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]

When the week of grinding had finally come to an end, it was time to make some decisions about the case. For example, in the very handy book Performance Corvairs: How to Hotrod the Corvair Engine and Chassis, it is recommended to widen each of the oil passages behind the main bearings to 3/16". Indeed, the passages are supposed to be 1/8" from the factory but they actually waver all over the place from .09-.14". I called up Corvair engine machinist Ray Sedman to ask about this, but he said it's better to try to even them out to just a hair over 1/8" and then cut them slightly deeper. This way you get more oil flow as well as the full surface support for the bearings. Grand idea. When the case goes to him for the VW cylinder modification he'll take care of that with a big expensive machine.

Also, some have repeatedly told me not to remove the oil gallery plugs when performing case prep for fear of something or rather. But for the sake of completeness I wanted to open them up anyway, especially since the case was glass bead blasted and knew the case would get cleaned about a dozen times before final assembly. Check it out:

The two case plugs are 1/4" NPT plugs with 1/4" square drive sockets. They're made of steel and held in place with some sort of sealant. I used a 1/4" ratchet to remove them but would have preferred a perfectly square tool without the ball on the side.









In later years, GM replaced these with aluminum hex-socket plugs and so will I. You can see the oil galleries are about as clean as a coal mine even after the case has been blasted and pressure washed a couple of times.



So it's a series of brass engine case brushes from FLAPS to suggestively clean the gallery, which with a little kerosene worked like magic.