"The truck was purchased in Nevada sometime in the
'70s and restored in Utah after many years of sitting
idle. After I purchased it in May, 2002 we took it to
the 2002 CORSA convention in Flagstaff,
AZ and it wasn’t running right so I didn’t
enter it into any events other than the People’s Choice show,
in which I took second place in the FC
class.
After returning home, I took first
place in a local show in Brigham City in September for the Corvair class. (They
have a Corvair Class in this Rod & Custom show because our club has consistently
entered 16 or more 'vairs for the past 4 years.)
The engine is a 140 HP unit
(from a 1965 PowerGlide Monza,
according to the block code), bored out to .60 over
with the step removed from the heads.
As I mentioned above, it was running rough but
nobody (Rudy Scheindt, Lon Wall, Billy Bruce or Don
Broadhead) could figure out why.
We tore it down in January, 2003
and we are now rebuilding it. It had three broken head
gaskets, not all on the same side, and 10 head studs
pulled out when we tried replacing the heads. None of the head bolts were
torqued down when we started removing them. But we now have it together on the
table and ready for cold adjusting the rockers.
The carburetors were rotated 90 degrees and I couldn’t get the Heim joint
linkage to operate properly or at least to my expectations so we took the
rotator blocks off and returned it to original linkage for the 140.
I removed the 4.11 gears that were in the differential
and replaced them with 3.27s. Just finished putting
the differential together and getting my patterns right. What a learning lesson
that was.
I’ve nicknamed the truck Helios, the Greek
sun god.
The engine about ready to go back in this weekend or next and start
breaking it in so I'll have it ready for the 4th Annual Corvair Gathering in
Mesquite, NV in March, 2003. Wow!
I can't wait to meet everyone again."
