TLC for a worthy GB
Doug Dunlap of
Baldwinsville, NY is the newest owner of this van. He purchased it in March,
2004.
"This van is recently from Charleston,
SC. I purchased
it from Frank Lux of Charleston,
SC, a long-time
Corvair man and member of
CORSA. I understand that
his father bought it in FL in the late '70s (1977
maybe).
The van withstood an
unauthorized, grueling,
250-mile high-speed
road trip from Charleston to Lexington, NC, at which point
it was put on a roll-back
transporter for the remainder of the ride.
I have a hard time believing it survived that
road trip. The belt broke
during the trip and who knows how far
the driver went before stopping?
The engine blew two head gaskets and the
lifters exploded!"
The van was dumped in Tim Colson's
driveway and the delivery people ran,
only to be caught taking off. But, to put it nicely,
we will never know the truth of what really took place the previous 48 hours.
This rig has 82K miles
on it. After the beating that the engine took (80 HP), Tim
and I recently built a 95 HP truck engine.
The plate number is CWK
6165, which has a neat tie-in with the Greenbrier's years
of production. It will be making its debut at the Central New York
Corvair Club's Recall on June
4-5, 2004."
Here's what Tim Colson had to say about
his time with the van:
"As Doug said, the van was delivered by flatbed truck to my driveway
at about 8:30 on a Sunday night. There was snow still on the ground and the
delivery people left in enough of a hurry to get sideways in my driveway,
obviously without any attempt to notify me. I
caught up with the slippery critters driving the truck by running out the door
in the dark flashing my camera at them.
Anyway, after they left I moved the 'brier into
the garage. It was then that I figured out why they were in a hurry to leave...
It
had no power. The head gaskets hissed at me like snakes, the lifters acted like the
rockers were very loose, and the clutch was jumpy and slipping. I found a
broken belt laying in the back. The final trial by
fire was a bad new clutch disk. The wrong rivet style had been installed and
that was fun to figure out.
The van now has a '65 95 HP car engine converted by me to a truck
block by filling the shroud hole for the dipstick, filling the oil fill hole with
a soft plug, and
drilling a new oil fill hole in the block.
I re-sealed both crank seals and pushrod
tubes, put a new blower bearing on it, and completed other upgrades to the distributor and carburetors.
I put 140 HP exhaust manifolds on it with Clark's dual exhaust kit (my own design hangers though
mounted to the engine instead of the body).
I just finished building
two new carbs for it because they were running like
crap. I put '65-style
carbs with power circuits on it.
The ones that came with the engine
were frozen. Someone
had tried to free them improperly, damaging nice
low-mileage carbs beyond reasonable repair.
It has been one detail after another
unexpected but needed. I sense even more to do in axle u-joints and
bearings. They just don't look/feel right and have been messed with. There are
a lot of butchers out there I guess."
What a story! I'm relieved that Tim and Doug were able to
restore the van to running order. Here are some pictures that Tim sent of the
engine installation:
And here's a great picture of the van back on the road!
Information from the data plate
