the shop. Apparently that bellhousing is bigger

8) even if there is a second bell housing for the C4, the only difference will be the location of the top two bolts. the starter location is the same for all high mount starter inlines. in fact the starters are all basically the same, though some of the later high mount starters have only two bolts holding them in place rather than three.

Actually there are different starters (actually same starter with two different nose cones) for automatics and manual transmissions. The difference is in the depth of the engagement of the starter drive. The manual starter has it's starter gear more recessed in the starter nose cone housing. The automatic starter drive protrudes about 3/8" deeper into the bellhousing than the manual starter. This is because the starter ring gear on the torque converter is positioned farther away from the back of the engine than in the manual transmission flywheel. I think the main reason for this is more space is needed in the manual transmission bellhousing for the clutch assembly.

So I think if they took the starter out of the other car and tried it in yours they would see the bellhousings are not different, the starters are.

I can empathize as I'm going through the same hassle right now. Look in this section for some posts about bellhousings I made earlier this week. There are 2, but as far as I know, the starter should be the same on both. You may just have the wrong starter, and need one from a later model.

In 1966 there should have been only one version of the C4, but there are later C4 versions that are interchangeable and may have been fitted as a replacement. There was a later "pan-fill" case and the similar looking C3 that would each have different bells.

However, the starter mounting surface is flush with the block face in each of those. The depth of the starter nose would only have varied with the type of ring gear. The ring gear was welded to the torque converter on most versions.

If you don't have the block plate between the bell and the block, your starter may not be correctly positioned. The cutout on that plate engages the starter nose and sets the distance between gears. If you only have bolts thee could be a lot of variation in that engagement distance. Also, there are shims available to move the starter nose away from the ring gear. You can find them for small block V8's.

What ended up happening was my shop decided to do some shimming to position the starter to where it should be, and boy does this turkey turn over better than ever before. Didn't really get to the bottom of the problem, but it is solved nonetheless.