CLARK'S CORVAIR PARTS TOUR — VIDEOS

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CLARK'S CORVAIR PARTS TOUR — VIDEOS

Post by bbodie52 »

This year marks Clark's Corvair Parts 40th anniversary of running a very successful business that does a serious job of helping us to keep our Corvairs alive. Surprisingly, I don't see any videos on this subject here on the Corvair Forum. I saw this video on YouTube today so I thought sharing it here would be appropriate in starting a recognition of the 40th year that Cal and Joan Clark have been supplying us with parts out of Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. :tu:

If you take the time to watch all of these videos, you will get some idea of what it takes to provide this Corvair parts support that has been there for so long we may start to take it for granted. DON"T! Clark's needs our business to survive, just as we and our Corvairs need them to survive. I started ordering from them 33 years ago, in 1980.

Clarks Corvair-Making it Here



If you want to read and view a fascinating 23 page history of Clark's Corvair Parts, follow this link...

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Clark's History
CLARK'S CORVAIR PARTS INC. - HISTORY
:link: https://ssl.corvair.com/user-cgi/pages. ... ry=history
Last edited by bbodie52 on Sat Jun 22, 2013 7:03 am, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: CLARK'S CORVAIR PARTS VIDEO

Post by bbodie52 »

Here is another great video about Cal and Joan Clark and Clark's Corvair Parts...

Clarks Corvair - PM magazine

Published on Jan 20, 2013
Corvair Love Affair-Clarks Corvair Parts, 1985 PM / Evening magazine TV tour, Joan & Cal Clark
Last edited by bbodie52 on Sat Jun 22, 2013 7:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: CLARK'S CORVAIR PARTS VIDEO

Post by bbodie52 »

Another Clark's video - Making Corvair Upholstery...
...gives you an idea of the work and effort that makes Clark's upholstery quality possible. Imagine not having this service available!

Clark's Corvair Parts - Upholstery Tour

Published on Jan 21, 2013
Tour Clarks Corvair Parts Upholstery shop and see how upholstery, door panels, top boots &
gaskets are produced.
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Re: CLARK'S CORVAIR PARTS VIDEO

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Clark's Corvair Tour (Order Processing)

Published on Feb 5, 2013
A tour of Clark's Corvair Parts, the buildings, parts & how an order is processed.
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Re: CLARK'S CORVAIR PARTS VIDEO

Post by bbodie52 »

This two-part video will help you to understand what is involved to produce these critical items. The work, research, business negotiations, financing, etc. is truly mind boggling! It takes a very special small business entrepreneur to accomplish successfully what Joan and Cal Clark have accomplished over the past 40 years!

CLARK'S CORVAIR PARTS - REPRO PARTS - Part ONE

Published on Jan 30, 2013
Check out popular repro parts from Clark's Corvair Parts-Cal Clark narrator


CLARK'S CORVAIR PARTS - REPRO PARTS - Part TWO

Published on Feb 2, 2013
More Clark's Corvair Parts repro parts and a narration of the "ins & outs" of reproducing Corvair parts.
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Re: CLARK'S CORVAIR PARTS VIDEO

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Machine Shop Tour - Clark's Corvair Parts

Published on Jan 20, 2013
Tour of Clark's Corvair Parts machine shop & rebuilding - our equipment and how we rebuild various items - Cal Clark
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Re: CLARK'S CORVAIR PARTS VIDEO

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Making Clark's Corvair Parts Catalog

Published on Jan 24, 2013
Clark's Tour (making a catalog) - all the steps over 6-8 months to update our 650+ page catalog.
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Re: CLARK'S CORVAIR PARTS VIDEO

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INTRO to Clark's Corvair Parts Internet Site

Published on Feb 6, 2013
INTRO to the "ins & outs" of Clark's Corvair Parts Internet site for researching parts, their online catalog for ordering parts.
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Re: CLARK'S CORVAIR PARTS VIDEO

Post by bbodie52 »

To supplement all of these videos about Clark's Corvair Parts and Cal and Joan Clark...

:tongue: ::-): This is a wonderful story that I had not seen before. Transcribed and posted for your enjoyment... :not worthy:

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HEMMINGS FEATURE
Clark's Corvair Parts
Chevrolet's air-cooled compact never had a better friend

By Dave LaChance from June 2006 issue of Hemmings Classic Car
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Imagine that you're the manager of a parts department at a Chevrolet dealership back in those carefree days of 1959. You have a good supply of everything that's needed to keep all those new Biscaynes, Bel Airs and Impalas on the road, and life is pretty simple, considering how many parts those cars have in common.

Then Chevrolet drops its bombshell: the all-new Corvair for 1960. It's a revolutionary design, a compact with a rear-mounted, air-cooled, flat-six aluminum engine. The automotive press is buzzing about the new car's technical innovations, but to you it's a major headache. You have to find space to store hundreds and hundreds of parts that fit no other Chevrolets, parts like thermostatic bellows and pushrod tube seals and thermisters, whatever those are. They might as well have told you to stock parts for those new Vanguard satellites NASA was sending into orbit.

Little wonder that, when Chevrolet abandoned the Corvair after the 1969 model year, dealerships everywhere were eager to jettison those parts as quickly as possible. Despite a general perception that manufacturers are required to carry replacement parts for a certain number of years after a model has been discontinued, there was no such requirement in place back in the Age of Aquarius.

Thank goodness for Corvair fans everywhere that Cal and Joan Clark loved and believed in the little car. "Right about when everybody else thought the Corvair was done for is when we got into the business," Cal recalled. "We absolutely believed in the car. No way would we have done what we've done without that emotional attachment to the car."

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Bolts of hard-to-get original upholstery fabric are stacked on shelves

What Cal and Joan have done is to create Clark's Corvair Parts, the world's leading supplier of everything for the air-cooled Chevrolet. From their location in the picturesque village of Shelburne Falls in western Massachusetts, they ship parts to every continent but Antarctica, offering more than 14,000 different parts in 600 pages of catalogs.

Look back as far as you like into the Clarks' story, and there's always a Corvair in the picture, usually playing a critical role. Cal's dad, Cal Sr., was an engineer at the nearby Millers Falls Tool Company, and owned two Corvairs, a 1961 and a 1964. Young Cal got his driver's license in 1964, and drove the '61 car. He and Joan began dating while they were in high school, and she too learned to drive on Cal's parents' cars. "It was like moving up to a Cadillac, going from my parents' VW to a Corvair," she said.

Cal began teaching during his last year in college, and could just afford a used Volkswagen for $200--"It was still cheaper than a used Corvair," he said. He longed for a Monza Spyder, with its 150hp, turbocharged engine, and periodically left notes on the windshield of a Spyder he saw parked on campus, never getting a response. Then, one day, he saw the tail of a 1964 Spyder coupe sticking out of a snowbank at a repair shop in the nearby town of Greenfield. Whether he knew it or not, the course of his future had just been set.

Cal and Joan, who had married four years earlier, bought the Spyder for $50, with the engine apart and in boxes, and restored the car in the summer of 1972, working in Cal's grandparents' barn. He was teaching biology and general science at Mohawk Trail Regional High School, and so could devote his summer to the work; Joan was working in the Dean of Students office at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. As they carried out the restoration, they came into contact with other Corvair enthusiasts who were frustrated by their inability to find the right parts for their cars.

That next spring, they decided to sell a few Corvair parts on the side, to finance their hobby. "We said, 'Let's start a part-time business that one of us can run,'" Cal laughed. Cal had worked at a garage, and was able to get parts at a discount through a Chevrolet dealer. He and Joan were living on the second floor of an old farmhouse, and got their landlord's permission to install shelving to store the 150 different parts they would stock. Their very first offering, still numbered C1 in the catalog, was a bronze shift bushing set to replace the original plastic bushings. Taking out advertisements in Hemmings Motor News, Popular Science and Popular Mechanics, they waited to see if any orders would roll in.

"We got a letter from a lawyer in Buffalo--our first thought was that we had done something wrong and they were after us!" Cal laughed. But the lawyer just wanted parts. The business did well, and the Clarks were soon putting up more shelves wherever they could, taking over the hallways and half the attic of the farmhouse, as well as half of the barn. They knew it was time to make a move, so, using all of their savings and a loan from Cal's grandparents, they bought a 1,500-square-foot ranch house in the neighboring town of Buckland.

"We didn't have much furniture, because there wasn't any room for it," Joan explained. "We had to eat standing up." They raised the bed high off the floor, so that it could also serve as a counter for packing orders. In the living room was the printing press and collator they used to produce their catalogs, and 50 cartons of paper. Their telephone ordering hours were 7 a.m. to 1 a.m., though they eventually cut back to 14-hour days.

The next steps were a natural progression: Joan left her job at the university to work full-time in the parts business in 1976, and Cal followed her a year later. "It was busy enough to keep us busy, but it always grew gradually," Cal said. In 1978, they built their first building in Shelburne Falls, and thought they were done with construction for a while. Then they discovered they needed another building. And another. And another. By the time they were done, there were eight, with a total of 80,000 square feet.

Why so many buildings? Joan and Cal kept expanding their production capacity, and each new operation required a space of its own. "We got to the point that, to get good quality, we got ourselves into all those niches that our suppliers wouldn't," Joan said. One of their first products was the cardboard kick panel, which they would cut from cardboard using utility knives. More heavy-duty equipment arrived in time, as did a timely assist from Cal's dad.

Clark's had purchased a massive dielectric embossing machine from a supplier on Long Island to begin manufacturing of embossed vinyl upholstery and door panels, and had ordered a die for one door panel pattern. Cal asked his father to look over the die for accuracy; the next thing he knew, Cal Sr. had taken the thing apart and reassembled it with much greater accuracy, using his precision calipers. Joan and Cal bought him a jigsaw and some bending equipment, and he got busy making the rest of the dies they would need. Today, Building 4 is filled with dozens of cutting and embossing dies made by Cal's dad; the door panel dies alone are insured for $500,000, and Cal is sure they'd cost more than that to replace. More dies cut gaskets, carpeting, upholstery material and cardboard panels. "My father made all but one piece of that tooling," Cal said with pride.

All of the seat covers are sewn on site, using new vinyl or NOS woven material that Clark's has ferreted out. How do they know in what order the pieces go together, or how many threads per square inch were used? It was Cal's dad, once again, who carefully disassembled each type of interior and recorded how it was constructed. "We could have done it more simply, and we could have done it more cheaply; we could have cut corners. But we didn't," Joan said. "In many cases, what we make is better than what the factory produced.

"They set up their own printing shop in Building 5, to produce not only catalogs but shop manuals and owners' guides as well. If you don't think that Chevrolet was eager to scrub away all traces of the Corvair, consider this: When Cal wrote in 1976 to ask permission to reprint one manual, a General Motors lawyer wrote back to say, essentially, "You can reprint whatever you want. It's yours." Cal keeps the letter well protected, and has several copies, too, just in case.

Some parts aren't manufactured, but remanufactured. In Building 3 is a machine shop "for simple jobs that nobody else wants to do," Cal said. Here, cylinders and connecting rods are cleaned up, carburetors are rebuilt (5,600 a year), and metal parts are finished. Starters, generators and alternators are rebuilt and tested before they go out to customers. Clark's does not rebuild engines, but can supply everything anyone might need to get a tired flat-six back into as-new condition.

Building 1 is the shipping center, where a number of more popular parts are stored; Building 2 is used for receiving, and for assembling Clark's 1,500 different "Multi Kits." NOS and used parts fill Building 6, while buildings 7 and 8 bulge with bulky used parts. In Building 8, Cal pointed out a 50-ton mountain of used parts brought east from California by boxcar; few Corvair collectors could stop with one, especially in the days when cars were free to anyone who would haul them away.

Clark's is not entirely self-reliant. It contracts with dozens of outside suppliers to produce headlamp bezels, shock absorbers, exhaust systems, emblems, decals and a variety of other parts. Working with suppliers is what occupies much of Cal's time. Sometimes it's a rewarding experience, as when a 25-year search finally found a supplier able to manufacture authentic molded fiberglass insulation for the engine lids of 1965-'69 cars. Other times it's frustrating, as when a supplier ran off a batch of 10,000 iron cylinders made to the wrong specification. Although Clark's did not have to pay for the mistake, they now need to find someone else who can supply the parts.

So much for the supply. What about the buyers? Clark's does not make public how many customers are in its database, though Joan revealed that Clark's provides about 6 to 10 hours of technical assistance to callers each day. "We'll stay on the phone as long as the person needs," Joan said. "I don't want you to get your order and be disappointed." What no one knows is how many of the 1.8 million Corvairs produced during the car's 10-year run are still in existence. How about a completely wild guess? "I'd say maybe 80,000 to 100,000," he ventured.

As much as they love the Corvair, Joan and Cal own and admire other cars, too. They've restored a 1963 Chevrolet Impala Super Sport, and are in the process of restoring a 1962 Oldsmobile Starfire. "We always have to have at least one Corvair and one big car," Cal explained. "It's got to be a collector car. I love seeing those '50s and '60s and '70s cars on the road."
:link: https://www.hemmings.com/stories/articl ... vair-parts
This article originally appeared in the June, 2006 issue of Hemmings Classic Car.

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Brad Bodie
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Re: CLARK'S CORVAIR PARTS VIDEO

Post by NorwayCorvair »

Thanks for hours of watching material and reading :)
Looks like this will be my parts guy for sure
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