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I am always available by mail at: thomasinetbbudney@ukfamilies.com .
1957 CHEVROLET BEL AIR SPORT COUPE
UNRESTORED FUEL INJECTION SURVIVOR
Please note that this is a private party sale! I have owned this unrestored, factory-original survivor
fuel-injected sport coupe Bel Air (one of 1530 passenger factory-built fuelies) since December 1999. It is in
excellent original mostly unmolested condition. This is a 283 c.i., 250 H.P. Turboglide numbers-matching car. It
was assembled In Kansas City, Missouri in May 1957. It has been driven 62, 000+ miles up to the present time. The
engine has never been rebuilt (hence the original patina in the engine compartment) and runs great. It has a black
exterior with a red/black interior. The paint is mostly factory-original and the interior is still in excellent,
beautiful original condition. This is a rust-free automobile and as far as I know the car has never been hit - as
you can see in some of the pics it is very straight (as we all know a black exterior is not very forgiving as it
will highlight flaws such as imperfect body work, waves, wrinkles, etc.). It still has the original rubber trunk
mat with the embossed encircled “57”. The fellow that I bought it from, because it had gravel chips in the
rocker panel area (the 2nd owner’s house [in Nebraska] was next to a gravel road), had it repainted below the
side trim. However, the majority of the paint is shiny original because the car has always been garaged. There
are a few minor wear spots (mainly primer showing through the original paint) in several places as a result of
constant waxing. Also, there are some gravel chips on the front part of the hood and there are minor scratches
here and there. Overall, the exterior paint is in beautiful original condition. Under the hood there are several
factory assembly line yellow chalk X’s (see pic) on the hood latch cover. What these X’s refer to is a puzzle
but I have been told by several Chevrolet experts that these were most likely an alert to the assembly line workers
that a fuel injection system was to be installed in this car. One photo of the chassis (floorboards are solid)
shows one of the rear spiral shock absorbers. Another photo shows the engine suffix pad which is F418GF and this
translates to Flint, April 18, Turboglide fuel injection.
All of the fuel injection components are original to the car. As far as I know the Rochester 4520 fuel injection
unit has never been rebuilt. It has always run well with minor tuning done every now and then. The 2nd owner, who
bought it in late Fall 1957 (the first owner was a young man and for whatever reason his father made him return it
to the dealership), told me when I first bought it that he was informed that this car was a factory demonstrator to
promote the sales of fuel injection passenger cars and because of this they made sure that it had the best
components installed to keep it running flawlessly. After the factory reps were done the car was sent to a
dealership near Omaha, Nebraska where it was sold. I asked the 2nd owner if he had the original dealer paperwork
for the car but it ended up getting lost or misplaced. I had him do a notarized “Certificate of Authenticity”
for me regarding his history with the car. He had also written a note to the fellow that I had bought the car from
detailing pretty much the same info.
This car still has all of the original peripheral FI components:
Vacuum wiper motor with the Electro-vac switch.
Metal clip (on the firewall) to hold the electric choke “pig tail” wire/connector for the air meter.
Air intake hose bracket that is attached to the driver-side radiator support (toward the bottom – see pic).
Most of these original brackets ended up missing or tossed aside in about 99.9% of the original passenger car
fuelies so this is an extremely rare, very hard-to-find item and very, very expensive if ever available. This item
is definitely NOT a repro.
Electro-vac (with the original Trico string tag) affixed by clutch head screws to the radiator support.
Passenger-side exhaust manifold with no vacuum tube hole drilled like the ones for cars with carburetors.
Original metal band to attach the air intake hose to the air cleaner.
The 3/8-
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