Three (Laborers) Against One (Corvair)

Ariel, her boyfriend Matt, and I spent nearly five hours working on Ringo Saturday. The two of them did most of the work, while I directed/supervised/prodded. Ariel was focused on part removal, while Matt wielded my grinder with a cutoff disc and wire wheel alternately installed.

By the end of the day, the only chrome left on the car was his driver’s door handle and lock and the trim around the windshield and backlight. Additionally, we completely gutted the passenger side door in preparation for replacement with a solid shell I’ll be buying next weekend.

On the sheetmetal side, Matt made a whole lot of Bondo dust which uncovered a whole lot of missing metal. The result of all that is that I’ll be buying two new rocker panels and lower fender pieces to replace the swiss cheese that’s currently there.

While they were busy, I was disassembling and evaluating the pair of 95 HP heads. Using the valve spring compressor I’d borrowed from my FLAPS, I removed (the photo on the left shows how it's done, but the head in the picture is not a Corvair) and cleaned all the valves, marking and storing them for reassembling. I found that most of the valve guides have worn so they’ll need replacing before the heads can be reassembled. Other than that, the heads appear usable.