Do you know how long the car was sitting before you bought it?
I would say it was fairly unusual to have the shift lever lock up unless the parkng pawl got overstressed. Back in the day, it was much more common for the transmission to leak, slip, make strange noises, or refuse to engage any gear at all. I suppose it is possible for the manual control valve to seize if water got inside the tranmission and it sat long enough. This could certainly lock the shift lever, but then you would also have a bunch of other problems as well.
The Dynaflow converter is unlike any other converter on any other transmission you are likely to have worked on. To get it off of the transmission you must disassemble the converter from the outside in.
There aren't many shops left that are willing to work on a Dynaflow these days. If you know of one in your area, consider yourself lucky. If you are brave enough to want to dig into the transmission by yourself, Team Buick has a 1957 service manual online. The Dynaflow section is here.
http://www.teambuick.com/reference/l...hassis/5-a.php
The major difference between the 57 transmission and yours is the output shaft and tail housing. The converter is enough like yours that you should be able to get it apart using the 57 instructions.
Ray
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