<VV> The "Real" Astro I Powertrain

[Tony Underwood]

At 06:54 hours 05/13/2005, werp knarly wrote:
>the engine displayed looked complete enough... someone seems to have spec's
>on it...
>
>was it also just a mock up? (say it aint so!)



Nope, not a mockup.    GM built several of these "cammer" engines.    They 
displaced ~170ci or thereabouts and made some respectable horsepower.   No 
cammer engine was ever installed in the Astro.    One of the engines *did* 
make the car show tours with the car, but it was mounted on a stand and not 
in the car.

Last time I picked and dug through the Astro-1 it had a 140 engine in it, 
or at least the engine was sporting 4 carbs, not running of course.   The 
car oddly enough did have an electrical system... which you plugged into a 
wall outlet to work things.    It was never intended to move under its own 
power although it likely could be made to do so with a little (OK,a LOT) 
bit of engineering work provided someone wasn't afraid to do some mods, 
which of course will never happen.


According to scuttlebutt, GM scrapped the cammer engines when the Astro was 
done with the car show circuit, supposedly.   It's not quite clear how many 
engines were built, but there were more than just one for sure, likely 
several more; one person said they'd been told there had been at least 7 
engines assembled, but that's  just hearsay.

Now:    (I've told this story before)


I did some chasing around and digging, picking and poking people's minds as 
well as scrounging for eye-witness accounts anywhere I could find info, as 
to what became of these engines.    I turned up some odd info from two 
different people regarding a "back door deal" which involved somehow who 
managed to sneak one of these engines out and away, whereupon it ended up 
in a late coupe.    This particular story came from a non-Corvair (Camaro 
fanatic from Back When) guy who had attended a musclecar get-together and 
was talking about Camaros with some other people when someone brought up 
Corvairs whereupon the anecdote came up.   It seemed this fellow's cousin 
or someone was acquainted with the person with the Corvair and while 
"hanging out" with the circle of friends, he'd gotten a look at the engine 
in the car which had odd 3xbbl carbs and cams in the heads driven by belts, 
oddest thing he'd ever seen, whereupon I'd perked up bigtime, and asked for 
more details.

The guy said that his cousin (or whoever, I forget the exact relation since 
I was sidetracked) had told him that the Corvair guy had relatives who 
worked for GM or he in fact had worked for GM in some capacity, and wanted 
one of the engines which along with others were slated to be cut up and 
recycled.   Supposedly, this guy had gotten access to the vicinity where 
the engines were sitting on pallets awaiting the choppers, sneaked one of 
them out and replaced it with a standard Vair engine, figuring that the 
choppers wouldn't know the difference or care one way or another since they 
just counted pallets and cut up what they were sent.   Supposedly it was a 
weekend evening foray, Monday the pallets were unloaded and cut up, so said 
the Camaro guy.    He went on to describe the engine in some detail as I 
listened closely.

He  asked about when the engine had been available for production Corvairs 
(I guess he thought it was an option) and I told him that GM never did 
produce this engine outside of building a scant handful of prototypes and 
that supposedly they'd all been destroyed and where did this fellow get the 
engine?   Who was he, is the car still around, what's the deal, what was 
his name...  whereupon the guy got spooked, clammed up, drifted away from 
me and disappeared not to be seen again.

I tried to chase him down but he was gone.    I don't know whether or not 
the story was bogus or what...

Later on, about a year or so, I talked briefly to a guy who said he'd seen 
a Corvair at an autocross (never did say where) many years earlier which 
had a "special optional 6 carb DOHC engine with three blowers on it" that 
"ran like stink" and was "...originally slated to be a part of GM's race 
program" or some such...  most of which was complete embellishment BS.   I 
pressed the fellow for details, being careful not to spook him the way the 
first guy was, and this 2nd guy talked about the engine, said he'd seen it 
up close, and was "sure" it had been a special performance option in 
Corvairs (which of course it was not).    When I'd mentioned that the only 
OHC engine that GM ever built for a Corvair had a single  cam in the heads, 
he insisted it was a DOHC because he'd "...seen the gilmer drive belts 
running the cams in the heads".   I didn't pursue the matter.   I did ask 
him about other details and he rattled on about the "triple blowers" atop 
the engine (the three squirrel-cage cooling fans the "Cammer" engines 
used?) which I also didn't try to correct.   He then started in on how 
Nader had stopped Corvair production because they were fire hazards (I'm 
serious) and (of course) they rolled over in corners, followed by an 
unsolicited description of Corvair engineering, design, and history which 
was pretty much about 50% pure fabrication.

The guy was basically a Barney Phife sort, but his description of the 
engine in the car was suspiciously accurate for the Astro "cammer" 
engine.    I'm still not sure whether to believe his story or not, seeing 
as how so much of what he'd said about other things was so bogus.    Add to 
this the fact that he looked a little like Burle Ives, only fatter...   I 
found him just a little hard to take seriously.


Then, a couple years later, I had a chance to talk to Dave Newell at a show 
and told him what I'd heard, and he related a similar story that he'd dug 
up, regarding the "purloined engine" which, according to his info, had by 
hook or by crook ended up hiding out in the engine bay of a Vair owned by 
the son of a GM white-collar sort... and had evidently been seen on the 
roads and in public a number of times.    This sounds like the story I got 
from the guy whose cousin knew somebody...  the Burle Ives guy offered up 
little or nothing as to details of the car, its owner, or where he'd seen 
it, only that he'd seen it at an autocross somewhere.


Made me wonder... autocrosses as a rule haven't really been all that 
popular as events until the '70s or so, from what I've seen (nothing like 
their popularity today) and if this engine had indeed been swiped from GM, 
it must have been done in the mid'60s...  making the car in question likely 
already accumulating close to ten years on the clock by the approximate 
time "Burle" said that he saw it.    It's possible that "Burle" may have 
simply seen a Weber equipped Stinger and "took that ball and ran with it" 
when asked about it... or maybe he did see the same engine we're talking 
about.


Now, the guy with the cousin said that he'd seen the engine back when 
Camaros were first coming out, and only noted the Corvair as an item of 
interest because it "looked like the new Camaro".    The timing is about 
right... and the cousin-guy didn't know much of anything about Corvairs so 
I'd wager that he wouldn't have been privy to details of the Astro or the 
cammer engine in any event, and that what he was telling me was bona 
fide.   Maybe.

Did one of these engines escape the scrapper's torch?   I'd like to think 
so.   However, if it did, and if it somehow managed to indeed end up in the 
back of a Vair owned by some character with friends/family in high places, 
it hasn't resurfaced outside a few hearsay comments along the way.


There's no proof... just stories from people who saw something odd in the 
back of a Corvair.     However, there exists some parts and pieces (carbs, 
for instance) left over from the cammer's days, along with photos, 
technical specs and engineering details, and some dyno pull data...  enough 
to suggest that it certainly had performance potential.


In the meantime, all I have of substance is a really nice photo of the 
engine in a stand... same one that's available for viewing on Gary Aube' 
web site.


tony..