<VV> My Rebuild

[Ryan Verthein]

I posted this on the CCF...thought I'd give it a go here too.  enjoy!



When I started this rebuild, I had a 110 Smog motor to rebuild that I’d gotten from Terry Kalp. But that all changed as soon as Keith Leslie said “you can have this 140 in this car” referring to a 1965 Coupe he’d recently acquired.

I’m not sure what started the idea of doing a rebuild, but I wanted it to happen.  I’ve been into Corvairs since November of 2004, and ever since then I’ve always dreamed about what I would do for a rebuild, and last spring I decided it was time.
Terry Kalp had a smog 110 engine that was halfway running that he didn’t need, so he offered it to me as a starting point for a rebuild. I started ordering parts and tearing down the smog motor when Keith told me that I could have the 140 motor that was in a coupe he’d just brought home. The motor was stuck, but since I was going to do a full rebuild I wasn’t too worried about breaking some pistons to get it apart(and boy did we.) 
After pulling the 140 engine I got to work pulling it apart. It took us hours and hours over a few weeks to finally split the case open because there were multiple pistons corroded and rusted into the cylinders.  We used heat, PB blaster, WD-40, and any other thing we had around.  We finally settled on breaking one or two the cylinders into pieces around the pistons.  It worked!
It’s hard to really put everything into perspective, but weeks would go by where nothing would get touched, and in the meantime, I started realizing that since I was doing a 140, I was going to need a little more performance. It was sort of one of those “while I’m in there” sort of thought processes.  I figured that as long as I was going to put the money into rebuilding a 140 I might as well do it up right. 
I called around and made some threads on Corvair Center about who to have do my head work. After promising one of the well known head guys that I’d send them to him, I didn’t.  I went against the grain and brought my heads to be done by a VERY well recommended head shop in town, whose owner John has been doing heads probably since these corvairs weren’t even 10 years old. I had a feeling after talking to him that the heads would be okay in his hands, so I brought them to him and told him I was in no hurry.
In the meantime, I was discovering more and more things that I just “had” to do to the engine, including being talked into throwing out my distributor completely and going with a FORD EDIS crank-fired ignition system(more on that later), and using forged pistons instead of cast.
It turns out that 140 heads do well with some mild porting in the exhaust chambers and smoothing of the combustion chambers, so I went ahead and bought myself a rotary tool and went to work on them halfway through John’s process.  He hadn’t replaced any seats yet so he thought it would be a good time to do this work in case I nicked a seat. I brought the heads back to John, and had already scooped up more ideas for them. I told him to go ahead and fly cut the gasket area. He couldn’t do it but he’d have them sent over to another company in town who does VW heads and have them do it. Fine. So in the end he replaced 7 seats(staked them all by hand too), all 12 guides with new cast irons, had the heads fly cut, then went to grinding the seats/valves and installing them with the new stock springs. I just saw the finished product today and they look DAMN good.
So now here I am with what should be a pretty strong engine. A bored 40 over 140 with a matched set of forged speed-pro pistons with teflon skirts riding on a nice original 140 nitrided crank with STD journals, fly cut heads with some mild porting, and an OT-10 Cam to top it off (I do have to drive this car every day after all..). Of course I’m also using new Sealed Power Lifters, new grooved ball rockers, etc..
I finished the ignition controller called a Megajolt Lite Jr. V4 (version 4) within the last few days, and with the help of Nick Williams and Brent P of the company that makes the Unit (Autosport Labs) went to creating an ignition map.  Now that I have no distributor, I have to manually input the amount of advance per load and RPM range in a computer program dedicated to the controller. I haven’t used it yet, but I can attest to the fact that for how cheap it is to have one of these systems in your car, it’s hardly even worth it to spend all the money having the original distributors for our cars recurved unless there’s some sort of nostalgic or concours reason to keep it. There are better options!
I now have complete control with a 10x10 ignition map, including the option of installing a shift light, a temp sensor for warm-up mapping...  the list goes on. Also, built into the system is a “soft” rev limit that stops your engine from going over your own specified RPM range, and dials back your advance to accomplish the task.

I’ve had a LOT of help from people along the way of this rebuild, and I’m sure I’ll have a lot more before it’s done. As I write this I only have one more order to make (for a Harmonic balancer) and I will have evertying.  Oh, and I still owe John 190 bucks for the head work.. I have a good friend coming to visit us the weekend of the Cold Tuna, and he’s coming with me and we’re bringing some engine with us!
I admit I can be completely naive about things so I sometimes need an extra push in the right direction, but once I have a good understanding of what I’m doing there’s really no stopping me! I’m looking forward to much more Corvairing.

Ryan

 
 1965 Corsa Coupe 110/4(posi)
"164 ci of Flat Six Fury!"