Our 1960 Monza Coupe

[jmiahman]

Something I didn't see mentioned is that sometimes the guy stamping things made a mistake and sometimes the person writing the charts made a mistake.
I have several blocks with codes that don't match anything and I also have some heads with casting numbers that don't match anything. I bought the heads from someone on the dead forum after there was a lengthy discussion on how to ID them. No answer.

I have not had the problem of something not matching, yet.. all of these parts I can find referenced in parts and accessories catalogs, I just haven't seen some referenced anywhere on forums in relation to the 60 and I've had to dig quite a bit. So I'm just trying to collect it all in one thread so it might be helpful for other owners with similar questions. Either way, you look at it a mistake was made for me to have a 60 YD engine, I am not arguing with that lol, but for the most part a majority of the questions for this car I have been able to find from people like you Joel who have clued me into possibilities and processes that seem fairly probable. I have been looking out for weirdness though knowing or at least thinking with the 1st year of anything stuff would be off.

[caraholic4life]

I did see the Bob Helt reference for the YD Engine code for the 95 HP with a 4 speed transmission.

Looking at the Clark's website, they show the YD Engine code for the 1960-63 Corvair 98-102 HP engine with a Manual transmission as illustrated in the attached screenshot.

I see your Grandfather potentially acquired this car as a trade for other work when it was close to 15 years old, so it is possible that whatever modifications were done to the car were done during prior ownership.

By the time he acquired the car, Corvair's were readily available for nothing, or next to nothing and I suspect that many "Backyard" mechanics with no budget to work with often mixed and matched parts frequently.

Keep in mind that anything is possible by this time.

[jmiahman]

I did see the Bob Helt reference for the YD Engine code for the 95 HP with a 4 speed transmission.

Yeah Bob Helt has a paragraph in Classic Corvair (I just bought it because of Craig's post) his 9th edition on page 18 that talks about the 1960 95 HP being released mid year. It has "a special high performance camshaft" (3777255 http://www.gmpartswiki.com/getpage?pageid=17908) and "stronger valve springs" both we seem to have. If you take a look at most of the numbers I posted part numbers that start with 6 like the Bell Housing etc. are normally early parts as sometime in 60 they moved to numbers starting with a 3, from 6, or so I have read. A majority of the part numbers I have (except the 63 transmission) are lower in sequence than that of parts released for the 61 and as I said in a previous post none of these numbers (listed in the first post) are unknown and can be found in part catalogs (or by using http://www.gmpartswiki.com). Yeah I guess someone could of haugepauged together a bunch of early parts that seem to point to 60 and some even June matching the body tag date (like the crankcase), but I would think that would be unlikely. Also, it looks like whoever did the transmission work knew what they were doing, so I'm excited that may not be an issue and for some reason, it just got parked for a blown head gasket on 6. I don't see the car being parked for that, but the interior was pretty rough, the carpet was not original and it smelt terrible, maybe that wasn't cause it sat as I had assumed, but how he got it lol. Other than the transmission things look to be original, we do have a makeshift battery holder on the passenger side that seems better made than the original, so I'm keeping that. I'm leaning heavily towards this truly is a 95 HP 1960 that was supposed to be at one point a 4 Speed (in the mind of whoever stamped it), but of course, it didn't turn out that way.

I do find it interesting that in the screenshots Craig gave Bob Helt notes the 4 Speed (YD) "Was never produced" (footnote 18) and in the 9th Edition of Cassic Corvair he leaves it a bit more open with "May not have been released" (footnote 15 on page 23). I wonder if something added a bit more doubt for him to lighten that statement up a bit. The 4-speed may not have been available but the stamp was.

[joelsplace]

Put a 4-speed in it so future owners can say "look, they did make a '60 with a 4-speed" but mainly because that is the best setup for a Corvair and really increases the fun factor over the awful 3-speed.

[cnicol]

Its cool you're so interested in understanding the particulars of your car.

Writers hedged their bets on the 60 4-sp 95hp engine because their existence was more likely than not despite no reported examples hitting the radar in over 60 years. The non-existance of the 60 4-sp transmission is virtually certain for known reasons.

Good job picking up Bob's book; it's more or less the collective wisdom wrapped into one cover. Bob was a stickler for accuracy so you can take wahts written "to the bank". OTOH, take technical information offeredby Clark's with a grain of salt. 95% of it is right but some is off base.

[jmiahman]

Put a 4-speed in it so future owners can say "look, they did make a '60 with a 4-speed" but mainly because that is the best setup for a Corvair and really increases the fun factor over the awful 3-speed.

Would love to have a 4-speed and some of my interest here is trying to gauge how that could be done, because I think it would be neat to have a YD engine that looks to be a 60 that's 4-speed lol, and like you said it's a good setup. Right now though my interest is just getting it up and running. Removing the drive train was easier than I had thought and not that I want to do it every day or anything but once we have it running and back in semi-decent shape I think then we can decide how far we want to go with it. It will be hard to make it completely original, but a lot of this has been trying to find what was original or at least should have been and I was blessed with a 60 lol.

Its cool you're so interested in understanding the particulars of your car.

I think once you know something has a story and what it's been through etc.. it makes it easier to connect to the project and see it through. Also getting it running helps lol. I also enjoy history and learning how things and the processes that made them work. I am a Cloud Engineer/Architect by day because I was the kid who took apart his parent's VCR to see what was in it. I deal with automated processes all day, but the digital world is fake it's the constraints of physical engineering that I have an interest in, at least as a hobby, things like using a venturi in a carb to pull fuel from a reservoir and atomize it. All the things that have to come together and work properly (or close enough) at once and the history of how people figured it out to get them to play together and improve upon them, how to engineer in variables to adjust, but then also mass produce them and all the engineering involved there. It's something that is incredibly hard to replicate and I think as we get pushed to EV's more and more that's something that is taken for granted and may come back to bite us, you can't force the natural progression of what took a hundred years of infrastructure to come about in a matter of years, maybe you can but it will be rather heavy-handed at an incredible cost. In any case, I have an interest in this at multiple levels, the most valuable thing is probably just figuring stuff out with my son and spending time with him. I think some of the principles of the culture that made automobiles great are being lost in our culture or taken for granted. From engineering to how we find we value things, hope this helps my son be a bit more well rounded and not just in knowing how to wrench and problem solve.

[jmiahman]

In lapping the valves I found that the valve springs have inner damper springs as is consistent in High Performace (and Turbo) models before 63. The standard 80 HP 1960-1963 had no inner damper spring (part 6256838). This is not to say in my particular case they were never swapped out but having a YD (95 HP) engine with a 3777255 Cam you'd expect to see high-performance springs. Springs look to be part number 3735381 and not 6256838.

[vairmech]

Transmissions.

Maybe at the end of 1960 there was a 4 spd offered but I don't think so. No one that I have heard of has ever reported having one. The 1960 trans and diff are a one year only build. The diff pinion shaft was different as was the trans main shaft. See the attached picture from Richard Widman.

4 spds were not officially offered until 1961 and the trans main shaft and differential were redesigned as was the rear suspension body mount to accommodate the 4spd's longer profile.

I have to say that while you are providing written text and part numbers the photo documentation is sort of lacking. There are many clues that can be in pictures that may not be in any book! If your car was originally a 4 spd then the rear body mount will have a cutout to accommodate the longer trans.
I could only find the 3 spd main shaft and internals not a complete trans. The 1960 trans main shaft only sticks out of the trans by about 3" and has course splines, the 4 spd sticks out about6-7" and has fine splines.

[joelsplace]

If anyone ever found a 4-speed with the short 60 output shaft that would be proof although not having one doesn't disprove the option since they could have redesigned the differential and yokes to accomodate the 4-speed.

[vairmech]

If anyone ever found a 4-speed with the short 60 output shaft that would be proof although not having one doesn't disprove the option since they could have redesigned the differential and yokes to accomodate the 4-speed.

Hmmm, I think I sort of said that.

[jmiahman]

If your car was originally a 4 spd then the rear body mount will have a cutout to accommodate the longer trans.

I don't believe it was, most likely came from New York with the intention to be as it was stamped YD. On paper, it should have been, but probably was not. However, the rear body mount on a1960 has options that are one year only as well. I find a lot of people make assumptions about it based on other years, but then in the same sentence will tell you how it had a lot of 1-year only parts and features and it seems hard to find people who have worked on a lot of 60 Monza 900s with the HP package. So I don't want to assume anything without part numbers and documentation. Not to mention the cross-member could have been swapped out as well. So that's a tough one for me, though I may at some point put in a 4-Speed and do my own modifications. Our exchanges over email have really caused me to dig a lot deeper into parts manuals and other resources to try and piece things together better than just making an assumption. Cause it does seem to be a mystery that most haven't had to solve at least for this year and model, so I want to do it right.

What I do know about the transmission and I think it was already covered in this thread was it's a 63 trans on a 60 diff. Where it seems they changed the 63 transmission main shaft to the short 60 style. I have given multiple pictures in this thread (on other pages) of the cross member, differential, and current transmission along with the misassumptions on my part (why I am a bit more careful now) and some good explanations from Craig as to how this may have all worked production-wise (apart from just a stamping mistake) that I got a YD all with parts that point to an HP option (95HP) engine with a 3-Speed in 60.