New Project

[k24556]

Spent all day yesterday loading this 65 Corsa project car on my trailer. The two rear tires were flat, so it was a tough pull for Mr Warn's product. The PO attempted a few repairs, and a jack-leg body shop made a mess of the front end sometime in the distant past. The Corsa is Cypress Green/Black interior. This matches the body tag. The deal came with 2 extra doors, two extra hoods, a rear deck lid, several pieces of trim, mostly in good shape. Then there is a set of spare seats, complete with evidence of mouse damage. Engine bars over and has compression, but I will borescope all the bores before considering to start it. My intention is to restore to original.

[doug6423]

Looking forward to following your thread.
Good luck!

[terribleted]

Nice and unusual color scheme.

[flat6_musik]

Sweet ride, although I am very partial to cypress green corsas! Snap some pics and post them up of your "starting point". Congrats!

[gbullman]

Congratulations, looks and sounds like a good project car!

Best of luck with bringing it back to life.

[k24556]

Thanks for all the kind words. Today is no-picture day. All I did was work on cleanout of the passenger compartment. Then I spent hours cleaning the trunk seal channel of rotted seal. A dusty dirty mess.

I posted an ad in the FOR SALE-misc section for several items that were in the car for which I have no room. If you want some free stuff you are welcome to come by and pick up the FTAGH items.

[k24556]

It was cold and windy today until the afternoon. I spent time on the Corsa cleaning up, removing exterior trim, After vacuuming the dust from the trunk, I put the car on the 2-post lift to have a look-see. I was pleasantly surprised, aside from oil here and there the underside is pretty clean. No drips on the floor in 4 days, another good sign. The engine bars over smoothly, no noise and noticeable compression. Looks like the steering gearbox needs a seal. All the tie rod ends are tight with good boots, and the PO actually kept them greased! so no new surprises underneath. Solid pans on the body with just a little surface rust here and there. The only serious body work will be the front; correcting the mess someone did to fix crash damage.Time to go into the house and pour a glass of Crown and toast my good fortune.

[Beers]

Very nice k, looks like this will be a fun project.

[k24556]

I’ve put maybe 20 hours in since my last post. I removed all the brightwork from the body. I decided to replace the front sheet metal, so I need to find a Corvair boneyard that has a good late model front I can cut out. Talked to Corvair Ranch and they are pretty sure they have what I need. My daughter and family live in Frederick, so the plan is to make a trip right after Christmas to harvest the needed sheet metal.

So the schedule changed slightly. I moved to engine removal work. I’ll need to roll the car around after I remove the engine, so I will build a fixture that will keep the rear suspension geometry. I made one for the same purpose during a restoration I did in the early 1980’s.

Once the engine is out, The body work will start up again.

[Wagon Master]

Nice looking bones for your project. Please post pictures and dimensions of the roll around fixture when it's done.

[k24556]

I will post pics and hope they will help others. It will be a month or more before I get there, I'm still taking apart, and planning on dropping the engine in a couple weeks.

In the mean time, I removed the interior, the carpet, and working on clearing the dashboard. This car spent its life in the sand hills of South Carolina, so while there is some rust, the pans are all strong. For some reason, the PO put caulking on all the seams. Sad, but all the water was coming from the two footwell vent areas. When I pulled the plastic vent/kick panels, I found sand and pine needles almost to the level of the vent openings. See the second picture.

That area should have a drain somewhere, I haven't found it yet, but it will probably be caked with mud, etc.

[terribleted]

This area drains through the rear of the rocker panel. Water enters through the cowl, flows to the sides and down behind the fender. From there it runs straight back exiting the rocker panel via a rectangular hole near the rear if the vertical inner rocker face. From the factory this hole is covered by a rubber flap that is supposed to let water out and keep critters from entering. The area behind the vents fills up with leaves and pine needles and needs to be cleaned out from time to time. The rocker panels themselves can get plugged with stuff over the years and often are. Jack the front of the car and remove the clean out plugs at the very front and very rear of the rocker panels. Run or even better high pressure hose water through the front clean out holes while prodding and picking at stuff trying to run out the rear clean outs and drain. Eventually you will get most of the crud out and the car will drain well again. This collection behind the fender is the primary cause of rust in this area.

[k24556]

Today was engine removal day. I made a lowering "jack" from two RV leveling jacks, 2 old furniture rollers, some wood, and a few bits of metal. The jack worked great and is a stable platform for further disassembly. Everything went smoothly and tomorrow I'll know what the engine will really need. Since I want to roll the car on tires for a couple months, I'm going to make a temporary fixture to stablilize the suspension with the engine out. That will take a day of cuttin' and weldin'.

[flat6_musik]

Rock on!

[joelsplace]

Rex Johnson sells these. Really nice and reasonable too. I just bought mine but I can't remember how much it was.
http://corvaircenter.com/phorum/profile.php?1,4688

[k24556]

Today was build the fixture day. Pics below. Basically, I had some 1/4x2 1/2 flat stock rusting under the shed, a length of 2x2x.120 tube steel and some 1/4x11/2 cold rolled steel. The flat stock bolted to the front and rear engine/drivetrain mounts. The 2x2 TS spanned between, and the cold rolled steel used for making the cross members to capture the lower rear strut rods. Everything was SWAG and cut to fit. No Corvair parts were harmed in the production of this device.

The car rolls great without the engine which was the objective in building this frame. I have a little heavy cutting and welding body work and I wanted to have the car rolling so the stinky dusty jobs could be done outside on nice days. Yes some of the welds look like a seagull flew over and crapped on the steel, but they will hold just fine.