Pullin’ Parts

Any afternoon pulling parts off of Corvairs is better than a few hours of employment, so I took last Friday afternoon off and spent it at the Corvair Ranch with Ken, a ‘vair good buddy of mine. I’d put together a list of bits and pieces I wanted to remove from PartsWagon and PartsCoupe. With Ken’s urging, for every part on the list we were able to unbolt, there was another part I just couldn’t leave behind. Three hours later we had the Suburban filled. Parts of note include PartsWagon’s rear hatch, engine cover, windshield, windshield trim, back seat, bumpers, the extremely fragile hatch covers, and a trailer hitch. The latter may come in handy if I do follow through with cool dream number two-hundred-thirty-one (a trailer made from a wagon’s rear half).

One item that really intrigued me, but which I was unable to remove was an aftermarket radio housing in PartsCoupe. In EMs, the radio is mounted in a separate sheetmetal enclosure that hangs under the center section of the dash. PartsCoupe’s radio was a period-correct Motorola AM/FM with a smaller display area than the stock GM of the time. To accommodate the size difference some company created a radio house that looked factory – it bolted to the dash and was painted. Not that I’d have a use for it, but it was unique and cool. Maybe next time I’ll try harder.

I spent a majority of Friday evening’s garage time unloading the Suburban moving all the parts into Wilma. Once empty, the truck got a thorough vacuuming.

With an hour or so left before bedtime, I moved on to YellowVert. Noone’s come forward wanting to buy her, so I’ve decided to part her out and the sooner the better. The first response to my revised post on the Corvair Center Forum asked for a second of the passenger side fender. The interested party is repairing some collision damage on an LM and needs some good, solid metal for the job. Since I don’t have a key to let me in the trunk, I removed the left front headlight bucket and unscrewed the two bolts holding the latch to the hood. Amongst the acorns and mouse-nest was, what appears to be, a new back window for a convertible top all rolled up in its original plastic packaging. I was more interested in the condition of the trunk, so I didn’t take it out to judge its condition. Could be a treasure.