<VV> Corvair Powered Porsche

[Tony Underwood]

At 07:14 AM 4/19/2007, jwcorvair at aol.com wrote:
>
>The fellow I bought my Porvair from told me that if he had it to do 
>all over, he would have used a Corvair four speed with the engine. 
>He wanted to have turbo setup, but the turbo would not work well 
>with the 901 gearing. (Even the original 930 Turbos had only a four 
>speed gear box.)

This is my intent (if I can ever manage enough time and opportunity 
to get it done).    I don't believe the Porsche gearbox is an 
acceptable option, considering the ratios which are intended to serve 
a high strung 4-banger with a limited range powerband.

The 'Vair 4-speed transaxle may be heavier and the shifter is 
certainly gonna be an issue (Porsche shifter has to go, 'Vair shifter 
fabricated in its place) but the driveline package will sure be a 
better mix for the car than trying to mate the 'Vair to the Porsche 
transaxle particularly considering the adaptor necessary and the 
reverse-rotation hardware for the 'Vair engine etc.   It's just 
better to use the 'Vair driveline as an assembly/package and take the 
50-60 lb weight hit (I think that's about right).



>I can see many advantages to using a Corvair gear box when building 
>a 911/912/356 hybrid. The biggest advantage, in my opinion, is that 
>you would have an engine and gear box designed for each other. The 
>second advantage is that you would not need to build a reverse 
>rotating engine. I have thought about using a Powerglide in such a 
>conversion and adapting an early Tempest Powerglide gear selector to 
>the Porsche. (We had a discussion on VV a couple of years ago about 
>using a Tempest Powerglide selector in Corvairs.) I suspect the 
>person that build the Powerglide Porsche adapted the Porsche shifter 
>to a modified cable for the Powerglide. I have often thought that a 
>properly built (that is, modified for performance) Powerglide could 
>make a very good autocross transmission in a light car. Left foot 
>braking comes to mind.



Then again, a 'Vair PG shifter is so small and compact it can be 
placed almost anywhere...  or, make a deal with Mark to eyeball his 
specs sheet on the PG floor shifter and cobble up your own clone 
variant...   which would still be cheaper than trying to deal with 
chasing down a Tempest shifter etc.




tony..