Fw: <VV> Corvair Industrial Engines

[Brent Covey]

That sounds about right, Dave-

I remember something odd about the heads, they might not have been 140's but
there was something out of the ordinary about them. The customer wanted to
use the engine in a Spyder, and IIRC there was some reason the engine didnt
need much in the way of mods to be suited to having a Turbo on it, but this
was about 25 years ago so a little foggy about just why- It was a very cool
thing to look at when it turned up, never had seen anything remotely like it
prior...

I remember being very surprised to find such a unique engine is such an out
of the way environment as...Calgary!

Calgary was one of those cities like Denver, San Diego, and Atlanta that had
a disproportionately large Corvair population likely attributable to the
aviation interests in town.

Now that you mention it, it DID have the weird generator adapter, there were
about 7 or 8 little conspicuous differences from a run of the mill Corvair
engine of similar vintage. I wished I'd saved that wicked oil cooler, but I
know who I gave the oil pan to and he still has it.

Brent Covey
Vancouver BC


> But all Dynatrac engines were two-carb low compression setups, not 140s.
> The top shroud was modified (extended sideways) for the larger oil cooler
> but the cooler still didn't extend past the head.
>
> The engines that Chevy built for Calgary Dynatrac production would indeed
> have had the cast aluminum pan like we have in the CPF Museum. The bell
> housing, though, was stock Corvair.
>
> I have records of all the "End Product" Corvair engines that Chevy
> produced. Engines sold for use by boat builders, Cord, Canadair etc. were
> handled by the End Products Dept. of Chevy Engineering. They didn't sell
> that many Corvair engines in that way, and none had anywhere near the
> engineering time put into them that the Dynatrac engine did!