'66 Sprint Convertible resto aka "my first car/first Corvair"

[Project65]

You’ve done a great job so far Craig! That’s a great story. Keep posting lots of photos. I’m putting mine back together as well and believe I can learn a lot from watching your progress. I also bought Rex’s rear-end tool and still have it in my car. Works great! Jeff at the Ranch pointed me to Rex. I’m hoping to tackle the rear suspension soon.

[RexJohnson]

I will just say thank you both for the kind words about my tool. Yes, Jeff at the Ranch is a great guy.

[cnicol]

Thank all of you for your comments. It really makes it fun to post when there are comments.

It has been a fun weekend. Not a ton of time, about two hours on Saturday and maybe six Sunday.

I've been working on pulleys. The column-mounted pulley and bracket got the evapo-rust, glass-bead, and dull silver paint so it's ready to install. I'm considering repainting to satin black. Original was bare steel.What do you think?

The undercar pulleys are presenting issues. When the axle bolt is tightened, the smaller pulley locks in place. It seems it isn't getting all the way onto the car-mounted stub-hub; probably a build up of epoxy primer.

I'm going nuts trying to find the pieces for the rear lower strut rods. Missing are four pretty good sized steel bushings and eight "top-hat" washers. They have to be somewhere but I've probably put something between one and two hours into looking for them. Move on to something else I guess.

Rear control arms, when swung up, hold the spring, bump stop bracket, and rubber cushion in place. Without something to hold the control arm, it just swings down and spring etc. falls out. DAMHIK. So, I lowered the car to floor jack range and jacked up the control arm, which compressed the spring a bit. Installation of the shock absorber holds up the control arm so it all stays together. The whole process would be easier with three hands.

The final project for the weekend: Perimeter seal.
I've been holding onto an NOS perimeter seal for decades; finally a worthy project!

Also, I refurbished enough of the '66-'69 1/4" head, tall "top hat" screws to go all the way around the perimeter. For those that haven't seen them, they make this job 1000x easier compared to "normal" 1965 style short head screws.

I've done this job before with the car on the ground and engine in place. Definitely NOT fun. I figured with the car halfway up and me standing on the ground, head and shoulders in the engine compartment, it would be easier. While it was easier, the job was still quite difficult and took hours.

You install all the straight segments first. The corner pieces come later. The magic was to get one short section across the front to defy gravity. After than it's just a long stretch of fiddly work.

That's all for now. Thanks for watching!

[toms73novass]

At least staples weren't involved!

Haven't messed with my 65 parameter seal yet, good to see you attach the seal first instead of the reverse.

[cnicol]

@Tom: Staples! Ha! Thank goodness no.

Onto today's progress. Steve Morton, Morton's Classic Garage (Corvair Parts and Service) to the rescue! I've been hung-up on installing the gas tank for a week and a day but today was the day because Steve sent the snap ring I needed!

Apologize in advance: For some reason all of today's thumbnail images are sideways. Clicking on the image straightens that out. Anyone know why?

Steve sent me the missing steering-coupling snap-ring so I could put the steering coupling together and put the steering box in place. Yay!

Once I got the steering box in place, I could install the gas tank... Man those hoses are a bear!

And with the tank in place, I could install the suspension. :-)

Tomorrow, I'll torque and cotter all the steering joints, install the idler arm and sway bar. I still have zero installed front brake parts and no front bumper so there's plenty to do before the "windshield forward" part of the car is "done" but boy it was a big day.

[doug6423]

Looking really good!! I noticed a Roger Parent pulley.

[cnicol]

You are correct, Doug. Roger Parent clutch pulley. Good eye!

I mentioned that I had been holding onto my NOS perimeter seal for several decades. True, but little did I know...

John Engelhart was one of the first people I met in the Corvair Club ca 1973, (South Coast Corsa, L.A.). John and I became friends and remained friends until his passing about five years ago. John bought a lot of new Corvair parts, many hundreds of Corvair parts. When he got out of Corvairs in the '90s, I sold most of them to Lon Wall but retained a few for my own use. The perimeter seal I just installed was one of them. I was excited and sad to see my friend John's name on the special order tag. Jeez, we sat on this part for almost 50 years!!!

In other news, I installed new Sprint/Aeon rubber springs on the front shocks. The OG ones were in bad shape, I was lucky to find new ones. While this is a "woo-hoo" Sprint part, I can't see much advantage over the stock rubber part that usually goes in the same location. A softer landing rather than a hard bump-stop maybe?

The steering damper is another Sprint goodie. Like everything else in this car, it was covered in dirt and rusty. I don't know what kind of Texas dirt road the PO lived on, but it was not kind to any part of the car. Having said that, half an hour later it looked pretty good. It still works fine and there are no leaks. Tomorrow I'll paint it the OG dark grey.

What really made my day was the damper's date code: 8/66! This is almost the same date as the shock absorbers. The matching dates puts the likely Sprint conversion date in late Fall 1966.
First Picture: Steering damper date code 8/66

Next Pictures: Front and rear Koni shock absorber date codes:

All in all, a fine day!

[cnicol]

Time for an update!
I've been chipping away at the project around 2-3 hours everyday for the last week. Nothing real shall we say, "photogenic" but progress nonetheless.

The steering damper is installed. Not too hard once I figured out the clamp went on the relay rod not the steering arm.

I found a really fun way to absorb at the best part of two hours: Torque and cotter all the steering and ball joints.
Goes like this: Set the torque wrench to the minimum torque, say 30 ft-lbs, tighten, see if the cotter lines up (never does), set the torque wrench to the maximum, 40 or 50 depending, and slowly tighten until the cotter lines up hoping not to trip the torque wrench. Finally, install and exquisitely cut and fold the cotter and you're good to go; minus 10 minutes of your life. Rinse and repeat ten times. (Looks like I could use a little touch-up on the tie rod sleeve...oops)

When I was 17 or 18, I converted this car to a power top. Back then, I didn't exactly follow the assembly manual (It didn't exist then) when it came to wiring. Fast forward a minute or two to age 65 or so and I rounded-up a proper power top harness.
Overnight in the ultrasonic cleaner and it was all clean and "shiny". Well maybe not real "shiny" but clean anyway. A little cut and splice between the two harnesses and it was "like" new.

The package tray was treated to a proper 1" hole using a two-part chassis punch at the factory dimple and in went the top motor extension. The extension also got the ultrasonic treatment as well as a re-wrap with OE style cloth friction tape. Odd because all the other harnesses have a vinyl wrap.

Installing the already restored heater box was pretty easy except for a broken mounting stud. Restoring the heater box took most of a day - I'm glad that was a year ago. It was nice that it was ready to go.

Sunday also brought the restoration of the heater ducts. That's a thankless job. After carefully scraping off undercoating it needed a good soap and water scrub. Too cold to do that outside so I did that job right in the middle of the garage floor. Soap, Scrub, and rinse, followed by glass bead blasting and painting the metal boxes and rings at the duct ends.

Once the refurb was finished, it took less than an hour to install the ducts. The job came out much better than I expected, considering what I started with.

Tomorrow, after I finish restoring the throttle rod and levers, EVERYTHING will be in the tunnel. Yay!

[SpyderMan]

Craig you are doing great work. Is this going to get a fuse box upgrade?

[joelsplace]

I would probably leave the bracket under the dash silver so it won't be so dark under there.

[cnicol]

Craig you are doing great work. Is this going to get a fuse box upgrade?

Ha! Where would I get one of those?
Actually this car's fuse panel was replaced already - it was the prototype-fit check for 65-66 models before I introduced them
Definitely a good idea though!

[cnicol]

So, another week of one little thing after another. It's just amazing how many parts require refurbishment and installation. Example: Flasher retaining clip glass bead blasted, clear-coated, and installed. Do that sort of thing 500 times and you're still not halfway there. All theses parts started out dirty and rusty, just like the parking brake you'll see next.

Considering the condition of the original parking brake handle, I figured use of my NOS handle was a no-brainer.

However, after treatment in Evapo-rust and a fresh coat of Appliance Expoy gloss black, the original looked fanstastic, just a good as the NOS one, so in keeping with my theme of reusing original parts, the de-rusted, repainted original went back onto the car. FYI, almost every part on the car had dirt and surface rust like the brake handle.

Wiper switches have a common defect where they lose their internal ground connection. I "bypass" that issue by adding a ground wire to the switch. Works every time.

The biggest underdash project is the wiring harness. It was extremely dirty and needed several repairs. I'm lucky enough to have all the stuff to do a proper repair job. The first step was to clean that filthy mess in the ultrasonic cleaner. It came out clean as a whistle!

I followed the cleaning bath with a fresh water rinse and proceeded with repairs.


This was the first car to receive my BlackBox HP fuse panel but the panel was a prototype, not the final version. The final version has jumpers to allow use on '67-9 models and a jumper to ensure a "live" Ignition output terminal. The prototype also had a handmade, cut and welded aluminum backplate. I desoldered the board and moved the components to the final design PC card and mounted that on a production backplate so it's literally "good as new" as seen on the lower right.

The center stack is together except for the radio speaker. It's beginning to feel like a real car. I imagine the installation of the powertrain is really going to impact that "It's a real car" feeling.

[66vairguy]

Great job. Nice to see the emergency brake handle refinished. I've seen too many Corvairs with great interiors, but with a chipped, cruddy, and rusty E brake handle

The little stud on the back or the wiper switch holds a spring clip inside the wiper switch that can loose contact with the wiper switch case, or the case looses ground with the back of the dashboard. I've been soldering a ground wire to that stud for years and never had an issue with slow or intermittent wiper action.

[Scott H]

I love all of what you are doing! The attention to detail is very inspiring!

[KenHenry]

Great progress, and very inspiring!! Did you show the prototype PCB? Ken

[sweet66monza]

It is awesome to see it come together! Reassembly is my favorite part. Lots of progress since I was last up there!