Last night I was out in the garage prepping the family bikes for tomorrow morning’s ride. When that bit of mechanicry was done, I moved on to a ‘vair-related activity. I had borrowed a buddy at work’s set of micrometers to find out the condition of the journal diameters on the 140 HP engine’s crankshaft. As my amateur fingers manipulated the measurement tool, I came up with values I jotted down as shown above. The pertinent excerpt from the specification pages of the ’65 shop manual is included for comparison.
Bottom line is I’m comfortable using the crank as-is with stock-sized bearings – both mains and rods. I’ll give Jeff at the Corvair Ranch a call and see if he’s got some main bearings in stock to send me. I already owe him for a recently delivered and installed speedometer cable for Glinda, may as well owe him a little more. Speaking of which, I need to first check Glinda’s front suspension for more loose balljoints in the front and also determine what’s caused the change in the left rear wheel’s camber.
When I was changing the aforementioned speedo cable, I discovered the right lower balljoint has some play in it. When I rebuilt this front end, I felt that a couple of the joints were questionable, but lacking time and money, I plowed ahead with the rebuild and the car seemed fine once everything was bolted together and greased. Now, not so much.
Regarding the rear camber, I noticed the other day that one rear wheel appeared to be slightly more splayed than the other. During the recent rebuild, I had to cut through the large bolts that retain the outer end of each strut rod. This damaged the special shoulder washers that center the bolt in the bore of the rod’s bushing tube. I thought there was enough shoulder left for these washer to do their job, but I may have been too optimistic. A quick look and I’ll know whether or not I need to add “used special washers” to my Corvair Ranch shopping list.
As I was cleaning out my can (it’s my repository of miscellaneous paperwork like bills I want to forget about, prescriptions for drugs I should take, etc.) this morning, I came across the notes I scribbled down while being schooled by Dave Edsinger on an LM street suspension setup that would work for a daily-driver. Before I lose any of this excellent information, I decided I’d put it down here for my memoirs and anyone else’s edification.
- - Front strut (reaction) rod modification: cut off roughly 1” from the length of the inner sleeve to give more compression of the bushings and, thus, higher stiffness and less movement under braking.
- Front springs: Cut-down HD (heavy-duty) Corvair springs. (note: I cut off one coil, but I’m thinking about taking off another half coil, but only after I move the battery from the rear to the trunk and look at Glinda’s stance – needs to be level or slightly nose-down).
- Rear springs: 250 pound-per-inch Chevelle spring from a stock car supplier. (note: I cut off a coil from a couple HD Corvair springs, so the racing ones may need to be cut down to get the same height as my current set up - they will certainly be stiffer)
- Camber setup: ¾ to 1 degree both front and rear
- Toe-in setup: 1/16th inch front and rear
- Castor setup: 5 degrees
- For correct vintage racing events, Dave runs 205/60-13 slicks. He loves this size and someday, if I’m in the right place at the right time, he might pass on some of his used ones my way. I can’t begin to imagine how cool that would be – Glinda shod with slicks for our next track day.
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