<VV> Don't Modify Top Cover Baffles

[Brent Covey]

Hi Phil,

> > The late Milton Binion contributed many valuable ideas to maintaining
and
> > improving Vairs.

Milton was quite a guy, I had a very entertaining tour of his FI 1968 car at
the 1987 Chicago CORSA convention, he was great:-)

> > Milton's scheme was to cut off the mating perimeter of the dissimilar
> > steel component (the splash shield), securing it to the top crancase
cover
> > via bolts/nuts, thereby leaving only an aluminum-to-aluminum mating
> > surface.

On the face of it, this oughta work, but I have seen several (8 or so)
Corvair engines that destroyed the oil baffle following this modification,
apparently by fatigue from the torrent of oil drops beating the metal; the
result was it disintegrated and fell in to be shredded by the connecting
rods, into little thin strips of metal. Needless to say this also made a
mess inside the crankcase etc. and required the cover to come off again
prematurely anyhow.....

I seem to recall that top cover baffle varies in thickness but cannot
confirm that, but am verrrrrrry leery of this mod now, and would not
recommend it.

The factory arrangement is far from the ultimate, but the top cover gaskets
will last about as long as the blower bearing does, more or less, and I
think probably retaining the stock system is best for the average person,
and will only start to leak about when its time to start thinking about
bearing service anyhow, sorta like how water pumps on V8's generally last
about as long as the timing chains behind them are reliable for.

Rolls Royce has a similar cover on thier V8 engine to the Corvair top cover,
and seals it with a peice of silk thread wriggling along close by the bolt
flanges. Chevrolet machine work is not quite to the same standard probably,
but I imagine something like that might make a suitable gasket for us too,
perhaps some sort of oil impregnable cording/string kinda thing.

Hope that helps,
Brent Covey
Vancouver BC