The News of My Demise Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

With apologies to Mark Twain.

Saturday afternoon Tom was prepared to drive me over to Gary’s (Corvair Mechanic Extraordinaire) for him to diagnose the cause of my engine rumbling. He decided first to make sure my carburetors were functioning properly, so he started me up while watching the chokes. I immediately settled into a smooth idle with no rumbling. While lying on the ground, he tightened the exhaust flange nuts to stop a slight leak. After a few minutes of warm up, he decided to take me for a spin around the block. I accelerated fine and sounded fine.

Today, Ariel drove me all around town including high speed jaunts on the interstate, and she felt like I was normal. Excellent news!

Something's Not Quite Right

Last night Tom started me up and backed me out of the garage. After driving around the neighborhood for a few minutes, I was warmed up, but there was still some clatter from one of the lifters on the right side. Tom didn’t like what he felt and heard. There’s a low-frequency rumble from the rear end. He asked Ariel to come out and drive me around to see if she felt and heard the same rumble. Her first comment is that I don’t feel as powerful as before. Then she agreed something sounded different. Now it could be an exhaust leak, but it could also be something else. Uh-oh. Tom had to go to a meeting, so I was parked back in the garage for another day. Tom promised he’d be out tonight to check for exhaust leaks and then measure engine compression to make sure all valves are functioning properly.

His biggest fear is that a piece of the valve seat or head has made it’s way into the bottom end (crank or rod bearing) and is affecting clearance. He checked the walls of the cylinders and didn’t see any scratches that would indicate something broke loose, but you never know.

Back Up and Running

Last night Tom finished putting my engine back together. To replace the head assembly with the dropped valve seat, he one of the two he’d rebuilt for Ariel’s sister’s car. He’ll replace that one with one that’s being reworked at the Corvair Ranch. With new gaskets and seals on the right side, I’ll hopefully not leak as much oil as before. He bought enough parts to eventually do the left side of my engine as well. He couldn’t take me out for a test drive because of an ice storm, so we’ll not know until this evening whether all is well. I certainly seem to be idling nicely and revving smoothly.

Off the Road Again

Last Thursday I started running rough again. Ariel figured it was a fouled spark plug thing again, so last night her dad, Tom, pulled all the plugs and cleaned them. They actually didn’t look too bad. Sure enough, cleaning them didn’t fix the problem. By then it was nearly 10 PM, so he left me in the garage and called it a night.

Saturday morning, Tom did a compression check on my engine, and it showed zero psi in cylinder #5, so up on jackstands I go. After pulling off my right cylinder head, this is what he found. Not pretty.
The valve is basically in the right place, but the steel seat has come out of the aluminum head. Fortunately, they’ve got spare parts on the shelf including a head.

Monday Tom ordered new gaskets for my engine reassembly. I’m off the road until Wednesday at least. In the meantime Ariel is driving her big sister’s Corvair, Heidi.