Making It Warm

With Ariel's dad's car off the road, I've been pressed into daily-driver status again which is fine with me. As Fall returns full-force, the morning temperatures drop, and it's time my heater works again. Since Corvairs are air-cooled, it's necessary to control the amount of air flow that crosses my engine fins. To accomplish this, GM designers put in sheetmetal that encloses the bottom of the two volumes that contain the engine's cylinder and head fins and added two thermostatically-controlled doors. The doors are closed when the engine is cold, thus restricting air flow, and open to allow air-flow once the engine is up to temp.
The thermostats are quite expensive to replace, so many Corvair owners remove them and the associated sheetmetal during the warmer months when engine heat-up happens without restricting air flow. The heater in a Corvair works by ducting the heated air bottled up in the closed volumes and directing it into the passenger compartment. Therefore, without the sheetmetal, the heater is useless.
So, the re-installation of the thermostats has become a Fall ritual around our house. First, it was Ariel's sister's Corvair a couple of weekends ago, followed by mine getting installed last weekend. Finally, Ariel's dad's got hers installed yesterday.