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]

I stared at it for twenty minutes or so until it gelled over at 450 degrees Fahrenheit (*), then let it bake for 400 degrees for another 25 minutes. Here's the final product. You can see that it's still quite pitted but that just can't be avoided with a weathered, fifty year old part that's seen action and abuse. However, in real life in looks much better and smoother than the photo. I didn't want to add any filler to smooth it out because I didn't want to throw the fan off balance. There are also a tiny few spots where the powder didn't take to oxidized sections that I didn't grind down far enough; but it will never show and it will never rust so I'm not worried. Having said all that, I'm quite pleased with how it came it. It's a half-shade darker color than the car, but I can easily live with that. For the most part, it looks great.






(*) Fun Fact: The Daniel Fahrenheit temperature scale is based on the lowest temperature he could make in the lab with alcohol and brine, or what he determined would be zero degrees. The high point was based on the human body which he scaled to 100 degrees. By repeatedly poking his extremely patient wife, Wilma, with thermometers he achieved his points and scale. But it turns out that she often had poor health with fevers so it's a bit high. Corrected for non-fever, it's 98.6 degrees. I wish so badly that we used the Metric / Centigrade system in the States, but frankly the goofy system we have is a LOT funnier.