1969 Corvair AMT

MR TOM SCHRY

Man Tcoat, I've said it before, you've had some great vehicles over the year!  In my opinion, the Corvair was ahead of it's time and never fully appreciated by the automotive community.  I had a modeling mentor who always would tell stories about the Corvair that he owned back in the day.  His stories always involved some type of mishap with the car but in every story, at the end, he always spoke fondly of the car and said how much he enjoyed owning it.  What vehicle is next on your list of previously owned "gems"?

tjs

 

 

Next up will be a very battered and well used '70 Coronet R/T. Not doing in any sort of order but in real life it It followed the Econoline but overlaped the Datsun pickup I posted a while back.   

Man Tcoat, I've said it before, you've had some great vehicles over the year!  In my opinion, the Corvair was ahead of it's time and never fully appreciated by the automotive community.  I had a modeling mentor who always would tell stories about the Corvair that he owned back in the day.  His stories always involved some type of mishap with the car but in every story, at the end, he always spoke fondly of the car and said how much he enjoyed owning it.  What vehicle is next on your list of previously owned "gems"?

tjs

Tanker-Builder

Hey!

 I liked that little car so much. Grow yours up so I can find it's twin in a used car lot and smoking or not Buy it!' The Model certainly captures the essence tremendously!

 

If I could do that I would have a whole fleet of cars by now!

Hey!

 I liked that little car so much. Grow yours up so I can find it's twin in a used car lot and smoking or not Buy it!' The Model certainly captures the essence tremendously!

Done. Still needs a mirror but I don't have a suitable one right now so that will come later but still calling it done.

The dull faded paint is done by painting Testers dark gloss red then misting a very light coat coat of Tamiya flat red over it. The slight grunge is from digging out a really worn and dirty sanding stick and rubbing it down to take some of the flatness off and leave some spots behind. It was an experiment that I think worked out well because the resulting finish is exactly what I was after.

The rather rough looking BMF doesn't look like that on the actual model of course. It is the magnifying effect of the camera. You can really see the existing yet subtle dirty sanding stick results on the quarter panel.

The silver rear looks just like the brushed aluminum panel on the actual model

If you look really close you will see that the drivers side reverse light is missing the white lens. I never did find a replacement for the real thing back then but no doubt now they are all over Ebay.

Well there it is. The real thing wasn't pretty but it was cheap and fun.

The interior looks okay.

     On those seats though. I always Undercut the fronts of all those types of Buckets. It makes them look lighter and more in tune with the style as well. I don't know(Well ,I do)Why AMT and JOJAN and MPC were so anal about that! NONE of that is important to your build though! Why? are you having fun? That is what counts!! Besides I think she's gonna be a pretty car anyway!

Oho!

        That is and has always been a problem with that kit. Plus, it seems the wheel is a wee bit bigger than it should be! That's why I always cut the column to fit just barely in the dash. The Dodge Mid sized and others were always bad about that too. Oh yeah.The metal trim on the dash was replaced with Wood steamed to the shape, sanded and semi-glossed in place. Birdseye maple trim looked great in there. I did my wife's car with mahogany!

I gotta say!

   Looking good! See the tailight cove? When my car was three I got a plastics jobber to make me a lens that went all across the rear of the car with the Mercury Cougar sequential signal and tail lights in it. The headlight bezels and housings were changed out for Chrysler 300 glass rectangular units. She looked great to me.

keavdog

Wow - engine looks fantastic!

 

Thanks! Can't see about 60% of it when the body goes on but looks better than the empty void the kit provided. 

Wow - engine looks fantastic!

LOL

I think the steering column need some tweaking.  I do not recall ever having to drive the car with my legs shoved through the spokes!

Really neat!

Hey Pawel!

 Could you E-Mail me at gjgeracci846@gmail.com.I still owe you for a favor!

Yeah Tcoat;

 I'll go there!

Now that's some nice detailling!

Not 100% accurate but busied it up. Will get dirtied up a bit more when body on.

Proper fire wall made.

Heater duct is a piece of a header with wire wrapped around it for "pleats"

Shrouds all around so can see through.

Rubber shroud gaskets are screen spline split into smaller strips.

Long skinny stock 1966 battery swapped for normal one.

Spare tire from spares box parts crammed in.

Wires are... well wires.

Tanker-Builder

Tcoat!

     I could've hidden a battalion in the smoke for sure!

 

Battalion? I think your underestimate the volume. Probably at least a brigade level possibly edging on divisional.

Tcoat!

     I could've hidden a battalion in the smoke for sure!

keavdog

Curious place for a spare tire.

 

I presume it was for weight distribution since the A/C cars had them in the front. 

It makes far more sense really.

Mind you there was no space left if you had A/C!

They had to get really inventive with a mount for the rear.

Even the turbo cars had them in the rear. They had to factory dent the housing to get them to fit!

Curious place for a spare tire.

Well this was supposed to be a nice simple out of the box build but since the only other thing for the engine bay (as above)  from the kit is a battery I have some work to do!

Tanker-Builder

        To this day, I am surprised it just didn't plain explode! I have NEVER figured out that part! I guess it was the fuel was a mix of Gasoline and Diesel (More Gas than Diesel) I think close to a 40% mix of Diesel to Gas

 

So it became a heat ignited two stroke! The smoke must have been amazing. 

Real G

That odd fan belt arrangement caught my eye right away!  What were the engineers thinking when they thought that one up?  I bet the Germans would have made a complex gearbox to drive the fan.  Maybe an electric motor would have been better.  But to rely on a motor that runs all the time to cool the engine would have made the Corvair...unreliable at any speed.  

 

Porsche and VW went with a vertical fan but that of course increases height in the rear. The horizontal fan gave loads of space to keep more of the North American design lines in place. It actually worked pretty well but mine was old and worn. In hindsight and with 40 more years of car experience I believe that most of my issues were likely due to worn out pully bearings not the actual design. I didn't have a whole lot of money so I pulled down the engine enough to get it running well but the auxiliary components remained original. The beauty of these engines was that they were dirt simple to just drop out of the car, work on and pop back in. No rad, coolant lines, pollution conrol lines, A/C crap, etc just some wire, a fuel line and 6 bolts. Could have the engine out in under 20 minutes.

That odd fan belt arrangement caught my eye right away!  What were the engineers thinking when they thought that one up?  I bet the Germans would have made a complex gearbox to drive the fan.  Maybe an electric motor would have been better.  But to rely on a motor that runs all the time to cool the engine would have made the Corvair...unreliable at any speed.  

Hi!

        As an owner of Two of the Turbo Versions of the car, I would say the engine was certainly ahead of it's time. My company bought me a new engine for one. The field park tank for Employees and Conractors, was accidentally filled with Diesel! My Secretary filled my car for my return trip to Arkansas and only when I turned off the ignition in Texarkana did I realize it! The engine kept going till I cut the fuel lines.

         Brown and Root replaced the engine as I wasn't the only casualty that day. But, Because it was Aluminum with aluminum heads everything got welded together by the extreme heat generated by the cumbustion of the fuel (Without Spar Plugs I might add!) they melted to the cylinder heads.

         We, at the engineering shop could get it to run on a stand after the fact. We kept it going till the temps fell enough to get it to die, Fuel starved and powered only by the starter which we burned out in the process! But an amazing piece of engineering it was. I hated that belt. We replaced mine with a metallic linked belt which was used by racers.

        To this day, I am surprised it just didn't plain explode! I have NEVER figured out that part! I guess it was the fuel was a mix of Gasoline and Diesel (More Gas than Diesel) I think close to a 40% mix of Diesel to Gas

cbaltrin

Very interesting engine! 

 

They are the only North American designed boxer engines (no they did not come from Porsche like urban legend likes to state.) and the turbo versions were the first turbo production cars anywhere. They were way ahead of their time and although much maligned were a very good engine.

Very interesting engine! 

oldermodelguy

That's a kit I didn't even know was out there. Looking foreward to it !

 

They are very old molds that date right back to 65. It was updated a couple of times between '65 and '69 for the minor year changes and race versions. The current molds have not been change and apparently not even maintained since 1969!

This boxing is from 2015 but there seem to still be loads around.

Pawel

Hello!

I'm looking forward to another build in this series!

It's interesting to see details of a rear-engined car. That "bent" belt drive looks really weird, for example.

You might want to take care of that mold line on one of the mufflers - that cool weathering really brings it out...

Anyhow, looking forward to more progress on this one - good luck with it and have a ncie day

Paweł

 

I got realy good at putting that belt back on at the side of the road. It didn't like the heat and no matter how it was adjusted it would throw at random times. Being an air cooled engine you had to pull over imeaditly or risk overheating very very quickly.

That mold line is almost invisible in real life and it is just the magnifying aspects of the camera that make it stand out so bad. Even then once in the car you won't be able to see the ends of the mufflers anyway. Those engines are really crammed in there.