Richard's Corvair

The Restoration of my 1960 Corvair

First Engine Assembly, and Parts Correction

Body on trailer

Original thrust bearing clearance

New thrust bearing with correct gap

Corrected new thrust bearing

Pistons in barrels

Piston with wrong rings

Piston skirt bulge

Gap from bulge in piston

Sanding piston to correct tolerance

Compressing valve springs

Installing main bearings

Torquing engine block halves

Bump on bearing

Engine block on stand

Torquing rod bearing caps

Checking for problem bearings

Rod cap numbering

New rings (wrong size)

Discovery of wrong size rings

Rings too narrow

New gas tank bottom

Gas tank top

Inside of gas tank with epoxy sealer

Spraying a third coad of undercoating

Raising front suspension

Raising rear suspension to position

Rear suspension in position waiting for engine

Engine compartment primed

Color selection

First color shot

Month 13 part 2

This is the second part of month 13, dealing mostly with the engine and mechanical assembly.

We borrowed a trailer and lifted the body onto it to take it to a shop where I could assemble the mechanical parts. It only took 5 people to lift it onto the trailer.

The engine is finally moving into full speed assembly. The engine stand was made from a Nissan truck crankshaft with a tensioning nut, half-inch steel plate, and miscellaneous tubes. It facilitates turning the engine over to whatever position is convenient.

You can see from the first two pictures that the .03 inch play in the crankshaft from the worn thrust bearing has completely gone away. The new thrust bearing only reduced it to .010 inches so I had to have it widened, then sanded it down to the correct .002” clearance.

A check of clearance of the new rings that came with the pistons and barrels showed they were not correct. I’ll assemble what I can of the engine while I await the arrival of the correct rings.

Here I’ve set up the pistons in the barrels to check the skirt clearance. One piston had bulges on both skirts and one on one skirt so they did not fit in their cylinders. The picture shows where it rubbed the cylinder and stopped going in. You can see light below the straight-edge resting on the bulge. I sanded out the bulges with 100 grit paper and polished with 1000 grit. Then we compressed the new valve springs to put in the keepers.

The crankshaft was machined to the 0.010 bearings that I bought. Here I’m installing those bearings and breaking in my new torque wrench.

Unfortunately as I tightened up the rod caps the engine became too tight. I decided to take it back apart, double check the match on the rod caps and finally test each bearing individually. I found that one bearing had a bulge near the end that I needed to sand off.

Assembly the second time around should be easy.

I’m starting to assemble the car so that the body shop can finish their work.

The gas tank is finally finished after waiting for the epoxy paint. Here are the top, bottom and inside views (taken through the sending unit hole. The sending unit is the reconstructed original and ready to install.

While I have the body up on a table I also decided to give the underside another layer of undercoating to protect it against stones and rust..
Here is the installation of the front suspension, which did not fit as easily as it should have since the body was cracked and the original suspension twisted. Also the lifting of the rear suspension and its final position in the car, ready for connecting the brakes.

Here is the engine compartment sanded and primed, then painted with the selected Turquoise Glamour. I decided it is darker than I want so I’ve picked a lighter turquoise.

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