When last I posted, I had recently returned from the Corvair Ranch’s Open House. I’d promised to post more information on the “newest Corvair,” and I will. Just not right now.
So, what has been going on with the fleet? Well, let’s start with the photos of the 4-carb linkage build.
The next step is to disassemble another 2-carb linkage to get the two brackets that will mount on the secondary carburetors. Onto those I will attach 3/8” diameter bolts for the final pivots. All of this, however, will wait until Ringo is back on the road.
Speaking of Ringo, I feel like I’m seeing the light at the end of the tunnel sheetmetal-wise. In the past couple weeks I’ve formed and welded in two patches and cut out and prepped two more patches to go with the purchased footwell piece. All that’s left is the welding. Oh yeah, then there’s the grinding and the priming and the painting, but I expect those portions of the project to move along quickly. Regarding the other major portion of Ringo’s roadification part two, I stupidly took the wrong heads up to the Corvair Ranch two weekends back. I grabbed the heads from the disassembled ’64 110 instead of the ’66 95 HP that I’d settled on. Fortunately, Ariel was heading up to visit her boyfriend in nearby Hanover, so she made the swap for me. I haven’t talked to proprietor Jeff since then, so I don’t know how much the work’s going to end up costing me. When I go and pick them up, I’ll also get the rest of the parts for the engine rebuild.
On to Glinda. At the open house, I’d bought a GUP rearview mirror and a GUP turn signal assembly. The mirror was installed the next evening – only one screw holds it in place, so the swap was a five minute job. The turn signal assembly, however, was much more of a project. To remove the old one, I had to pull the steering wheel and the horn components, remove the three screws retaining the assembly, take off the plate that holds the wires in place, and, most scarily to me, take off the snap ring retaining the top bearing and its housing. Of course, even with all my precautions, it popped off and went flying, but thank God I was able to find it rather easily. With the ring off, the bearing and housing slipped off allowing the connector of the switch assembly to slide through the opening in the column housing. Reassembly with the replacement switch went well, and with my optimism raging, I even reinstalled the steering wheel before testing anything. Of course, the new switch didn’t work. Irrr. While the hazard switch activated blinking lights, the toggling portion for the right and left blinkers wouldn’t set the correct lights to blinking. My first check was to verify I hadn’t blown a fuse – all was good there. Next, after taking off the steering wheel and horn parts AGAIN, I grabbed the old assembly and plugged it in place of the replacement. Everything electrical worked again. I then began probing the wires on the old assembly to see where I needed power. After re-plugging in the replacement, I discovered there was no power to the wire that energized the blinker circuit. I ended up soldering a jumper wire from hazard’s hot lead to the blinker’s hot lead and that fixed everything. A few minutes later the steering wheel and horn were back in place and it was time to move on to the other pressing issue – Glinda’s dangling muffler strap. The strap is held in place by an eyebolt that’s looped through a hole in a bracket that bolts to the engine. Glinda’s bracket is rather rusty, but for the most part, solid. Sadly, the vibrating muffler caused the bracket to break at the hold. I drilled a new hole in the bracket and reinstalled the strap. I’m crossing my fingers this fix lasts longer than a few months.
Finally Lucy. Well, thankfully, she has been extremely undemanding. I’ve kept track of every tank of gas I’ve put in her since I put her on the road back in June of 2007 (yeah, I’m finding it difficult to believe she’s been my daily-driver for nearly four year). The first entry reflected an odometer reading of 69769, while the current odometer reading is over 102000. That’s over thirty-thousand miles! I feel so blessed to be able to drive a cool, old car that is so reliable. TYL!
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