Corvair fans out there?

Lager

Lager

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When I was stationed at Ft Eustas VA back in 1975 for schooling I bought a blue 1966 Corvair Monza from a guy rotating out for $400. What a fun car to drive with its 140 HP engine 4 speed manual trans and light weight. Drove that car every day with trips to PA and NY with friends to visit their family's on the weekends. Sold the car within days to another soldier 3 months later for the same $400 to another soldier just before I was sent off to Germany. What reminded me of that car was a news clip on MSN about the Corvair being so different then anything Chev and Ford had to offer.
 
I love corvairs. My dad had two. Btw if you know what you’re doing and know a machine shop you can make a few changes and grind a few things and really get some horsepower out of that engine without blowing it.

One of my dads he estimated to have about 300 hp off regular gas.

I bought a four door when I was about 17. It blew a jug and I tore the engine apart and then got called to boot camp early and never got it put back together. My dad did and sold it for me while I was gone.

So I didn’t get a chance to do some of the things he did like use the front fiberglass trunk as a cooler and drive it onto the beach. Lol.

One of these days I’d like to buy a spider (2 door convertible with a turbo).
 
My Mother had one in 1967. A four carb 140 HP BUT unfortunately for me with a Powerglide. It was and is a Porsche killer in the right configuration. Look back at old performance figures of the day and compare them. America's rear engine answer to Porsche. Unfortunately the consumers bought Nader's Bull Shiite.
 
Someone in the upstate of SC has one that looks like this.
e3d840624ebf4c77bfeebe9efbc42c28.jpg


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Lager said:
When I was stationed at Ft Eustas VA back in 1975 for schooling I bought a blue 1966 Corvair Monza from a guy rotating out for $400. What a fun car to drive with its 140 HP engine 4 speed manual trans and light weight. Drove that car every day with trips to PA and NY with friends to visit their family's on the weekends. Sold the car within days to another soldier 3 months later for the same $400 to another soldier just before I was sent off to Germany. What reminded me of that car was a news clip on MSN about the Corvair being so different then anything Chev and Ford had to offer.
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I'll make a wager that you wished you still had it.:D
 
BatteryOaksBilly said:
My Mother had one in 1967. A four carb 140 HP BUT unfortunately for me with a Powerglide. It was and is a Porsche killer in the right configuration. Look back at old performance figures of the day and compare them. America's rear engine answer to Porsche. Unfortunately the consumers bought Nader's Bull Shiite.
Click to expand...
Ralph Nader did have a point,, it wasn't a really safe ride when pushed hard.. Most cars when overdriven into a corner will understeer, meaning the front end slides outwards and the average driver can then jam on the brakes and get their groceries home intact. The Corvair would understeer very quickly and was quite fun if you knew when it was going to happen and kept your foot in it. It was yesterdays drift car and I had two corners that I used to instigate such hooligism in everyday on the way to school from my apt off base.
 
Qball said:
I'll make a wager that you wished you still had it.:D
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Yeeh, your wager would be correct. But, If you and I wished we kept or still had all our cars from the past? Our yards would be stacked with cars and wouldn't have any grass to cut( not like that's a bad thing) and our car insurance rates would be unaffordable..
 
Lager said:
Ralph Nader did have a point
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There used to be a comedian that had a line about Corvairs….Yeah so after the government made GM get everything fixed on the Corvair they then stopped making the ONLY car that we knew was perfectly safe.
 
Grits said:
.....and the came the Ford Pinto.

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Yeah who'd ever thought if you take a car and fill it with gas and then leave the cap off for a moment and a car Plows into the rear...it might catch on fire?
 
Hit any of them in the right spot and they'll leak like a sieve. I saw a mid 60's Ford pick up, the ones with the gas tank in the back of the cab, get hit one day. Gas started leaking put of that sucker.

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My first car was a 1960 Corvair - red. Loved driving it but my dad made me sell it, "unsafe" :(. In high school I learned you could be going downhill, turn off the ignition briefly and turn it back on to get a POW! explosion from unburned gases in the exhaust system - great fun if you did it next to someone. After a few of these demonstrations, I blew the muffler off. Went back to pick it up... OW! OW! HOT! The explosion also broke a piston ring, causing smoking. Scored the cylinder. Oh dear. But being air-cooled with individual cylinder barrels, the head could be removed, rings and individual cylinder replaced with the engine in situ and we're good to go :D.

Another little adventure with the Corvair involved the gasoline heater. Air-cooled engine, remember. So the heater burned gasoline from the fuel tank. Which was situated just above your feet. One winter day (in Kentucky) I'm driving along with the heater on and I hear WHUMP! WHUMP! little explosions under the (front) hood. Thinking this thing is gonna blow, I whipped the car over to the shoulder, jumped out, flung open the (front) hood and started ripping wires out. Whew! Disaster averted! So now everything was calm but for the remainder of the winter I had no heat. Well, I want to take girls out, I gotta have heat! I came up with the brilliant notion of placing a can of Sterno (lit) on an asbestos shingle on the floor of the car, with a clay flower pot placed over it to radiate the heat and protect the flame. What could possibly go wrong? And it did work fine for heat. But I had neglected to consider that a byproduct of combustion is H2O, which condensed heavily and instantly on the inside of all the windows. And my hasty removal of heater wiring had left me without a defroster... so I could be warm and not see... or see and be cold... and lonesome.

Later, on a curve on a country road, I was hanging the rear end out a bit too far, and the tip end of the rear bumper snagged the fender of an oncoming car in the other lane, making a neat horizontal slice. I lost the end of my bumper but no other damage. I got the hell outta there, but had some 'splainin' to do when I got home. That's when Daddy made me sell the Corvair :(
 
A boyfriend had 2, one with the 4 carbs....fantastic, beautiful cars.
 
Grits said:
.....and the came the Ford Pinto.

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Click to expand...
I had one when I was 21, red, which turned to pink after being in the sun a lot. Loved that little car!
 
My dad had a ton of 'em when I was a kid, including a couple of seriously built turbos. One of the guys in his car club had a super charged one he'd built into essentially a Trans Am/SCCA racer.

The old man's last Corvair was a '67 with a mid-mounted 375hp 327. It was the kit that included the fiberglass shell that covered the engine & had 2 bucket seats molded into it. This kit was supposed to make the car weigh 600lb less than stock (rear floor pan & all seats removed, so maybe?). 14 shades of primer & stupid fast.

In fact, my dad was such a Corvair loon, he built a Corvair powered trike, as well as a Corvair powered Formula Vee racer.
 
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Red Marley said:
My first car was a 1960 Corvair - red. Loved driving it but my dad made me sell it, "unsafe" :(. In high school I learned you could be going downhill, turn off the ignition briefly and turn it back on to get a POW! explosion from unburned gases in the exhaust system - great fun if you did it next to someone. After a few of these demonstrations, I blew the muffler off. Went back to pick it up... OW! OW! HOT! The explosion also broke a piston ring, causing smoking. Scored the cylinder. Oh dear. But being air-cooled with individual cylinder barrels, the head could be removed, rings and individual cylinder replaced with the engine in situ and we're good to go :D.

Another little adventure with the Corvair involved the gasoline heater. Air-cooled engine, remember. So the heater burned gasoline from the fuel tank. Which was situated just above your feet. One winter day (in Kentucky) I'm driving along with the heater on and I hear WHUMP! WHUMP! little explosions under the (front) hood. Thinking this thing is gonna blow, I whipped the car over to the shoulder, jumped out, flung open the (front) hood and started ripping wires out. Whew! Disaster averted! So now everything was calm but for the remainder of the winter I had no heat. Well, I want to take girls out, I gotta have heat! I came up with the brilliant notion of placing a can of Sterno (lit) on an asbestos shingle on the floor of the car, with a clay flower pot placed over it to radiate the heat and protect the flame. What could possibly go wrong? And it did work fine for heat. But I had neglected to consider that a byproduct of combustion is H2O, which condensed heavily and instantly on the inside of all the windows. And my hasty removal of heater wiring had left me without a defroster... so I could be warm and not see... or see and be cold... and lonesome.

Later, on a curve on a country road, I was hanging the rear end out a bit too far, and the tip end of the rear bumper snagged the fender of an oncoming car in the other lane, making a neat horizontal slice. I lost the end of my bumper but no other damage. I got the hell outta there, but had some 'splainin' to do when I got home. That's when Daddy made me sell the Corvair :(
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I had the Sterno climate control in a 1962 VW Beetle. My defroster was a folded up rag.
 
Lager said:
Yeeh, your wager would be correct. But, If you and I wished we kept or still had all our cars from the past? Our yards would be stacked with cars and wouldn't have any grass to cut( not like that's a bad thing) and our car insurance rates would be unaffordable..
Click to expand...


Very true.
 
On the no heat deal, I once had a truck with no heater. My wife was worried I would freeze to death in Teen and twenty degree weather on my commute. I solved the problem by turning on the AC. It was warmer than the cold cab.
 
Red Marley said:
My first car was a 1960 Corvair - red. Loved driving it but my dad made me sell it, "unsafe" :(. In high school I learned you could be going downhill, turn off the ignition briefly and turn it back on to get a POW! explosion from unburned gases in the exhaust system - great fun if you did it next to someone. After a few of these demonstrations, I blew the muffler off. Went back to pick it up... OW! OW! HOT! The explosion also broke a piston ring, causing smoking. Scored the cylinder. Oh dear. But being air-cooled with individual cylinder barrels, the head could be removed, rings and individual cylinder replaced with the engine in situ and we're good to go :D.

Another little adventure with the Corvair involved the gasoline heater. Air-cooled engine, remember. So the heater burned gasoline from the fuel tank. Which was situated just above your feet. One winter day (in Kentucky) I'm driving along with the heater on and I hear WHUMP! WHUMP! little explosions under the (front) hood. Thinking this thing is gonna blow, I whipped the car over to the shoulder, jumped out, flung open the (front) hood and started ripping wires out. Whew! Disaster averted! So now everything was calm but for the remainder of the winter I had no heat. Well, I want to take girls out, I gotta have heat! I came up with the brilliant notion of placing a can of Sterno (lit) on an asbestos shingle on the floor of the car, with a clay flower pot placed over it to radiate the heat and protect the flame. What could possibly go wrong? And it did work fine for heat. But I had neglected to consider that a byproduct of combustion is H2O, which condensed heavily and instantly on the inside of all the windows. And my hasty removal of heater wiring had left me without a defroster... so I could be warm and not see... or see and be cold... and lonesome.

Later, on a curve on a country road, I was hanging the rear end out a bit too far, and the tip end of the rear bumper snagged the fender of an oncoming car in the other lane, making a neat horizontal slice. I lost the end of my bumper but no other damage. I got the hell outta there, but had some 'splainin' to do when I got home. That's when Daddy made me sell the Corvair :(
Click to expand...
You sir, are a mad man !! How did you possibly stay alive to this age ?
 
This thread, when I first started it ? Thought, no one is going to respond and was I wrong.. This has turned into the most entertaining collection of memories from the most crazy people Ive ever met..
 
Crazy Carl said:
My dad had a ton of 'em when I was a kid, including a couple of seriously built turbos. One of the guys in his car club had a super charged one he'd built into essentially a Trans Am/SCCA racer.

The old man's last Corvair was a '67 with a mid-mounted 375hp 327. It was the kit that included the fiberglass shell that covered the engine & had 2 bucket seats molded into it. This kit was supposed to make the car weigh 600lb less than stock (rear floor pan & all seats removed, so maybe?). 14 shades of primer & stupid fast.

In fact, my dad was such a Corvair loon, he built a Corvair powered trike, as well as a Corvair powered Formula Vee racer.
Click to expand...


Just thought a pic or two might be in order.


DSC02367.JPG


DSC02369.JPG
 
I want to say there's one of these for sale between here and Pageland SC. It's been there for months.

Does anyone want me to check on it? I could get contact info, if someone was interested.
 
I used to have a buddy that built a bunch of convertibles with SBC drivetrains. Those little bastards would fly.
 
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