Legends of the Engine Compartment

Part 1

August 14, 2002

Hello there.

I worked on my Corvair last night and had such a good time that I decided I would share with you. For those who are married, you know how it is. Sometimes your wife has a question she wants you to answer, and sometimes she just wants to talk. This would be the latter scenario.

For starters, we didn't do anything amazing like install a new Clark's flux capacitor with acid reflux backdraft (C12345). The engine is still out getting in touch with itself after having been disassembled and shipped around the country. Right now the project is cleaning up and painting the engine compartment, a thankless task. My oldest son Jake and my buddy Jeff were out helping sand and scrape.

Here's a picture of Jeff:

Here's a picture of Jeff that he wouldn't mind me posting on the Internet:

Someone at sometime used remarkable amounts of undercoating on this car. I fluctuate between cursing and thanking that person, because everything is gooky but everything is also remarkably rust free. However, I have decided that I don't particularly care to look at it in my engine bay, so there Jeff and I were, crammed in the engine used to be, two motorheads where the cylinder heads belong, wiping on lacquer thinner and thinking that these fumes can't be terribly good for us. After awhile ya get pretty loopey, ya know....

We are painting the sheet metal with low-gloss black engine paint from spray bombs we bought at Advanced Auto (sorry, Hank). It isn't going to be an exact match for the ink black powdercoat on the shroud but that's life. I am painting everything black, including the plenum interior at the front of the engine bay. I try to keep things basically stock, but I have finally adjusted to the fact that I will never compete in concours in the factory stock restored class (heck, who knows if this thing will ever move again under its own power?) and there is some freedom in that decision. I still want to keep things basically the way the factory did it, however, because I like the cars as they were originally.

Some of the seam filler was inadvertently removed, so now I have to locate a suitable replacement material. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

I have this fantasy that I could have the car complete for the DACC homecoming, but I haven't talked to the guy who is assembling my engine. If my previous experience is anything to go by, I should be aiming for next year's homecoming.

More updates as work progresses, and I promise better pictures next time.

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Back to Prologue.

On to Part 2.

All images and text copyright Norman C. Witte 2002.