Corvair at auto auction

Yesterday my wife and I attended an auto auction held by RM Auctions
near Toronto.

Among the vehciles was a 1961 Corvair, which had been conveniently left
with it engine cover open. I hade never seen a Corvair engine in the
metal before, so I studied it for a while. Two questions eventually
arose:
1) How do you get the oil filter off?
2) The generator belt appears to double as the cooling fan belt, and
traces a rather creative path, flexing and twisting within two planes.
Is this primarily why they tended to fail? And if so, why would GM have
designed such a critical part do perform such calisthenics?

Hugo Schmeisser wrote:

> Yesterday my wife and I attended an auto auction held by RM Auctions
> near Toronto.
>
> Among the vehciles was a 1961 Corvair, which had been conveniently
> left with it engine cover open. I hade never seen



Several embarrassing typos here. I had not completed my proofreading
before accidentally hitting Send.

My guess would be that GM was not all that smart then, just as they
may not be all that smart now.





On Sun, 09 Apr 2006 09:13:10 -0500, "Hugo Schmeisser"
> wrote:

>Yesterday my wife and I attended an auto auction held by RM Auctions
>near Toronto.
>
>Among the vehciles was a 1961 Corvair, which had been conveniently left
>with it engine cover open. I hade never seen a Corvair engine in the
>metal before, so I studied it for a while. Two questions eventually
>arose:
>1) How do you get the oil filter off?
>2) The generator belt appears to double as the cooling fan belt, and
>traces a rather creative path, flexing and twisting within two planes.
>Is this primarily why they tended to fail? And if so, why would GM have
>designed such a critical part do perform such calisthenics?

Hugo Schmeisser > wrote in article
>...
> Yesterday my wife and I attended an auto auction held by RM Auctions
> near Toronto.
>
> Among the vehciles was a 1961 Corvair, which had been conveniently left
> with it engine cover open. I hade never seen a Corvair engine in the
> metal before, so I studied it for a while. Two questions eventually
> arose:
> 1) How do you get the oil filter off?
> 2) The generator belt appears to double as the cooling fan belt, and
> traces a rather creative path, flexing and twisting within two planes.
> Is this primarily why they tended to fail? And if so, why would GM have
> designed such a critical part do perform such calisthenics?


The Corvair engine, transmission and rear suspension were actually designed
by some German guy named "Porsche" - on contract to GM.....

Porsche was said to have a modicum of success in designing a "people's car"
for Adolph Hitler, and also won a race or two with cars bearing his
name......

The swing-axle rear that "automotive engineer" (no, not really!) Ralph
Nadar cited in his vendetta against GM, was an almost-direct copy of the VW
of that same era.

If you ever worked on both, you would often wonder if some of the parts
might be interchangeable......

........as a matter of fact, Crown Engineering made a kit that allowed you
to install a Corvair engine into a VW bus. I did a couple of these
conversions back when........

Kruse > wrote in article
.com>...
>
> * wrote:
>
> > The swing-axle rear that "automotive engineer" (no, not really!) Ralph
> > Nadar cited in his vendetta against GM, was an almost-direct copy of
the VW
> > of that same era.
>
> Nadar made a man for himself by bashing the Corvair design and making a
> lot of money by doing it. It's interesting that he also tried to bash
> the Chevy Citation design, but GM sold so many Citations that it
> backfired on him. Besides pocketing tax-payer raised presidential
> campaign money, exactly what does Nadar do for a living? Oh, wait. He's
> a lawyer. Never mind......
>
>

Way back when........

....... I read that Nadar, flush with his "victory" over GM, decided to go
after VW and Porsche for using the same rear suspension design, but was
wisely advised that the Germans would chew him up and spit him out.

Too bad GM - in an ill-advised P.R. effort - chose to roll over instead of
crushing Nadar when they had the opportunity.

* wrote:
> Hugo Schmeisser > wrote in article
> >...
> > Yesterday my wife and I attended an auto auction held by RM Auctions
> > near Toronto.
> >
> > Among the vehciles was a 1961 Corvair, which had been conveniently left
> > with it engine cover open. I hade never seen a Corvair engine in the
> > metal before, so I studied it for a while. Two questions eventually
> > arose:
> > 1) How do you get the oil filter off?
> > 2) The generator belt appears to double as the cooling fan belt, and
> > traces a rather creative path, flexing and twisting within two planes.
> > Is this primarily why they tended to fail? And if so, why would GM have
> > designed such a critical part do perform such calisthenics?
>
>
> The Corvair engine, transmission and rear suspension were actually designed
> by some German guy named "Porsche" - on contract to GM.....
>
> Porsche was said to have a modicum of success in designing a "people's car"
> for Adolph Hitler, and also won a race or two with cars bearing his
> name......

It was not unusual for those engines to start leaking oil before 50k
miles and pretty soon the backend was covered in a fine layer of black
oil. They also could pop a fan belt easier than a more conventionally
designed car.

Still they were fun to drive, altough they were light in the front end
and skittish in winds.


>
> The swing-axle rear that "automotive engineer" (no, not really!) Ralph
> Nadar cited in his vendetta against GM, was an almost-direct copy of the VW
> of that same era.
>
> If you ever worked on both, you would often wonder if some of the parts
> might be interchangeable......
>
> .......as a matter of fact, Crown Engineering made a kit that allowed you
> to install a Corvair engine into a VW bus. I did a couple of these
> conversions back when........

* wrote:
> .......as a matter of fact, Crown Engineering made a kit that allowed
> you to install a Corvair engine into a VW bus. I did a couple of these
> conversions back when........

I remember those. You could also put a Corvair engine in a bug or a
Karmann Ghia (which woulda been way cool). IIRC, you had to swap the ring
gear to the other side of the pinion because the Corvair engine turned
the opposite way of a bug engine. Or use a transporter (bus) transaxle
which had gearing at the ends of the axles that reversed the rotation. It
was kinda rough on the transaxle and clutch, esp if you used the higher
powered engines. I believe the top engine was a 180hp turbocharged unit.

There was also a kit to put a small block V8 in the Corvair. You had to
turn the transaxle around and the engine went into where the rear seat
(which was pretty useless anyway) normally was. I guess if you did it
right, it was a real screamer. Sounds like a real PITA tho...having to
put a radiator somewhere, build an enclosure around the engine, etc. But
then, if it were easy, it wouldn't be as much fun...

Corvairs were fun to drive if you watched out for the oversteer (or
learned how to take advantage of it). They tended to leak oil after a
while and often were belt-eaters, tho. The last ones (1965 or so, IIRC)
were pretty nice...they did away with the rear swing-axles among other
things.

> It was not unusual for those engines to start leaking oil before 50k
> miles and pretty soon the backend was covered in a fine layer of black
> oil. They also could pop a fan belt easier than a more conventionally
> designed car.

Interesting. Just picked one up. Fun little car. 1964 Corvair,
unfortunately not a Spyder, but it is a convertible.

It was easy to toss a belt on the early models, especially the Spyder.
Lift the throttle under boost you were almost guranteed to toss the
belt. We changed one of the fixed tensioners for a spring loaded
variable and this made a significant difference. GM later adopted a
similar scheme.

JW

ZZ wrote:


>
> Corvairs were fun to drive if you watched out for the oversteer (or
> learned how to take advantage of it). They tended to leak oil after a
> while and often were belt-eaters, tho.


Which was the main subject of my original message, and no-one's
answered that question: Why did GM allow such a critical component as
the fan belt to flex and twist so much?

* wrote:

<snip>

>
> The Corvair engine, transmission and rear suspension were actually
> designed by some German guy named "Porsche" - on contract to GM.....




Interesting. Except that Porsche and VW cooling fans are mounted
vertically.

On reflection I suppose there may heve been issues with rear leg room,
which appears to be somewhat scanty in the Corvair compared to other
contemporary compacts. If a cooling fan had been mounted vertically, GM
would probably have to have installed it on top of the engine instead
of behind it, in order to limit the length of the assembly. But then
that would have created height problems.

And if GM had driven a horizontal fan off a distributor-type gear
drive, that may have presented other difficulties.

It's almost as if the concept was doomed from the start.