<VV> Pinkish

[airvair at earthlink.net]

As I recall, there was more to the story on Pinky than just the car. If
memory serves me right, there were around 6 built, but Pinky's tranny was
the only one to escape the factory. I think they were thinking of using it
in the Tempest or some other application. Then the factory burned down, and
that was the end of it. It was mostly a turbohydro internally, so most
everything that might eventually need repair/replacement would have been
available over the counter. The real prize would have been the shifter
mechanism that went with it. Without that, it might indeed have been a huge
doorstop.

And talk about a doorstop. One person I know has sitting in his living room
the transaxle from the V-8 powered LM Corvair that Chevy built as a test
mule in the mid '60's. They were seriously experimenting with putting a V-8
in the car to compete with the Mustang, but things quickly got out of hand
with it. So they decided it was easier to just rebody the Chevy II/Nova
just like Ford did the Falcon to come up with the Mustang.

-Mark 


> [Original Message]
> From: Tony Underwood <tony.underwood at cox.net>
> To: <virtualvairs at corvair.org>
> Date: 11/30/2009 11:55:45 PM
> Subject: Re: <VV> Pinkish
>
> At 09:06 PM 11/30/2009, Sethracer at aol.com wrote:
> >
> >
> >In a message dated 11/30/2009 4:38:15 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
> >vairologist at verizon.net writes:
> >
> >It was  advertised as a 3 spd Powerglide.  She said, do you want it?  I
> >said, where the hell would I ever get repair parts for it?  That was the
end
> >of the conversation and my interest in the  transmission.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >Yeah - Why would you want something that Chevrolet never really produced
> >anyway, and there is only one of them around?
> >
> >Good call, Smitty!  <grin>
>
>
>
>
> If I had the chance and the money on hand I'd not have 
> hesitated.   Even if the transmission was inop I'd still go for it.
>
> I don't believe that GM would have deliberately made it so that it 
> would never be rebuildable.   What could go wrong?   Clutches, 
> bands?   Logic would suggest that much of it would likely be 
> corporate GM stuff and things that weren't off-the-shelf would likely 
> be things someone could fabricate, and even then I'd bet that not a 
> helluva lot would go wrong that couldn't be corrected one way or another.
>
> If they can modify a T5 to fit a 'Vair, somebody somewhere could 
> likely fabricate whatever such a transmission might need to make it 
> function again.   If not, it could live in the corner of my basement 
> until *I* could figure a way to fabricate whatever it needed, after 
> calling in a couple favors from my career machinist bud who thinks 
> Corvairs are kinda cool but spends his spare time manufacturing fire 
> arms from templates and diagrams.   I've had him do some aluminum 
> welding on some heads along the way and he knows stuff.
>
> I suspect he could fabricate a few obscure things if need be.    I 
> once watched him use a cad pgm to carve out a batch of hypoid gears 
> from bar stock that drove rollers for an assembly line beltway 
> system.   He'd dump the  fresh cut gears into a vat with polishing 
> media to deburr them then sent them across town to another shop that 
> heat treated and phosphated them, came back looking like something 
> NASA would have used.    He's pretty good.
>
>
>
> There's not much that couldn't be fabricated to fix something like a 
> one-off automatic transmission... and who's to say it wasn't made 
> with mostly corporate GM parts anyway?   GM did the same sort of 
> thing using two Powerglides in that "clutchless 4-speed" they cooked 
> up for the Super-Duty Tuck-under Tempest race cars.
>
> There's almost always a way.
>
>
>
> tony..
>
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