<VV> CO2 Serious Angle

Mel Francis mfrancis at wi.rr.com
Tue Jun 17 12:33:03 EDT 2008


Of course Smitty, as with all collector cars, there are two types of Corvair 
enthusiasts; those who maintain theirs as OEM-original, collector cars
and those who are quite willing to modify things in the stock setup, to 
better suit their personal preferences and keep up with automotive
development in general. That's why we now have Corvairs with fuel injection, 
electronic ignition, disc brakes, 14" - 15" wheels, front spoilers, etc.
Each modification seeks to address one or the other  perceived 
'shortcomings' of the original design.

The Chevy engineers did a great job, given the constraints they had at the 
time. But almost 50 years have passed and certain details in the stock
heating system can reasonably be addressed now, such as eliminating any 
passage of engine-related fumes into the passenger compartment.
Stephen Upham is reporting a raw fuel leak that starts to burn his eyes, as 
he idles the engine. This is not acceptable in today's automotive 
environment.

You said yourself; "Somewhere along the line, even with the best assembly 
things go wrong.  Humans and defective materials get into the act."

Some of us 'modifiers' might address this situation, by stopping the flow of 
engine compartment air to the interior. That doesn't mean we then let 
maintenance slide,
simply because we can't smell any fumes, but at least it puts our eyes and 
noses out of the loop, as the prime sensors of what's happening in the 
engine compartment.
I've worked around strong chemicals most of my life and don't need any 
further aggravation to my lungs, just because I'm enjoying my hobby.

So, initially, my flex tubes are disconnected. Later, I'll see what I can do 
to mount an electric heater up under the dash, to heat the flow of air that 
will still be
coming from my rear-mounted blower. I can mount an upper air intake in the 
rear trough, to supply fresh air to the blower, perhaps with a nice K&N 
filter.
The air won't be as hot as the original design, but it will adequately defog 
the windows during the summer months. And that's a trade-off I can accept.

Mel Francis
65 Monza convertible
77 Monza 2+2


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Smitty Smith" <vairologist at verizon.net>
To: <virtualvairs at corvair.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 17, 2008 10:39 AM
Subject: <VV> CO2 Serious Angle


>
>
> Smitty Smith <vairologist at verizon.net> wrote:    Smitty Says:  Everybody 
> knows engineers ain't too smart.  They go around engineering things that 
> have no hope of working.  They design an engine that has inferior O rings 
> and suspensions that require intelligent maintenance of tire air pressure 
> to be safe. They design things like cyl head gaskets that leak and exhaust 
> packings that leak .   No, wait a minute now.  Do they really do that? 
> Somewhere along the line even with the best assembly things go wrong. 
> Humans and defective materials get into the act.  If one makes the 
> assumption that the engineers aren't dummys after all and tries to 
> understand their goal, then uses the best materials and educated effort to 
> make the equipment work as advertised then odds of having success are 
> pretty fair.  Success being, "it works as the engineers designed it". 
> Through my years of ownership of Corvairs I have learned to take a whole 
> lot of peoples critisism of Corvairs with a grain of
> salt.  I am sorry your standard of maintenance has not been up to the 
> engineers standards.
>  Even If I did want to sidestep the design of the heater system I would be 
> in serious trouble here.  One of the items on the State safety inspections 
> is "fan forced hot air from the base of the windshield for defrosters". 
> (or else you don't drive the car)
>



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