A Sad ‘Vair Affair

It wasn’t officially a ‘vair affair, but last Saturday’s Celebration of Life for the recently deceased Rich Coburn brought together nearly a dozen Corvair faithful. To us ‘vair folk he was a great guy, a good friend, a willing participant in club events, and an avid collector of many things Corvair. Not surprisingly he will be missed by many as attested to by the constant flow of well-wisher into and out of a crowded house.

As I’d mentioned about a month ago, he had taken me up on my offer to help by asking me to head up the effort to find new homes for all his Corvair items not earmarked for use by his son, Vince. The first item up for relocation is a LM Corsa 2-door hardtop (140 HP engine with 4-speed transmission). Tomorrow evening I’ll stop by their house, take some photos and jot down notes on the condition of the body, interior, and drivetrain. Per his wishes, the car will be offered first to the local CORSA members. If there’s no interest, I’ll widen the advertising area.

Onto fleet news. Ringo’s recent repair to staunch the ATF leak seems to be holding. Ariel was at the house yesterday and when she left, there was no telltale puddle.

I’m way behind on my Glinda reports since, even though I crossed a slew of items off her to-do list, there was and is still plenty left. Last Friday night I went leak hunting. I discovered an interesting path using the garden hose and dribbling water into and around the fresh air grill at the base of the windshield. The water would trickle onto the surface just under the trunk lid, then run into the weatherstrip groove, and then though a few small rust holes where it traveled down the inside wall of the trunk until it came to the brake line interface where it oozed through and finally dripped onto the carpet. Some silicone RTV plugged those holes, and I figured it fixed. Next I backed her up onto the ramps and removed her transmission pan watching a few quarts of not-so-red-not-so-nice ATF stream into a drain pan. I thoroughly cleaned the mating surfaces of pan and tranny before applying very thin coat of RTV to the pan’s flange surface and laying down the new gasket. A thin coat of plain grease went down on the gaskets exposed surface, and then the pan was bolted back in place. I let the RTV cure overnight before topping off the tranny with about a gallon of nice, new fluid. This time, the dipstick shows red instead of brown, but I’m not sure how long that’ll last.

That evening I drove her Rich’s celebration, during which the skies opened and gully washer passed through the area. Sadly, after a mad dash through the showers, I discovered I hadn’t really made much difference in the under-dash puddling. Irr. So, last night I was leak hunting again. It wasn’t until I ran water down the windshield that drippage inside the car occurred. I’m going to get some clear silicone and run a bead along the trim to body seam and another one along the glass to trim seam. Hopefully, I can get enough in to fix the problem. If not, I get to re-set the windshield.

Finally, last night I went tire rustling though my collection. I wanted to find four decent stock-size tires to have mounted on Glinda’s stock, turquoise painted, steel wheels. I came up with four that were part of the buy I made some months back from a used tire store. I then removed the one Glinda wheel that was holding Luna up (I replaced it with a jackstand so she’s not sitting on the ground), so I’ve got all four of Glinda’s wheels ready to get new rubber.

Ringo Leaving His Mark

When I returned from the convention, I was greeted by a large puddle emanating from Ringo’s rear end. My initial reaction was, since he had sat facing downhill, his previously patched shifter cable was failing even worse than before. It took about a quart of transmission fluid to top off the reservoir. I moved him so he was now parked facing uphill. The next day, however, there was another puddle. Irrrr. Wednesday evening I backed him up onto the ramps to investigate the leak source and saw fluid coming from the patch on the cable, but also from the front of the tranny near the pan-to-housing joint. I tightened all the bolts holding the pan on since they were barely tight. Then, I placed a drain pan underneath and left it for the night. Last night, I found a significant amount of fluid in the drain pan. I investigated more thoroughly and discovered the bolts I could reach at the front of the transmission (the lower front-facing ones that retain the front pump cover) were loose. Now, I am positive I torqued these bolts to the factory specs when I rebuilt this transmission. I guess I should’ve put some thread-locker on them. Fortunately, I could get a socket on these three bolts, so I snugged them down and crossed my fingers. When I checked for leaks an hour or so later, the cardboard I’d placed under the transaxle was dry. Now, either I staunched the flow or there wasn’t any fluid left in the reservoir. I’ll check again this evening and will, regardless, pull him out of the garage and park him on the street over a dry piece of asphalt.

I only bought one part while wandering the aisles of Clark’s setup at the convention. Ariel had been complaining that the current cracked driver's armrest pad was leaving dark stains on her elbow, so I bought a new to the tune of twenty-six dollars. Once installed I’m sure it’s gonna’ be one of those replace-one-interior-part-and-everything-else-looks-even-crappier-so-I’ve-got-to-replace-everything kind of thing. Well, that’ll just be one of those things we’ll need to live with although I know Ariel would also REALLY appreciate a new driver’s seat so she’s not sitting with her butt almost touching the floor having to peer through the steering wheel.

Last evening I also gave Glinda some attention. I swapped out the racing seat for her front bench. It took some fiddling to get the screws to go cleanly through the holes in the carpet and get started in the nuts welded to the floor, but I was finally successful. The seatbelts were also reinstalled. Now, for the first time in a VERY long time, Glinda was able to be pressed into daily-driver duty and did so this morning. Sadly, the bogging when flooring the go pedal still exists, and now the tranny is low on fluid so I've got to take it easy on the turns. I’ve left the awesome taped-on 2 in place because I’m sure it makes her faster.

Rally Elaborated

I thought it would be fun to share the directions we followed while winning our class in the rally. I love typing the word “winning.” I don’t do it very often, so I’ve never tired of it. But, I digress. The following images are scans of the documents handed to us the day of the rally – the definitions were provided at the participant meeting, while the route instructions were in the envelope handed to us as we headed out from the host hotel parking lot. Click on each image to go to a legible, enlarged version.

CORSA Convention 2013 Photos

Click on any of the photos or titles to view a set of photos on Flickr
Gingerman Raceway


Concours


Rally


Autocross

Convention – Final Update

I’m back home again. Not sure how many miles I put on my truck, but I’m thinking it was nearly three thousand. The two events I participated in after attending the Concours (see previous posting) were the Rally and the Autocross.

The day of the rally, Thursday, started VERY early for Ariel, Victoria, and I with a 5:30 AM alarm. The schedule I had downloaded a couple weeks back said we needed to arrive at the host hotel by 7, so we left my sister's house at 6, and were right on time for the rally and econo-run participant’s meeting - only the meeting had been moved to 8. Arghh – should’ve looked at all the contents of my registration package. We found a Burger King and breakfast killed the hour. The first thing we found out once the meeting commenced was what kind of rally it would be. Last year’s was a Gimmick Rally with participants answering questions about sights along the prescribed route (the most right answers wins), while this year’s was a Continental Rally with only mileage for the three legs determining your score (don’t make any wrong turns and correct your mileage for the three legs based on the initial calibration leg). Because we were a team of three, we were assigned to the Touring group with the quip that, having extra people, is typically more harm than help when you’re trying to follow the route instructions. After a few questions were answered, we were sent to our cars to line up for the beginning.

With Ariel and Victoria directing, spotting street signs, and recording mileage readings we nailed it! We came close to missing a turn once, but I slammed on the brakes and we were able to stay on course. We saw a lot of lily-pad filled ponds, drove through cool, shady woods, and passed by LOTS of cornfields before arriving at the end of the event – a restaurant. I pulled up the calculator app in my phone and we corrected the miles for each leg using our calculated calibration value and turned in the paperwork. Since it was too early to eat, we headed back to my sister’s home via a stop at a Qdoba’s.

Click here to view a set of photos from the retaurant parking lot at the end of the rally.

That evening I double-checked the latest schedule and verified the autocross racer’s meeting was set for 7 the next morning, so I hitched Glinda back up to the truck in preparation for another early morning departure. I bid my good-byes that night before turning in early.

The next morning, I threw the last of my luggage in the bed of the truck and drove the 45 minutes to US 131 Raceway. I arrived and unhitched Glinda setting up next to a racer name Phil from, appropriately, Philadelphia. He was unloading a beautiful yellow Corsa off his car trailer. I had a nice chat with him and his wife while we prepared for the day’s event. Around 7:15, I started wondering why no one seemed interested in a driver’s meeting, so I asked Phil who responded that it had been moved to 8:30 with the tech inspection to occur the hour before the meeting. Irr. Then I was told by one of the tech inspectors that I didn’t need to be inspected since Glinda already had her green sticker of approval from Monday’s event. Double Irr. I could’ve had ninety more minutes of sleep if only I’d known. Oh well, that’s the price you pay for not staying at or near the host hotel.

The driver’s meeting started late, so I had plenty of time to walk the course and attempt to memorize all the twists and turns defined by the myriad of orange cones. I eventually found out I would be running in the last group of the day, meaning I probably couldn’t start my ten plus hour drive to Blacksburg until at least 4 PM. It was going to be a painfully long day. As soon as the meeting ended, the announcement went out for the first group to go get their cars and drive them over to the staging area. I immediately hunted down the event organizer and pleaded for him to let me into this group. After explaining the long drive I had ahead of me, he graciously allowed me to join the early group.

My three runs were nothing special (other than being an absolute blast to drive) – I’d just hoped to go faster each time around. The second run I missed a gate (it was one you had to pass through both entering and exiting a straight/hairpin/straight combination and I forgot to go through it as I left that portion) so my time didn’t count. My two usable times were (if memory serves) 97 and then 95 seconds. The fast time of the day was set by a racecar at 68 seconds. Glinda still had a bog whenever I floored the accelerator and I just left the transmission shifter in Drive the whole time, so both of those negatively affected my speed. The final results for all the cars haven’t been posted at the time of this writing.

Click here to view a set of the photos I took at the Autocross.

The final results for the rally, however, just came out, and …. wait for it …... WE WON OUR CLASS! I still get goose-bumps just typing it. Our final score was .05 miles from perfect. The second place team was only .02 miles behind us.

By the way, I promise I'll put pictures up tonight and share the link.

Convention Update - Concours

Tuesday was an off day for me so I spent it visiting the tourist sites of Holland,MI (my mom's birthplace) with my sister and part of her family.

Yesterday was Concours day and it was imperative the I take that in in the morning before the oven that is Kalamazoo reached broiling temperature. We were somewhat successful. I snapped quite a few photos with the camera, but currently have no way to get them onto the web - I'll do it once I'm back home. The photos here were taken of the camera's display. Anyway, the car's were, as expected, amazing.
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My Day at Gingerman Raceway

I arrived at the track around 7:30, unhitched the tow-bar and drove over to get in line for tech inspection. After re-securing the battery, the green dot of passing was applied to the top corner of my car's windshield. The driver's meeting went quickly, but thoroughly, and the first group (racers) were an the track on-time at 9.

I was in the third (last) group (stock and IS), so my three 20 minute practice sessions were at 40 past the hour. This was the first time on the track for my '68 (110/PG). I'd just finished up a total rebuild of the suspension and the alignment was done the day before departing for MI. Also, my only track experiences had been behind the wheel of an EM. Needless to say, driving a lowered,stiffened LM with quick-steer arms is a tremendously different experience. I could drive so much deeper into corners and felt like I was carrying far more speed than I could have in my '63. I never once felt like the rear was going to come around and the turn-in response was immediate.

During the lunch brake Seth led a group of cars for a few taste-of-the-track laps. Two of my daughters are with me this week, and, after a couple laps, I offered to let them drive. Only the 19 year old was willing, so we exited the track, and she and I traded places. She had an entirely too good of a time. I'm afraid she's going to be asking for a helmet for her next birthday.

The time trials started soon after with the groups lined up in the same fast to slow order. One of the first cars to go out sadly broke it's engine. I only got snippets of the story, so hopefully someone can fill in the details. From what I could tell, there were no fluids dropped on the track, so runs started again fairly quickly. Before I knew it I was gridded and then sent out for my four laps (warmup, 2 timed, cool down). My first hot lap went smoothly and I felt good. I pushed things a little harder on the second and ended up overcooking it a little going into the back hairpin. Had I been in my early, this would have been disastrous, but in the late I was able to wrestle the car around the corner. Missing the turn-in point killed me for entering the fastest stretch on the track.

I hung around for award's presentation. I missed out on the Fast and Shiftless award for cars with automatic trannies with a 140 powered LM's 2:19 beating my 2:20. For comparison the fast time of the day was 1:51.

it was a fantastic way to start my convention experience.

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--
Tom in Baltimore
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