Daniel's Corvairs

Pictured here is my since-sold '63 Corvair Convertible, which I bought while still a student at William & Mary . The best thing that I can say about it really is that it photographs well. If you examined it up-close you'd see evidence of major body-work, while underneath lurked untold rust horrors hidden by a thick layer of undercoating. Mechanically, my old '63 was forever jinxed -- if I fixed one thing, three other things would go south. The entire Corvair eventually went south as well, as I sold it to a gentleman from Memphis over the internet. Sure I had many fun times tooling along with the top down. But it's not fun being stuck on the side of the road, and it's definitely not fun knowing that the doors don't shut right because the subframe is caving in on itself. The best thing I can say about my experience with this Corvair is that after owning it for three years, I went from Corvair-neophyte to young Corvair guru in no time at all!

The aesthetic abomination pictured here is my present Corvair, "The Green Machine" (or "La Maquina Verde" for all you polyglots). As these snapshots reveal, it's about as ugly a '65 Corvair as you can imagine -- but this is one of those times where you have to look past the paint. This car was previously owned by my friend Greg, doyen of all things Corvair, for 16 years (I'll have photos of his new Rampside soon). Personally I've been familiar with this car for two years, so I knew its history and I also knew first-hand that it was well cared for. The paint is atrocious -- DC-area acid rain has completely eaten away the mid-eighties respray -- but the trunk, subframe, and rockers are about as good as you'll find on a car from the Northeast (Pennsylvania). And since the 110hp engine has been in the hands of a fellow Corvair nut for so long, my '65 will no doubt run for eternity.

Presently, I'm stripping the car down to bare metal and preparing it for a nice coat of "Artesian Turquoise," an original '65 color. As the photos here will attest, I uncovered a fair amount of bondo and fiberglass in the front fender -- most likely from a long-since forgotten about collision. Whoever performed the work originally actually did a reasonably good job. By sanding off the paint, however, I disturbed the body work thereby forcing the issue of re-doing it. Admittedly, this is the first time I've ever worked with body-filler, so I'm still just getting the hang of it. I'll continue to put more photos up as my work progresses.

Fortunately, I've been able to locate a straight, southern parts- car, and was able to cut away some sheet metal to graft onto the Green Machine. My Corvair has some typical late-model Corvair rust: behind the left-wheel (underneath the battery tray); wheel wells; a little in the door jam, too. The rockers, however, are unbelievable -- the secret to good Corvair rockers is to jack the car up on one end and shoot water from a garden hose down into the drain holes at least once a year.