One Daily-Driver Corvair

There’s been a lot of snow this winter, thus a lot of salt, and since I’m sick of fixing rust, I’ve parked Glinda except for the occasional jaunt to the store. That means Ringo is the only consistently driven member of the fleet.

Until Friday he’d been behaving, but that day he had a failure that, while not fatal, was certainly inconvenient. Ariel had just driven him to her job, and after climbing from behind the wheel, she went to close his door, and it jammed about halfway shut. She called me and explained her plight – it wouldn’t be prudent to park a car in a mall parking lot with its door seriously ajar. I was in line at Taco Bell at the time, but told her I was on my way. While I was en route, she fiddled with the door until she got it to close enough to catch the first latch. Thanks to California Corvair Parts for the photo.



When I arrived, twenty minutes later, I opened the door and discovered a pin had fallen out (see photo). One of the small linkage pieces was jammed against the door frame by the now-unfettered spring. Not having come prepared with any tools, I went searching for something suitable to pop the spring out. Ringo’s glovebox contained a Phillips screwdriver, while the lovely Loriann’s daily-driver (we swapped vehicles for the day), provided Chrysler’s equivalent of a lug wrench. With them, I was able to pry out the spring without having it take flight into any body part. Once the spring was out of the way, I carefully aligned the two linkages and closed the door tightly. Until repaired properly, Ariel had to use the passenger door for ingress and egress.

Yesterday, I rolled TwoTone out into the driveway just as it was beginning to rain (of course) and quickly threw a tarp over her and tied it in place. I then drove Ringo into the garage and tried to replace the missing pin. Sadly, I couldn’t find a pin of proper diameter, nor could I find a locknut that would allow me to use a bolt/washer/nut solution, but I did find a pin from an old-house hinge that, while smaller around than desired, will do the job until I get a high-strength bolt with locknut from the hardware store.

With Ringo ready for Ariel’s retrieval, I put Glinda in the garage. My hope is to get to checking the fuel pressure with the gauge setup that recently arrived from Amazon.com.