|
Post by Volktales on Jan 23, 2023 21:44:43 GMT -8
Meanwhile it was time to have a closer look at the original wheels/caps/tires that came with the car. First order of business was giving them all a good clean. This also included the hubcaps, which turned out to be in pretty decent shape. Much better in fact than any of the ones from the previous two cars... Yes I know the rallys look great on this car. But they are going to look fantastic on Bluey for sure. They will be blasted and re-painted, because it is the right thing to do... I don't mind the stock look at all, and will be happy to run this look on Glacier... But what about these tires? When was the last time you heard of Goodyear Tiempo tires??? Have a look at the info on the back of the tire. Note the four different seasons shown on the sidewall. What is the significance of this??? This short advertisement will reveal all... Yup. Goodyear Tiempo tires were in fact the world's first "all-season" radial tires and entered production in 1977! These were a major success for Goodyear and of course all other tire manufacturers soon followed. If you look carefully at the codes shown in the previous photo of my tires, you will see that they were produced in late March, 1982! Yes, these tires are pushing 41 years old! For obvious reasons, I want to replace these, BUT the 185/80R13 whitewall size just is not available in Canada, but IS available in the US. Going to have to do something about this and it is probably going to be expensive... The other option is to get different wheels in a more popular size, but have to think about this. For those that might wonder, the Camaro wheels currently on Goldie have the wrong offset and width for a Corvair, and will not be used on the road. Tires, tires, tires....
|
|
|
Post by CrazyBrit on Jan 25, 2023 21:27:01 GMT -8
I haven't used these folks yet, but they were recommended to me by a friend. They're a freight forwarding company in Victoria who will bring your US items in from their US warehouse. Saves going to Point Roberts and enduring those BC Ferries...
|
|
|
Post by Volktales on Feb 5, 2023 23:14:36 GMT -8
So Reagh stopped by today, and he dropped off this. It is one of the HotWheels Corvair "Vairy 8" versions, which as you might expect, has a big V8 in the back seat! You really wouldn't expect any less from HotWheels, now would you... And note the "Ralph's Ride" on the side. I didn't even notice that at first, and had a good laugh about it. Thanks, Reagh! Now let's get into that dash cluster... First up will be seeing what we can do with the damaged speedometer... But before that, lets take a picture to make sure it goes back together like it should. The individual bulb sockets are marked what wire colour goes where, so that is nice. Notice that rusty strap in the bottom right. That is actually very important, as it is the ground strap for the whole cluster. Judging by the rust, you can see it was unlikely to be doing it's job well. In fact someone had added another ground wire in the past, and I will probably retain it... Now let's dig out those speedos. The one on the right is original and the odometer mechanism is all seized up. The left is a working replacement, but l will try to see if the original can be fixed first. That worm drive to the left is part of several gears that drive the odometer numbers. I removed the odometer assembly first to determine what exactly was damaged. But then realized the paint was flaking off the digits, and this would have bothered me. So time for a swaparoo! On these old mechanical units, you can take out the odometer assembly and reset the digits to whatever you like without much effort. I set this one to what the old one registered, and it worked just fine. There we go and ready to be reinstalled. I was going to swap out the fuel gauge too, but the spare turned out to be different to accommodate the brake warning light in the later cluster. Both fuel gauges had the same ohm readings, so the dead fuel gauge is not likely the gauge itself. Back to that later... Next up is de-rusting the housing and making it all look new again... Just because...
|
|
|
Post by Volktales on Feb 12, 2023 22:28:46 GMT -8
So no much work got done on Glacier Grey this week. But I did acquire some more stuff for it. The previous owner found some more goodies at his house and dropped them off for me at work. The stash included another set of keys, a nice condition repair manual and assembly manual, as well as the above owners manual. These all came with the car when he bought it, and the previous mentioned manuals were all reproductions. The above owners manual is an American spec reproduction as well. The Canadian manuals are quite different... This however is very different... This is basically the warranty and service booklet, and is definitely the original one to Glacier Grey as the numbers on the cover and inside match the car. Most of the pages are like the one shown above. They list what should be done for each service. This booklet shows the car was delivered on September 24, 1965, so would have been one of the earlier second generation Corvairs produced. Missing "coupons" from the booklet show the car went back for two warranty related repairs, but does not indicate what was done... This is the coolest page! Shows the car was sold to Marie Jackson from a dealership known as "Collier's Ltd". What limited information I could find was that this was a fairly small Vancouver based Chevrolet/Oldsmobile dealership that went out of business at some time after the mid 1960s. I cannot find a useable picture of the dealer, but it was a very cool Art-Deco building that was eventually demolished in 2007. Was located at 450 Georgia Street, West (which is still a parking lot today). The original owner lived at 2429 Lonsdale Avenue in North Vancouver, and today that address is in the middle of the Trans Canada highway and Lonsdale overpass! The best thing about this booklet is that it shows the original Dealer, original owner (no record on the internet), and shows the car still has its original engine in place. The booklet also shows that Marie did not drive her car that much, as it took her 16 months to get to 4374 miles. It would be neat to find out the rest of the history of the car, and how long she owned it for....
|
|
|
Post by Volktales on Mar 8, 2023 20:58:11 GMT -8
So I have not had much time to work on this project lately. But I did get something accomplished last night... Yup. It is back to finally put the instrument cluster back together... Lots of cleaning was done to get it to a level I was happy with. Note the green paint inside the housing. This is to give the clear lightbulbs the "greenish" glow at night that was so common on '60's cars. There was a lot of rust specks in this finish, but Krud Kutter and patience took car of that... Note the cardboard "tubes" that had to be re-glued in place. These allow light to travel to the indicator lights, without leaking into the illumination area. Naturally the main housing was cleaned up, as well as the instrument faces and lens. Lots of individual parts make up these cluster assemblies. You have to pay attention to what wattage bulb goes into what socket. Can't remember??? Good thing the car's owner's manual explains this well. Except there were only two types of bulb, not three as listed in the manual. Hmmm. And there we go. All the wiring and bulbs plugged back in the right spots, and pre-tested with the battery in Don's handy SAAB. The back of the casing was also soaked with Krud Kutter gel to get all the surface rust off. Again slow, but got there in the end. And now the cluster is ready to install back in the '65...
|
|