Marcus' Corvair conversion, 914-C6 Options

[r3dplanet]

A few years back I got all excited about doing a Corvair engine conversion for my 1971 car. The project waffled. Numbers were crunched and chewed. Thought and diagrams and opinions were drawn out over long winter evenings.

One particularly rainy winter evening, I found an ad on Craigslist advertising a warehouse full of Corvair parts including engines. So my pal Rory and I drove a hundred miles into the boonies late one rainy night to what turned out to be an unmarked, geographically isolated, former slaughterhouse illuminated by a single 60 watt light bulb. No cell phone reception, no escape. We were met by a couple of toothless brothers who couldn't stop talking about Daddy. Seemingly they only did what Daddy wanted them to do. Daddy wanted them to sell the stash of Corvair parts. Daddy wanted them to steal my Toyota cargo van. Daddy needed to approve the transaction of cash for an engine. Daddy, it turned out, was long dead. The two brothers kept trying to separate Rory and I, and the creepier of the two brothers kept demanding my car keys so he could test drive my van, despite my insistence that it wasn't for sale. For the first time in a long time, I wish I had a tazer gun on me. The brothers eventually showed us exactly what I wanted - an RD code 1965 110HP engine. Fearing for our lives, Rory and I muscled the engine into the van while the brothers went to find more stuff for Daddy to sell to us, or you know, maybe a club or some rope or a ball gag or something.

I left the $100 on the bench and tore the hell out. Rory and I laughed all the way back to town, ever so pleased that we were neither killed, nor raped, nor eaten. Plus, we were one up on a Corvair engine.

So with a provenance like this, and seeing JRust's new car, Dr. Evil's project, and 914coops Nader's Nightmare all take shape I've finally decided to get serious about my own project: the VW-Porsche 914-C6.

The "C" stands for Corvair.

[r3dplanet]

So let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of case preparation. While I really dig the design of this six cylinder engine, I dislike the "let's crank out fifty more of these before lunch" attitude GM seems to have had in terms of production. In my not-at-all humble opinion this always irked me about the American Big-3 - often some very cool engineering ideas but watered down to hit a price point.

Take this aluminum case for example. I like that the case is just big enough to provide for six cylinders. I love that the rotating assembly just fits inside to maximize a small space. The construction is strong and simple. But these were obviously not hand built by German union labor who cared about their craft. Observe the crazy volume of casting flash in the block hemispheres:






Also observe how the oil drain holes on the bottom of the case don't even match up. For that matter, neither do the tops of the walls for the journals. Luckily, I can easily clean all of this up. Specficially, I bolted the case together and used a 7/16" drill bit to clean up the drain holes.






That's actually the good news about all of this. GM may not have cared about this, and clearly the engine ran for 40 years before failing. However, Marcus DOES care and was rewarded with a HALF CUP of casting flash at the end of the exercise.

[shameless plug]
It's also time for an unpaid commercial plug: Here I'm using the my fourth and LAST DREMEL EVER to remove case flash. Pro Tip: I finally got sick of replacing Dremels every few months so I replaced it with a Proxxon rotary tool (part #FBS 115/E) made by the nice people living in Luxembourg. Matched with a Flexishaft, this tool is superior in every way. It's quiet. It's comfortable. It has an adjustable chuck instead of a 1/8" collet so you can use a far wider array of bits. Another Pro Tip: McMaster-Carr has a ton of rotary bits that cost half of what Dremel bits cost and last longer. For example, I bought eleven brass cone brushes for $1.48 each. It's a money saver for sure.
[/shameless plug]





The part that took the most amount of time were the valleys above the center of the lifter bores. There were casting pockets full of little bits of crud; something like an undersea cave system. This took some serious time to grind down. It also reinforced my plan to proceed with an application of GE Glyptal paint.