I have a 1955 239 Y-Block that I will be rebuilding. However I would like to do away with the carb and convert it to a throttle body. Does anyone have any advice or location of advice on what to use and how to do this?

 

I thought the 239's were only made in '54, but that is not an issue. I had a 239 Y-block that found its way into a '56.

What is an issue is that the 239 intake manifold is, to the best of my memory, a different animal than the rest of the Y-bocks, so you are unlikely to find anything but the manifold you have that will fit. With its three-bolt, two-barrel carb setup, no matter what throttle body you use, I think you will need a custom adaptor plate.

 

Ok, so I gave up on my 239 block and now have a 272 block. So now maybe I can get some responses on how to covert this from a carb set up to a throttle body setup.

 

Lawrence,

I am not the person to help you with throttle-body stuff, but post what intake manifold you have. There were both 3-bolt and 4-bolt two-barrel carbs, and someone could have even put a four-barrel manifold on a 272. There were also two different bolt patterns for 4-barrrels, so the stud dimensions are probably necessary. I expect you will need an adaptor and it will have to match your manifold.

 

Lawrence: you should find that you can use any manifold up to and including 1956 without problem. I have personally used a 1957 big port 9425B 4v manifold on my 239 and it did work, altho I would admit that I was very lucky.

Use an intake gasket to check whether your ports will match the manifold. But the 55 and 56 ports are not that much larger than 239 ports.

My opinion would be that a throttle body conversion could be done with the use of a carb adapter. Perhaps one of the Holley 2v throttle body aftermarket units would be the easiest route. I used to see used ones come up on EBay for sale; don't know if they still do.

The easiest match to a throttle body would be using the 57 and up big port 2v manifolds, which will allow you to bolt a 2v throttle body on directly. (Here, I'm assuming that you don't need the flow capability of the Holley 4v throttle bodies).

Still, if you want to stick with a small port (55-56 or 54 256) manifold, I think that your best bet would be to use a 4v manifold, and adapt the teapot bold pattern to the throttle body you select.