For the past few months, a leaky windshield seal has kept the Corvair in the garage. But that’s not the only reason it’s been in hiding. The biggest problem is that I have not been able to keep it running. Even after installing two rebuilt carburetors and timing the carbs, the car would not run correctly. Bob St. John (a friend from church) and I got the linkage worked out and timed the car until it purred like a kitten. But the next day, it died two miles from the house and had to be towed home. So, I parked it in the garage hoping to find a good “old school” mechanic who could help me out. But who still knows how to work on a Corvair?
I thought I had found the answer when an instructor at Ohio Technical College agreed to make the tune-up a class project. Kris Brickman, the dealership’s picture taker, is currently taking classes at Ohio Technical College and arranged everything. You can imagine how excited I became about this. The school would provide the labor and any parts would be my responsibility. That sounded like a good deal especially as I already had a set of points from NAPA, a choke coil, and the carb sync tool. But as I was making arrangements to transport the car to downtown Cleveland, the instructor took a different job thus ending the possibility.
As I considered these things, I found a set of five Corvair wheels and almost new tires on the local Craigslist site. For only $150, the car no longer has dry rotted rear tires. But I also found that two of the wheels were missing a lug nut. That led me to NAPA in Painesville where I found out about Bertone’s 76 gas station. “Zeke” (NAPA) told me that Mike Bertone was an old school mechanic who could handle the Corvair. So, after a short conversation at the gas station, the car is scheduled to be worked on Friday morning. They expect to have it over the weekend and be finished (here’s hoping) on Monday. Maybe I’ll be able to drive the car before the snow flies afterall!
Hi! Hmm, just noticed you posted this last week. Is the car running now?
With respect to mechanics, you might also consider taking the ‘Vair to an aircooled VW specialist, I think theres is one in Euclid that specializes by the name of Euclid Foreign. No affiliated, just an idea unless someone knows a good Tatra 613 mechanic around here 😀 .
You might also get some good guidance from members of one of the forums mentioned on corvair.org
Regarding the break-down, I presume you double checked the bits you worked on to ensure nothing was loose or missing, and that you checked for spark and fuel? My guess would be fuel filter if the car has been sitting, but it shouldn’t be too hard to isolate anyway.
Perhaps this would make for an entertaining call to public radios’ “Car Talk”? Good Luck, hope to see the car on Mentor Ave soon.
Just got it back last night. I drove the car to work today (about 8 miles) and it did fairly well. It runs pretty well with new plugs, points, choke coil, exhaust manifold gaskets, timing, etc. With the exhaust being so quiet, I now hear a noise when the clutch is released. If I depress the pedal a small amount, the sound goes away. It is not noticeable when accelerating but the sound returns when I take my foot off the accelerator. We’ll see how thing progress.