<VV> Whats the fastest you've gone in your Vair?

[Jim Simpson]

When I was somewhat younger and living in Idaho with some nice, straight, 
LONG Interstate runs north of Idaho Falls and I had a fresh engine in my 
'66 Corsa turbo, I did open it up to see what it would do.

I had GR-70/14 tires on the rear giving me a little better MPH/RPM ratio 
(3:55 rear) and FR-70/14 tires on the front which pretty well matched the 
original diameter stock tires.  The engine had been recently overhauled do 
to a scored piston and had about 1500 miles on it at the time.  One fine, 
sunny day, I went out for a cruise on I-15 north of town.  After running at 
~75 for ten or twenty miles to warm everything up thoroughly, a opened it 
up a bit and cruised at 90 for a while.  It felt pretty good and stable, so 
I tried 100 for a bit and it still felt pretty good and engine temps were 
ok.  At full throttle it pulled pretty strongly to 119 mph indicated (Corsa 
140 mph speedometer) and 5500 rpm indicated (red line) and was still 
accelerating (although not very much) and I thought that was fast enough 
and backed off.

I have reasonable confidence that the indicated speed and rpm were within a 
couple percent -- the odometer tracked the mile posts well and the 
speedometer tracked with both the rpm and a stopwatch check against the 
mile posts.

That was more years ago than I'd like to believe and I'm not about to try 
to duplicate this on the east coast.  (Traffic back then in Idaho was 
pretty sparse and I-15 was still a brand new road.)  Turbos do work -- even 
at the 5 or 6 thousand foot altitude of Idaho Falls.

Jim Simpson, Group Corvair, '66 Corsa turbo.