Done With Racecars For a While

Sunday afternoon Mikhaila joined me in the garage for some quality Corvair time with her car. While I returned to Luna her borrowed wheels, Mikhaila continued cleaning Scarlett's (this post marks the date where she agreed to give her car a decent name in place of RedVert) seats. So far it appears the original upholstery will be usable.

Once Luna was down on the ground and the jackstands were available, we put Scarlett up in the air and removed her wheels to give us access to the hub ends of the brake system. I had given Mikhaila options as to where we start first on her car: engine, brakes, bearings, fuel. She chose brakes. We’ll be doing this job in stages with stage 1 being inspection of what’s there. From what we could see, the lines and hoses are actually in pretty good shape, but we’ll be replacing the rubber hoses anyway. To improve access to the rear fittings, we undid the outer ends of the heater ducts. While under the car, I noticed the exhaust pipe has rusted through in one spot, so I decided we should also remove the exhaust system which helped with brake fitting access as well. We sprayed both ends of all four hoses before moving on.

I’m anxious to determine the condition of the engine, so Mikhaila and I went to work prepping the engine for starting. After removing the spark plug leads, we discovered mice had moved heater box insulation to the volume under the Upper Shroud (turkey roaster). That meant that we needed to remove that shroud to clean out all the finned passageways of the heads and jugs.

We accomplished that in surprisingly quick order by removing the alternator (this EM’s been modified), the vacuum balance line between the carburetors, the PCV valve tubing, and all the screws holding the shroud in place. Since the top shroud is sandwiched by the front shroud, the three screws for that piece had to be loosened. With the top now free, we finagled it off the engine. Mikhaila then gave each spark plug a generous shot of penetrating fluid which we decided to let sit and work its magic for a day or so.

Some of the parts Scarlett is missing include the side shrouds. John had allowed me to go through his stash of used parts and I did uncover a side shroud, but it ended up being for a turbo engine, and won’t work for us. The last task for Mikhaila and I before knocking off for the day was to go through my GUPs and see if I had the sheetmetal that Scarlett required. We found side shrouds (with good seals), a rear engine mount cover, and a couple lower shrouds (both with good thermostats). I really need to get rid of all the excess crap I’m keeping on shelves. It makes it very difficult to find the right GUP. Wait, the crap are the GUPs.