Very cool cool. I wonder if there's a way to use the cold from the propane evaporating system to help air cool the engine? Like put an evaporator atop The fan.
Well sir, you nailed it with the observation that a guy can double or triple the power output of an aircooled engine, but he cannot double or triple the cooling capacity as well. Not with air cooling. I did hear you say that you’d used the tachometer figure to calculate top speed at Bonneville. With wheel slippage at ten percent or higher on the salt there’s no way to derive an accurate number. A reasonable guesstimate might be possible though. Enjoyed the video and would love to learn more about the technique of crafting the W-C cylinders.
I really wish there was a way to find out what make and model of mixers he used on his record motor. They're not a type I can recall ever seeing before. Anyone happen to know?
Hello AHHOLT, I used Impco 425 mixers on the turbo's. Herb Hills, who was CEO of Impco at the time, was very helpful and decided to sponsor me and even let me use his dyno. He was a very kind and generous man. TomKeo
@@tvkperformance5968 Hello TomKeo! I never expected to hear from the man himself, thanks! I can see it now; I wasn't taking into account that they were partly hidden inside the intake elbows. I didn't even consider 425's because the current Impco literature says they need to be vertically mounted. As a matter of fact, I've been trying to come up with an N/A intake system for a different engine using the smaller 125. I emailed Impco tech support about horizontal mounting of mixers bigger than the 55 and they said flat out no, that the springs and diaphragms weren't strong enough to function on their sides and it wouldn't work. Your success says otherwise. Did laying the 425's over give you any kind of problems?
Amazing vehicle, by an amazing man. I'm told that his is one of oldest standing records at Bonneville, if not the oldest. Being a strong proponent of propane myself, I was very interested to find out more about this car and particularly how he made it work on an air-cooled engine.
Fascinating video thank you. I am a retired Porsche tech who specialized in air-cooled 911's. Porsche's philosophy in regard to cooling was to use oil cooling - this was so important to them that they considered their engines as much oil cooled as air cooled. A large oil pump/dry sump setup up with a large oil reservoir and dual oil coolers with oil sprayers aimed at the underside of each piston carried heat away. As a side note Porsche used a special alloy head stud called "DILIVAR" that expanded at a similar rate to the cylinder/heads/cam housing and eliminated the stretching, breakage, and case pulling prone to the earlier studs. These do not necessarily require replacement after every build, but careful inspection for issues (corrosion, cracks etc.).
Can we get another video explaining how the heads were made/assembled? I was fascinated by the part from 10 mins - 11:45. Would love to know more about how the chambers were affixed to the heads/cylinders.
Looks a lot like a $10,000 to $12,000 Corvair engine. Now you need Toronado rear hubs and 1-1/2” half shafts connecting to a suitable Porsche transaxle. Add trailing arm suspension with cantilever coil overs and all the supports, brackets, bits and pieces and you have a $25,000 to $30,000 back half of an unpainted Corvair body. I would absolutely love to do it if cost was no object but just a pair of triple Webber carbs and Porsche intake manifolds are out of the question. Question: you put a ton of engineering into the water system. Could you cast each cylinder bank as one total aluminum unit that was all fins with the cylinders cast into it? Given a known amount of heat to be dissipated can fins accomplish that task? How much air at 90 degrees Fahrenheit must pass over the fins? Or drop in an aluminum 264 (?) Buick and call it good?
How could this great video be hidden in a corner of RU-vid and only have 55 likes (including mine) after 2 months? Super interesting, especially the combustion chamber and conversion to water cooling!
That is awesome, I have thought about converting motorcycle engines to water-cooling I was thinking just mill down most of the cooling fins. Leaving the top one and bottom fin, mill a clear coolant path in the remaining fins. With a coolant crossover to jump cylinder to head, with the head having aluminum sheet welded to it just as the cylinder. With milled down fins. Possibly mill around the sparkplug hole, and weld in an aluminum tube with the sheet welded to the tube. All this welding and milling would be a nightmare on a 6, 8, 12cyl engine,. Possibly even a 4cyl. Could stressful.. I was thinking single cylinder or two cylinders. I am very interested in this engine. I had a corvair as a kid, and always wanted to drive it. Really wanted to work on it ,modify some things. But it's only 2-3 I ever seen around here. As in for parts I seen none. I like the 4door rear deck area to trunk, the two door look all stretched out to me. I would love to shorten it a bit. Not the whole rear door length, maybe half way. Weld it back together. Making a 2 seat with cargo area. With the remaining doors welded closed. Swapping out the 2speed .for a 4-5 speed. I even thought about mounting a 3.8L v6 Buick in transverse. Even with the transverse version of the 4l60 or whatever. Most recent, after discovering lost foam , lost pla casting. Where anything you can 3D print or can carve from dense foam . Can be cast into aluminum easily. With a possible better than die cast finish. I saw a guy who makes replica intake manifolds, carburetors even. And lots more. Looking as good or better than the original parts. So why not cast some water cooled cylinders that bolted to the case, with thick aluminum jackets and about 1" thick decks 1" thick head with a o-ring groove, and either a dead soft aluminum or copper head gasket. Squeeze in about 1.5"/2.02" valves if possible, and possibly two sparkplugs, and custom pistons with a hemispherical dish in the center. With the head only having about 20cc of chamber in it. With a compression ratio around 8:1-9:1, with a pair of turbos, on methanol, laced with a bit of nitro. And either press in top hat liners, or chrome the cylinders having the O-ring groove in the liner, to seal the sleeve to the head with about 8 bolts(arp studs) per cylinder with flanged nuts, having a 11/16"" or 3/4" hex. (7/16" thread )To spread the clamping pressure. And while at it. Polish the crank and rods , removing all excess material. Leaving a basically polished sculpted finish. Removing stress risers and leaving a stronger crank and rods. And improve oil passages also. Cast a aluminum manifold/ mounting block to accept a either SBC short water pump or big block pump. That Mounts to the rear of the engine. Runs a 1/2" shaft to the front in a bearing mounting flange with pulley. To be crank driven. The manifold block having plugged ports , with two 1" ports connecting to each bank. With three 1/2" ports per cylinder, with 3, 5/8" -3/4" outlets on the head going into a 1.5" outlets into a tee, and possibly a 2" with a 1/2" bypass. The tree having a thermostat using a SBC thermostat. And possibly look into getting a fluid damper harmonic damper, to keep the crank happier! And flow testing the heads, using the info to order a custom grind camshaft. To take advantage of the flow characteristics of the heads, casting 4valve dohc heads would be awesome. Possibly using modified Subaru heads? Doubt they have 8 bolts, or room for them. Maybe a bolt change to allow the use. Maybe cast near replicas of the Subaru heads, keep the cams and valve positions. And modified everything else. Raise the ports , make a more straight shot to and from the valve. With shallow combustion chamber. Thick decks and ceramic insulation coating on the piston dome, combustion chambers, valves, and inside the intake and exhaust ports. And both sides of the turbo tubular manifold. Possibly cast from stainless steel, with 3mm wall, and 10-12mm flanges. (1/8, and 3/8-1/2") with bolt holes for bracing, to prevent breaking tubes. Reduce vibration. With the crack being sandwiched between two engines. It should handle a fairly large power gain. As long as nothing actually breaks from excess RPM, 4x power+ should be easy even 100hp per cylinder,+ turbos and nitro!! Maybe reverse the valve sizes, run a 1.85" intake , with a 2.10" exhaust,. With a huge port, and 1.75" or larger header , with 2valves , 1.5"/1.65" for 4valve. It would be a heck of a project. Someone would either be rich, or own the equipment and have the ability to do the work. And possibly have friends with the ability to machine and cast, CAD design, 3D printing, and willing to help. Because nothing would be available for this. Not even gaskets so I'm thinking cast aluminum valve covers. With enough material to use a o-ring rope as the gaskets , a spark plug tube seal and perimeter seal from a roughly 1.5mm o-ring cord. Someone with waterjet access or EDM to make head gaskets from, .020"- .050" copper without work hardening. And the head o-rings from stainless, could be EDM cut. Slice . 030" thick slices off a stainless tube. Or later weld stainless wire. It would be costly, I! Think corvair should have lasted until the early 80's at least, there could been a race series using them. It could been soo much more..
I did use an intercooler at Bonneville in 1966 but didn't seem to help that much. Since then, I discovered simpler ways to make more horsepower. Thanks for your comment.
Starting in 1966, Corvairs with manual trans. were equipped with Saginaw gearboxes and that was a BIG improvement. I've never had a Saginaw fail. Thanks' for your comment.
The engine is $7,900 +shipping--The Black car is the Car Life Magazine "World's Fastest Corvair" and is not for sale...yet. Maybe next year. Thanks. (tomkeo@aol.com)
The engine is $7,900 +shipping--The Black car is the Car Life Magazine "World's Fastest Corvair" and is not for sale...yet. Maybe next year. Thanks. (tomkeo@aol.com)
My first car was a 1964 Black with Red interior Corvair Monza. My dad just told me this car belonged to a friend of his and I was going to buy it for $200.00 in 1974 money. My dad brought it home to our 2 bay garage. He repainted it right there. I have to admit it looked really good after the paint job but I had been talking about how I liked the 2nd generation body style much more. It was a good little car though.It never broke down or left me stranded.I also would rather it had been a 4 speed instead of the old powerglide automatic transmission it came with. I kept it until I ordered my first new car.It was a blue inside and out 1978.😢 Chevy Nova. It was a stripped down model. lt came with a 6 cylinder and automatic transmission,air conditioning, power steering and brakes.I ended up selling the Corvair for $1000.00 when I got my Nova so at least that was not bad!
NHTSA tests proved the Corvair was as safe as any other car on the road at the time of tests. So old Nader can go suck his snowflake thumb somewhere else.
enjoyed that presentation, very informative. Always liked the 65 and up body style. Had a couple of friends with them, one was the 68 turbo convertible, loved that car, lusted after that, but went the british car route, tr4, tr6, exe's, and also german, still would like a turbo convertible though. They handled well on the twisted Vt roads where I grew up.
I was the proud owner of a 1966 Corvair Monza - bought it stock with 800 original miles in 1968. By then, there were dozens of aftermarket performance products for Corvairs in California, and I made good use for them: I removed the stock carburators, had a Crown ram induction manifold installed with a Holley 4 barrel mounted on top, 3/4 cam, installed Hedman headers with glass-pack mufflers, a Bosch racing ignition coil, dual-point distributor, spring tensioner for the fan belt pulley, opened up the fenders and installed 14" wheels with the new Goodyear radials, and had a fiberglass aero body kit installed with racing/fog lights. I routinely did a "road commute" every 2 weeks from West Los Angeles to San Francisco down the I-5. Several times I would fill up the gas tank, leave from SF or LA sometime between 2:00am - 3:00 am and once I would get on the 1-5, I would turn on my radar detector, and that Corvair would hit 120mph in a short distance. I would drive at that speed for 2- 4 hours heading in the mostly straight with relatively few exits and NO cars on the road - only semi trucks. My time record from San Francisco to West Los Angeles was 4 hours and 28 minutes, and I still had about a 1/2 gallon of 76 Union Plus in the tank . Those were the good ole' days!
I bet that even today if you ran the Corvair up and the 405 in LA on on any given week day the air would be cleaner coming out of the exhaust the going into the air cleaner. It also would most likely be illegal to drive in Coliformia, unless it was all CARB designed and approved
Warren, You are right. They would lock me up because I wasn't using Ethanol. BTW--Years ago Road & Track magazine had a cartoon that illustrated just what you mentioned. Dirty air going in and clean air out the exhaust. Thanks for your comment.
A superb project and I love your accurate technical description of the components and their integration into the overall system. Plus, the sardonic description of the original suspension is to die for... I have nothing against Mr. Nader, but the late Corvair was an awesome sports car and a tragic (inappropriate) victim of the initiation of customer safety. RIP Corvair.
