Hit the Road Jack

I awoke today to a misty morning. Regardless, I wanted to do all I could to bring a decently performing Corvair to tomorrow’s track event, so I backed Glinda up to the open garage door and pulled all six spark plugs from the engine. They were all black with soot. I’m going to attribute this condition to the forty or so miles I drove before swapping out the Ignitor II. I cleaned all the plugs and checked gaps before reinstalling. I’m still hoping I don't need to swap carbs and plugs Saturday at the track.

With the drizzle dampening only my grungies, I continued to gather and pack tools, parts, and supplies as I crossed off items on my checklist. The truck-bed's contents now includes three nearly full five gallon jugs of 93 octane, two spare tires (borrowed from Luna), a bulging bag of tools, a couple milk crates filled with assorted parts and fluids, jack and jackstands, and a couple large pieces of cardboard. Most of these items I pray will stay in the bed for the entire weekend.

I attached Glinda to the tow-bar and the tow-bar to the truck’s hitch before pulling out onto the road. Thanks to the text from the lovely Loriann I forgot the sunscreen I’d put on the dining room table. I pray that’s all I’ve forgot.

A Lot and a Little

There’s been a lot going on fleet-wise, but only a little to show for it. The “lot” that’s been going on includes a couple of just-say-no’s, a that’s-so-awesome, and one thank-you-very-much that’s led to quite a bit of shopping and dreaming.



The first just-say-no was my passing on the V8 ‘vair. While the seller is offering an exciting beast of a Corvair for a VERY fair forty-nine hundred dollars, the situation just isn’t right for me to pull the trigger. Even though replacing the built 302 Chevy smallblock that currently resides in its back seat for something tamer would net me a couple grand and selling Glinda should get me a couple more, there’s just too much time and money that would be tied up in the deal – there’s that two parts of that dreaded TTT again. This car, by the way, is still available. In addition to the JPEG, you can click here to see a bunch of photos that were taken a couple years back by the car's builder before Earl (the seller) purchased the car and did a lot of finishing work. Earl can be reached at 410-705-8823 or earlbirdman@yahoo.com.

I still struggle with all the time and money I’m putting into Glinda, a car that I’ll always have to be doing rust repair on. It would be such a time-saver to have a solid, rust-free LM coupe as my track car/street car. That brings me to my second just-say-no. I was using the SearchTempest website to torment myself this morning and came across a listing for a 65 corvair 140 prodject(sic) with no price. Not one to ever pass on a misspelled Corvair ad, I clicked on the link and was rewarded with a number of photos of a very solid-looking primer gray coupe with its rear-end sitting high in its drivetrain-less-ness.

I shot the seller an e-mail asking about the condition and what he (or she) was asking for this prospective replacement to the rusty Glinda. I received a reply rather quickly telling me the car’s as solid as the jpegs show. The seller told me to, “Give offer if u want to come see it.” The response is still in my inbox, but even if I could get the car for a few hundred dollars (seller says, “need to get this car gone”), and even though I could easily borrow a trailer and make the roundtrip to Youngstown, OH for about $150, and even though this car’s already got all the manual shift and clutch parts in place, and even though I’ve though I’ve got a tranny and diff that’ll bolt right in, I don’t have a running engine. Because of that I haven’t really given it much more thought (yeah, right). Here are the photos that were in the ad.



The that’s-so-awesome occurred last evening when I received a photo-text from the guy that bought Rich’s Corsa. He’s in the final stages of reassembling the car after its new paintjob is finally finished. It is one really cool car now. It’s wonderful to see that he’s gotten so excited about it, and I really appreciate the frequent updates he sends me.

That brings me to my thank-you-very-much. The other day I got a phone call from my folks. My generous dad started the conversation by telling me he’d just sent a donation to the Tom Hughes Racing Fund (I’m calling it THRaF). He’d been reading between the lines of one of my Facebook postings, and decided I needed a fund and he needed to be the first contributor. Since finding his $500 check in my mail a couple days later, I’ve made a list of luxuries I’m going to get with the fund:
- Flamethrower Coil - Mufflers - Shifter Boot - Bucket Seats - Throttle Linkage Kit - Tunnel Pivot

It Ain’t Easy Selling Parts

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I'm working with the family of a friend and Corvair-nut that recently passed away to find new homes for the vast collection of 'vair stuff he'd collected over many years. I spent last Saturday morning with Rich's hard-working son, Vince, clearing out some room in the garage, moving big items to allow access to everything, and attempting to catalog everything that will be available for sale. The photos I took can be found on this flickr set:

I've finalized the sale date (this coming Sunday noon to 4) and sent out invitations along with a 185-item price sheet. I thought I'd been clear in my e-mails that you had to attend with cash to buy parts, but I'm still getting replies with people placing orders and asking about shipping. Oh well – as I like to say, "The world is full of people." Regardless, it looks like there'll be a pretty good turnout, and the weather's supposed to be nice (TYL).

I've struggled to price the items as attractively as possible to sell as much as possible and still be fair to Rich's family. When Rich asked me to help, he indicated he felt a third-off pricing would be good. For less desirable parts, I've gone with that using Clark's catalog prices as a guide, but for the hard-to-find, really cool stuff (of which there are many), I've bumped that percentage up to fifty. I'm sure many will end up finding exceptional deals, including me. In addition to the wonderful feeling I'm getting from helping out Rich's family, I'm getting the benefit of selecting the parts I want before anyone else. It has been VERY, VERY hard to restrain myself. There are, as I mentioned before, some really cool stuff in Rich's stash that I would love to have. And then there are many parts that Mikhaila and I will need for TwoTone's roadification, as well as many parts I'll need when building the 140 HP engine for Glinda. I'll be at their place again Saturday morning to make my final choices and clear them out of the way.

Now, back to what's happening in my garage. TwoTone got some attention last Sunday afternoon.  Mikhaila and I finished assembling our father-daughter pair of carburetors. We then moved on to the recently removed gas tank. After shaking out what seemed like a tank-full of dusty, brown, flaky chunks of stinking yuck, we attacked the inside using the flattish end of a long pry bar scraping off as much of the ancient gasoline residue from the inner walls as possible. More shaking with the two-inch drain hole facing down resulted in a sizable addition to the yuck pile. Amazingly, some of the residue was still gooey. I speculated the car was parked back in the early-80s with a full tank of gas.

With the tank's inside nearly empty, Mikhaila turned her attention to its exterior. A wire wheel inserted into my drill proved to be the right tool for her to remove all the loose rust. Thankfully there wasn't much, so she was able to move on brushing on a coat of Rusty Metal Primer before telling me she was too tired to continue. I'm not pushing things with her, hoping to build old car endurance over time.

After she headed inside to detoxify herself, I went around to the all the front brake fittings soaking each in the 50/50 acetone/ATF solution in preparation of the next big project – brake renew. We've got the soft parts (cylinder rebuild kits, hoses) and the tubing, brake pads, and hardware all look to be in terrific shape, so we're just a master cylinder away from having everything necessary to make TwoTone stop on a dime.

Still Plenty Going On

With the responsibility of helping Rich’s family get rid of a good portion of his collection of cars and parts, it seems as if the fleet has grown again. Saturday morning I met a man who drove up from Richmond to consider buying Rich’s Corsa. He very carefully looked over the entire car before we even started up (good for him). He commented on how wonderful the photo montage I put up on Flickr was – all the areas of concern were included and he wasn’t surprised by anything he saw now that he was looking at the actual car. He did, however, point out some bubbled pain on the top front edge of the dash – right under surface rust at the base of the windshield – and confessed his concern for the condition of the metal in the channel. We then fired up the engine and it settled into a nice, low idle. After a few minutes of listening and blipping the throttle, we took it out for a test drive. What a BLAST! I’d never driven a LM with a manual transmission, nor had I ever driven a 140-powered ‘vair. I could really get used to it though. The shifter in this car has very short and positive throws – very different from Lucy’s EM shifter. And the power - oh my goodness! 'Nuff said.

I shared with Vince how badly I wanted to buy his dad’s car, but that I needed to sell my ’68 first. I went on to tell him that I’ve had some e-mail conversation with a gentleman in MD looking for a Corvair for his wife who’s supposed to be coming up to look at both the Corsa and my ’68 sometime next week. Depending on what he does, I’ll decide what I’ll do next. If he doesn't buy either, I may put the Corsa on eBay, or I may put Glinda on eBay. I just don’t know.

The other vehicle I’m helping to sell is a cool dune buggy kit. It’s an Action Roadster that Rich picked up a while ago and has since sat in his garage. I’ll put it on Craigslist next week and hope a buyer finds it.

On the home front, work continues on TwoTone. I just placed an order with Clark’s for parts that will start the overhaul of that car’s brake system. Soon to arrive will be brake hoses for front and rear as well as wheel cylinder rebuild kits. In the meantime, Mikhaila and I have been continuing our carburetor work. All the parts have finished their bath in carb cleaner and are laid out on the workbench with the two rebuild kits awaiting reassembly.