Richard's Corvair

The Restoration of my 1960 Corvair

Steering Column and Details

Painting Chevrolet logo

Before and after front emblem

Polishing door handles

Door and window handles polished

Sanding steering column

Painted steering column and parking brake

Inner half of original steering wheel bearing

Steering wheel bearings-old and new

Flaring new brake line

Fastening new nylon throttleshaft bushing

Old fuse box

Old rusty and burned wiring

New nylon bushing for accelerator linkage

Bent accelerator pivot

New gas lines

New lines under car

Loading car on trailer for body shop

Trailer ride to body shop

Month 14 part 2

This is the second half of month 14, showing the non-engine projects of the month

The chrome emblem from the front of the car was tarnished and had a lot of surface corrosion. The blue Chevrolet part was clear and the red was mostly missing. Here is a shot after polishing half of the chrome and then the finished emblem.

I found that I needed to change polishing wheels and switch to a softer/finer (dark red) polishing stick so as not to scratch the chrome. The white one for stainless was too rough.

The car came with only one door handle and one window handle, so I got some donor handles and polished them to be ready for the car when the doors are upholstered.

The details take a lot of time. Here I’m sanding and painting the steering column and replacing the bearings that were completely missing (only the raceways were left). I’ve also replaced all the turn signal parts with those cleaned up from a donor car in the US.

The only brake lines sold here are with metric threads, so I had to cut off the ends and flare them with the original threaded nipples.

There was a lot of play in the throttle linkage so the two carburetors could not work together. I made bushings out of teflon and here I’m fastening them to the levers with small screws.

Here you can see the wire between two terminals in the fuse block. Most wires were melted from a fire. I’ve stripped the car of all wiring and after the body shop I’ll take it to an electrician to rewire and add the circuits I want for my headlight relays, GPS, electrical heater and seat pad, etc.

To make the accelerator work I had to make a few teflon bushings, bend the pivot and bar. Finally made a new gas line and finished the installation under the car. (Later I found 4 meters of steel lines and replaced these.)

Finished with the mechanical for now. Here we loaded the car on another trailer, washed out the cowls and rocker panels and are taking it to the body shop for their magic. When they finish it will go to the electrician for complete wiring.

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