In this issue: 1960 Corvair For Sale From the New Activities Chairman - by Ed Hlusko Steering Wheel Adjust - by Smitty Smith Points - by Dean Zawacki

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1 From our Lynchburg Bureau comes this photo of Steve Dunn s Corvair hunkered down during this year s annual Storm of the Century. Sunday, March 20 is the first day of Spring, and we set our clocks forward the previous Sunday, March 13. In this issue: 1960 Corvair For Sale From the New Activities Chairman - by Ed Hlusko Steering Wheel Adjust - by Smitty Smith Points - by Dean Zawacki AND MORE!

2 PAGE 2 January 2016 THE SPYDERS BREATH GAZETTE Officers for 2016 President: Keith Klemm (240) kjklemm@hotmail.com Vice President: John Gilliland (757) jwg1701@cox.net Activities Chairman: Ed Hlusko (757) ehlusko@yahoo.com Secretary/Treasurer: Anne Davis (757) annie-bo@cox.net Newsletter Editor: Dean Zawacki (757) deanage5@hotmail.com Historian: Smitty Smith (757) vairologist@cox.net Phone Committee: Helen Smith Barbara Gilliland CORSA/CPF Board President Ken Hand Vice President Mike Hall Secretary Bryan Blackwell Treasurer Paul Sergeant Eastern Division Directors Bryan Blackwell bryan@skiblack.com Dean F. Gemberling pro@ihscomputers.com Karl Haaakon cityhawk@pobox.com John Nickel fivcent@tds.net Activities Schedule January 26th - Club Social Mongolian Barbecue, 862 Military Hwy., Norfolk, 6:30 pm. (757) January 30th Polar Bear Run For details and registration, please visit February 9 th - TCC Business Meeting 7:00pm at Hendrick Chevrolet on Virginia Beach Boulevard in Norfolk. Refreshments Robert Graefe All Members - Please make sure you pay your Dues If you have not yet paid - please send a $12.00 check, payable to TCC, to Anne 4220 Lindberg Place, Virginia Beach, VA We want to recognize everyone's birthday! Please us and let us know your day of celebration. Penny Chance Winners: We Need Your Articles! Publication Notice: To be a full member of The Tidewater Corvair Club (TCC), you must be a member in good standing of the Corvair Society of America (CORSA). Annual dues are $12.00 for TCC and $45.00 for CORSA. Due to insurance requirements, only paid member may participate in Club Events. The Spyder s Breath Gazette is a monthly publication, published and distributed by TCC, Inc. This publication is available for a donation of $10.00 annually. The Spyder s Breath Gazette reserves all rights with the following exceptions: Any material may be reproduced or reprinted by CORSA or any CORSA Chapter only for nonprofit purposes that benefit Corvair Enthusiasts. Any such reproduction must credit both the author and the Spyder s Breath Gazette. Rights for any other use must be requested in writing from The Tidewater Corvair Club. Correspondence should be sent to: Tidewater Corvair Club, Inc. Corvair Society of America 2901 Cardo Place P.O. Box 607 Virginia Beach, VA Lemont, IL

3 PAGE 3 January 2016 THE SPYDERS BREATH GAZETTE From the 2016 Activities Chairman - by Ed Hlusko My 1966 Monza is done; I have mentioned this before. Front is almost all new. Interior is new material or refurbished. The rear seat vinyl was good so I just re-stuffed it with new material. Fixed the front broken bucket seat springs. POR 15 d any rust and shot new undercoating under. Engine has been extracted 4, no 5 times, now. I rebuilt that back end sewing machine down to the block, while it was still in the car. Ok; only 4 times the engine has been totally OUT. New slave cylinders for the brakes and new brakes too. If ya need help, call me. If ya want to go on a Corvair Outing, like we did to Kitty Hawk, call me. Tech session on any Saturday or Sunday, Call me. Southern sayin is, Don t Ask, Don t Git. The new, High-Tech world says, Don t call/ , Don t Git! I look at the Peninsula Car Club site for upcoming shows. I ll post those in our area, within a day s drive. If you know of one, like your High School or civic club having one, then do pass it on. They are smaller and usually I like them much better than being in a 5 to 10 acre lot, like at the Aviation Museum. I get to be the odd, and only, Corvair there. Go to a big one and Smitty hogs all the good trophies with his convertible. Mine is a nice driver, only. Try to plan in advance of your Tech Session or major work. I have some gaskets, but not all. Clark s Corvair has about everything you ll need for parts and gaskets. However, check with your local AutoZone or whatever. They do carry some parts, as Dean and I have found out, like air and oil filters, fuel pumps and brakes. They even overnight parts at no extra cost. You will find they do give you real hard looks when you mention Corvair and the year. Just smile and humor them. Either the part is in their computer or there is always Clark s. (Editor s Note: When checking out your local FLAPS (Friendly Local Auto Parts Store), go to their website, enter your car s make/model/year, and search out your part. You can usually find out if they carry your part and if it is in stock at your local store before you even leave the house. Comparison shop Advance, AutoZone, NAPA, Pep Boys and O Reilly to get the best price; there can be quite a difference between these stores! Write down the part number they use for your part and take it with you. That ll help the guy at the counter quickly locate what you need.) John, Smitty, myself and others have done some Emergency assistance. No problem, cept on a cold, rainy, dreary, and even your dog doesn t want to go outside day. If Smitty hasn t done it before then you aren t working on a Corvair! Well, cept for the ones that look like the car and not the box it came in! (I should hear laughs here) New Year is here. Get thinking on some ideas for what things you need, want to do, go to. Dean likes to go to the local Drive Ins. Give me the places and times of those in your area. I ll put them in the monthly letter. me at ehlusko@yahoo.com or call (757) You may need to leave a message on the cell. I m still working, and ships don t allow phones.

4 PAGE 4 January 2016 THE SPYDERS BREATH GAZETTE Corvair For Sale Bill Manke is selling his 1960 sedan. The car has a Powerglide transmission and is green with a green interior. The engine was overhauled by Smitty and Bill Hubbell less than 1000 miles ago and runs good. He is asking 3,500 for it including two parts cars. One parts car was running before he borrowed a couple of parts from it. Located at 131 Hertford Beach Road, Hertford NC. Phone Learn to align your steering wheel the right way! Final Steering Wheel Adjustment by Smitty Smith Merry Christmas to everyone; I hope yours was as good as mine. I got one present that I was overjoyed to get: I finally resolved a problem that has bugged me for years. You know when doing an alignment, you first establish that the mark on the steering shaft and the one on the wheel hub are indexed together. You dive underneath and set the caster camber and toe in. Everything checks out good so you jump in the seat and go for a test drive, only to find that the wheel is cocked at an angle when you are driving straight ahead. I don t know about you but I really hate driving that way. It only shows poor workmanship. The easy fix is to try to fool yourself, and pull the wheel and rotate it to the horizontal position. Nobody knows but you. But you have taken the shaft to a place off of the high spot in the gear box. You will have a tight steering on one side off center and sloppy steering on the other side. All the books tell you that instead of rotating the wheel on the spline you should adjust the two tie rod sleeves an

5 PAGE 5 January 2016 THE SPYDERS BREATH GAZETTE equal amount on each side to center the wheel. Mess this up and you have ruined your toe in adjustment. The tie rod sleeves have different threads at the tie rods on each end. Left thread is on one end and the right thread on the other. It s not too hard to understand that rotating the sleeves makes the distance between the ends closer or longer. OK, at this point the books don t say to turn the sleeves this way or that way to get a clockwise or counter clockwise rotation of the wheel. Here s my Christmas present and don t take it lightly. I worked pretty hard for it. As simple as dirt, IF YOU TURN THE FRONTS OF THE SLEEVES DOWN IT WILL CAUSE THE WHEEL TO ROTATE CLOCKWISE TO YOU IF YOU ARE IN THE DRIVERS SEAT. All the other rules still apply such as moving both sleeves the same direction at the same time to leave the toe-in unaffected. Another thing the books don t say. You must have both front wheels sitting on the pavement if you expect the wheel to rotate while you are adjusting. Alignment Tech Session by Smitty Smith The scheduled Tech session for December 20th went off as planned though attendance was very poor. I understand that there are folks who have better things to do than to go through another session on front end alignment, but getting together with other members is always worth something. With Robert doing most of the up and down we got through the whole process in about two hours. The wagon had been pre-set just close to specs in my garage and then redone at Robert s garage more accurately. It was almost good enough to leave as was except for the toe in, which was a half inch off! Poor tires were sliding sideways about the width of the tread about once every eight revolutions. Not real good for extending tire life. Thanks again for the help Robert and for the use of the garage heat when it was cold outside. Check the little cam bar located in the rear of the points assembly to make sure it s properly lubricated. Making a Point About Points by Dean Zawacki I have had a long-standing issue with the way my car sometimes runs. Seems it will be fine for a while, then it will start surging and backfiring and will not do well in 3 rd gear under about 30 mph or so. ( , 3-speed manual transmission) The way Ed Hlusko and I would fix the problem would be for Ed to hook up the timing light and dwell meter and move the distributor until the car was purring like a contented kitten again. After the first few times he did this I wanted to try it on my own to see if I could get the same result as a seasoned mechanic. I took out my

6 PAGE 6 January 2016 THE SPYDERS BREATH GAZETTE feeler gauges and popped off the distributor cap to set the points gap. I read in the manual that the more the points wear, the metal can actually transfer from one side to the other and may need to be carefully and gently filed flat and the gap reset. I tugged on the belt to get the points on the top of the cam, then I went to measure the gap but there was no gap. Aha! So that s the problem. By inserting a screwdriver in the adjustment hole and turning slightly, the points should open up. Nothing happened. Was I doing it right? Yep, that s how you do it all right, but I couldn t get them to open up. I removed the points and condenser for a closer look. That s when I discovered it the bar on the back of the points assembly that rides on the cam had completely worn away. This point set had been in the car since the engine was first rebuilt and restarted in Lots of folks have their point sets happily installed in their cars for years and years without a problem. Shop manuals, articles, blogs and You Tube videos advised me to look at the gap and the condition of the metal on the points but never mentioned the bar in the back. My metal always looked fine, so I assumed I was ok. I must have inadequately lubricated the bar when we installed the points back in 2012 and never checked or re-lubed it since. A quick trip to Advance Auto Parts (on my bike) and I soon returned to the garage with a new point set and condenser. I installed them, put everything back together, turned the key, and nothing. It would crank but wouldn t catch. As a newbie, this is my worst fear that I would put it all together and not be able to get it started again. I looked and looked and couldn t see what I did wrong. My gap might have been off, but not by that much. Everything looked like it went back together the way it was. It was time to throw in the towel and call Ed. A pair of more experienced eyes will probably see the mistake right off. He graciously agreed to come over and have a look. He noticed that I had installed the condenser wire upside down, and that it was contacting the points plate and grounding it out. I thought for sure that s the way it was originally, but of course it couldn t have been. He checked my gap, which was a tiny bit wide as it turned out. We turned it around, replaced the cap, turned the key, and VROOM! She fired right up, and after getting up to operating temperature, started to purr. I almost did it without Ed. Ah, well, next time As I drove the car in the weeks that followed, I noticed that she performed much better than she had in a long time. No more backfiring on deceleration (no more backfiring at all), no chugging or surging, and the car ran smoothly at slow speeds around the neighborhood in 3 rd gear. Could all of these problems have had something to do with the cam bar wearing away? All I know is: that s all I ve done to the car, and no more issues. The point about the points is that although your metal may be okay and everything looks good, but when you are checking your point set, take a look behind and see how your cam bar is doing. You may want to add a little more lubricant if it s been awhile. It s just one more little gotcha to be aware of.

7 PAGE 7 January 2016 THE SPYDERS BREATH GAZETTE You can also like the various posts on the page. I have been trying to add new content to the page regularly to try to keep up interest. So far there are almost 200 people who have liked the page, and many of these visit the site regularly. Much of what I post consists of pictures of Corvairs or articles that would be of interest to Corvair folks that I share from other sites. The hope is that local people who see the page will make their way to a meeting or will contact us if they need help with their own car. That has already happened a few times, and the more folks that see it, the greater the chances that they will act on it and contact us. TCC Facebook Page by Dean Zawacki The Tidewater Corvair Club Facebook page has been up and running since September of 2012, and I never really reported on its progress. Here s what s going on. The challenge is to keep posting fresh material to keep interest alive. Photos from tech sessions and car shows always have a wide appeal. Just some basic info and a few snapshots of who we are and what we are doing will go a long way. Members and guests can post on the page as well; it all doesn t have to come from me. So if you think about it and you have something of interest to the Facebook community, post it on our page. You ll be generating interest in the club and helping us out in the long run. The site is growing in popularity, with more people seeing and liking the site all the time. There is a button you can click on the Facebook page to show you have visited the page and you like it. Liking a page causes it to show up on your News Feed, so every time I or someone else posts something new on the page, that post will show up on the News Feeds of everyone who has liked our page. It gives us more exposure and also gives us an idea of who has visited the site.

8 PAGE 8 January 2016 THE SPYDERS BREATH GAZETTE January Minutes Meeting called to order at 7pm by Vice President John Gilliland. There were no new members or guests, and precious few old members. January Birthdays Stephanie Jacobsen 1/6 Martha Mitchell 1/12 Scott Cartine related how he had problems with his new fuel pump. He replaced it with one purchased from Clark s and also installed some new fuel lines. He is still having an issue with his steering column, which will be the subject of an upcoming Tech Session. Scott also gave us an update on Steve Thomas, who is on his way to Australia. Smitty explained the procedure to use to get your steering wheel properly aligned. Details to included in the newsletter. Old Business/New Business: everyone was reminded of the Planning Session on 1/23 at the Klemm s home. Because of the impending storm, the start time was moved up to 11am. It was further decided to postpone the release of the newsletter until after the planning meeting. Due to Anne Davis absence, there was no Penny Chance held. Dean pleaded with folks to please submit a newsletter article anyway. The January Social will be held at Mongolian Barbecue on Military Hwy., January 26 th at 6:30pm. Meeting adjourned at 7:30pm. Submitted by Dean Zawacki