As an old-skool rodder, I grew up believing that anything can be made to fit anything if you are willing to work at it hard enough. However, in this case, you are going to need some very good fabrication skills or a lot of money to pay someone else who does.
I have a 52 Roadmaster, so I know what the factory PS looks like, and I looked at some pictures of the Pontiac unit. Here is what I could find out from comparing the two:
1. These are two different designs of steering gear. The Buick power cylinder is parallel to the steering shaft axis and points rearward. The Pontiac power cylinder is angled and points forward. It will come very close to the engine mount and/or the generator.
2. The gear-to-frame mounting is different. You will need to fab some kind of mounting bracket for the Pontiac unit.
3. Pontiac uses a symmetrical steering linkage with a center link and idler arm like modern cars. The Buick linkage is asymmetrical with long and short tie rods and the pitman arm connected to the long rod. You will have to do some serious modification on the Pontiac pitman arm to connect it to the Buick linkage.
4. I would advise against attempting to splice the Pontiac gear to the Buick steering column. You will probably have to install the Pontiac gear and column as an assembly. I think the column will fit ok, but you may have some issues with the shift linkage (I am assuming you have Dynaflow and the Pontiac had Hydra-matic). If I remember correctly, Buick has the detent mechanism on the column and Pontiac has it in the transmission. You may want to check this one for yourself though, as it has been a long time since I've owned one of those old Hydra-matics.
When I was younger and tougher, I would have dived into this swap without any hesitation. Today, I would think twice, because I believe there are better (or at least easier) ways to get PS on the Buick.
Ray
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