Old Shaft/New Shaft

We managed to track down a mixture of '65 and '66 drive shaft parts that should, hopefully, return the car to operation. Team Unsafe's crack mechanics had the car up jacks and the wheels off before you could say "How many more times are we going to do this?"

(Byron checks new bearings in foreground. Mike removes rear wheel in background to fix valve cover oil leak.)

The new left side drive shaft goes in, aided by six hands, a rubber mallet, and a little coaxing from Mr. Dremel.


New shaft installed, we turned to finishing off the interiorectomy. Note the truly awesome wiring job done by the former owner.



Removing the interior revealed that the underbody is generally in good shape, the firewall is intact, and just a wee bit of rust in the shifter area.



It's hard to see from the picture, but the ground underneath the car is clearly visible through those holes. Smokey Yunick and his acid-dipped body panels ain't got nothin' on us. We are going to have our cage guy weld a patch on the rusted-out area.

At the end of the day we had 6 cylinders that all delivered compression, two of our four carbs operational and two still disconnected, and two drive shafts somewhat more securely connected to their respective wheels. Who knows, the engine might even run. A successful day by LeMons racing standards.

Team Unsafe gets the (drive) shaft

Having restored compression to the engine, we decided to take a look into the source of the camber problem with the rear end of the Corvair. The cut springs that came with the car gave all of the wheels a bit of negative camber, except for the left rear wheel, which had an impressive ~10 degrees of negative camber. It's a shame we are not racing at an oval track. So, once again, the car goes up on jacks.



Hmmm, that looks interesting. Setting aside, for the moment, the fact that our throttle linkage appears to be held together with a Wonder Bread twist-tie, there was excessive play in the drive shaft.



Oh, hey, look! Half a bearing!!!



Well, maybe the problem will just be with the bearing, or the universal joint. The shaft itself could be fine, right?



Nope. The disintegrating bearings took out the u-joint, the drive shaft, and did some machining work on the yoke.



Hmmm. You can't tell by looking at the picture, but the nub in the center of the yoke is, or rather used to be, the bolt that keeps the yoke attached to the differential. Jake was able to pull the yoke out with two fingers. Keep in mind that we drove the Corvair home, more than 20 miles, with half of the final drive held together by essentially nothing.

The only bits of good news from the day was: (1) A replacement drive shaft was available for ~$50 and (2) all of the shocks had been replaced in the relative recent past. We ordered a used, and hopefully less mangled, drive shaft from the good people at Clark's Corvair Parts and put the car to bed.