Hi Jim's 58. On the Dynaflows in '57 and '58, I remember there was a very specific way to adjust the shift linkage. They have a whole page devoted to the adjustment in the shop manual. You have to follow the book carefully. I don't want to retype the whole thing here but if you cant find a shop manual, I will. I've looked at my shop manual to jog my memory on some other things. Maybe some of this stuff will help you. When the car will not move in 'drive' only, they mention problems with the high accumulator. When shifting from 'low' to 'drive' and the shift is abnormally rough or slips, they again mention the high accumulator. The high accumilator is the thing on the side of the transmission that the kick down linkage hooks to. It's linkage too has to be adjusted just right. You said that you had used the car with no kickdown linkage installed. That means that the high accumilator was not being effected. It also means that you might have been running around with the varible pitch (kickdown) perminetly engaged because the accumulator obviously was in one position or the other and not being moved. And, you don't really know if you were in varible pitch or not. Now that you have hooked up the accumulator you have disturbed it and I think you are going to find your problem involves the adjustment of both linkages and the condition of the high accumulator and it's gaskets. Get a shop manual and read it carefully and you might be able to fix it yourself. One thing comes to mind though. You drove it one day and it was fine. The next day it was a quart and a half low. How did that happen? You probably have a bad seal on the output shaft or in the torque ball. You probably have a quart and a half of ATF inside the torque tube. It will start leaking on the floor so that you can spot it. Also, a quart and a half low is enough to make the car not go. They are very sensitive to fluid levels. One more thing. I would not go to someone without any Dynaflow experience and without having an understanding up front about charges. A guy could get that thing scattered all over the shop and through his hands up, and you will be out looking for a transmission guy carring around a box of trans parts. Dynaflows are very good transmissions and they are very tough. But, They have a lot of different aspects about them from their contemporarys and when you figure most tranny guys wern't born when that transmission was made, well it's easy to see why it's hard to find qualified mechanics to fix them. If you find a guy thats known to be a good trans guy, and can get him a shop manual, preferably a genuine Buick one, you will probably be OK. Parts won't be a problem, look through Hemmings. I really hope this all helps rather than confuses. Good luck.:wavey:
PS. You might hear a lot of negative stuff about Dynaflows. Most of it will be things that guys are just repeating and have no personal experience themselfs. Dynaflows are among the very best transmissions in snow and mud. They are great for pulling trailers. I first broke into drag racing in the mid '50's with Dynaflow equipped Buicks and we were always competitive, and won our share of races. Our '55 and '56 cars ran in the upper 80's just bumping 90mph. My '57 car (66R) had a best time of 94.38 mph. and consistently ran 91-93. Many of the strips didn't have ET clocks but I seem to remember that we were in the low 15's. Those were pretty good speeds and most of the guys we ran against were stick shifts (3 speeds). When I was a kid I accidently through my mom's '56 Century convertible in reverse at a little over 100 mph. I had forgotten all about that until my '50th class reunion a couple of years ago. One of the kids that was in the car that day reminded me of it. It didn't seem to hurt the tranny. I hope my grand kids don't find out about that. Again, good luck with your project.
