DETOURS
Corvair Stories We Lived To Tell about
Change Your Oil Filter
Is being 22 years old any excuse for being dumb enough to change your oil but not your filter?
It was December of 1970 and I was visiting my grandmother in Dover, N.H. where I was born. I was dating a girl who was also attending the University of Northern Colorado and also from N.H.We agreed to drive back east in my 1965 Madiera Maroon Corvair Monza Coupe, 110 Hp 4 sp. for winter break . The plan was to drop her off at her home in Keene, N.H., meet her parents and spend one night before driving on.
It was a snowy and typical New England day when I got to my grandmothers house. This was the house I grew up in and was really home to me. We visited for a few days and then it was time to get ready to head on out, pick up Carol and get back to Greeley, Colorado.
It was cold. I mean New Hampshire type damp cold. In those days, I did everything on my car myself . I went and bought what I needed for an oil change including the filter, brought it home and started the job.
I remember that day. It started to snow and my hands were so cold. I made an executive decision to not change out the oil filter. Wrong , wrong, wrong.
Fast forward to the middle of Nebraska and holy cow ! Here comes all this smoke in through the heater vents. Now picture that the highway was snow packed and icy. There really wasn’t much of a shoulder to pull off on and it’s Nebraska and man, it’s windy and cold. What to do . I get out, open the hood and there's oil everywhere . Now, I knew enough about my car to know that if I blew something, it there wasn’t going to be any oil on top. Not typically anyway. So, it took me about 5 seconds to wipe down everything including the oil filter and see that the gasket was blown to bits. Guess who didn’t bring any extra cans of oil along. Why would I do that. My car didn’t burn or leak oil at least not until this day.
What I had was some good t-shirts which immediately became rags. I cleaned it up as much as I could, changed out the old filter for the new, got back on the road (didn’t have far to go) and off we went. Off we went for about 10 miles only to find that they had closed the highway.
We were forced to pull off into some dinky little town that barely had a motel. We found one but it had no heat. And the car had smokey heat. Drive a Corvair but..................
Change your oil filter !
Larry Yoffee
Corvair Ambulance
It’s December 1969. Wichita, Kansas. One advanced skier. One who had never skied.
My girlfriend Sandra thought it would be fun to drive to Denver, stay with her brother and try skiing while there. Seemed like a good idea at the time. As a skier, I didn’t need any persuasion and so off we went.
The weather was beautiful that day as I recall and Sandra and I headed for Vail in my 1965 Monza 110 four speed equipted with my brand new Michelin radial tires. Man , radial tires, that was a big deal back then. I remember we had a set of those on a old Peugot when I was about 15. I digress.
We arrived in Vail, not a big deal in those days, and got Sandra outfitted. After that we headed for the bunny slope. I taught her how to side step her way up the hill a little and then got her into the snowplow position. First run-last run ! Her first time down this little
hill and down and out for the count-she broke her leg. Unbelievable! The ski patrol was summoned and off she went to the on-site clinic and into a cast on her right leg.
Eventually she felt well enough to leave . The next challenge was how to stuff this 5’1” ,105 pound young woman on pain killers into the back seat of a 1965 Corvair Monza. Well, we did and eventually got back to Denver.
One more memorable Corvair trip. I should have stuck my head out the window and made like Bigfoot in Harry and the Hendersons and let out a siren sound in my “ Corvair Ambulance” !
Larry Yoffee
It’s December 1969. Wichita, Kansas. One advanced skier. One who had never skied.
My girlfriend Sandra thought it would be fun to drive to Denver, stay with her brother and try skiing while there. Seemed like a good idea at the time. As a skier, I didn’t need any persuasion and so off we went.
The weather was beautiful that day as I recall and Sandra and I headed for Vail in my 1965 Monza 110 four speed equipted with my brand new Michelin radial tires. Man , radial tires, that was a big deal back then. I remember we had a set of those on a old Peugot when I was about 15. I digress.
We arrived in Vail, not a big deal in those days, and got Sandra outfitted. After that we headed for the bunny slope. I taught her how to side step her way up the hill a little and then got her into the snowplow position. First run-last run ! Her first time down this little
hill and down and out for the count-she broke her leg. Unbelievable! The ski patrol was summoned and off she went to the on-site clinic and into a cast on her right leg.
Eventually she felt well enough to leave . The next challenge was how to stuff this 5’1” ,105 pound young woman on pain killers into the back seat of a 1965 Corvair Monza. Well, we did and eventually got back to Denver.
One more memorable Corvair trip. I should have stuck my head out the window and made like Bigfoot in Harry and the Hendersons and let out a siren sound in my “ Corvair Ambulance” !
Larry Yoffee
My First Corvair
By Bill Reider
I bought my first Corvair in August of 1962. It was a Monza Convertible, white with red interior and a black top. I’ll bet your wondering why I bought this car. The family and I had been on a trip to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and I had seen a number of ads for the new Corvair Convertible on the trip and I though, that is a neat second car. I had always wanted a convertible and this looked like a great way to go. At the time we had a 59 Chevy Station Wagon, which was great for hauling the kids around, nice for going on location at the studio, etc. We also had a 53 Chevy Bel Aire coupe, which was a nice car but was getting a little tired. Ever day I drove to the near north side of Chicago (20 miles one way) so we really needed another reliable car. I would be able to take the Corvair if I weren’t going on location, I was able to drive the Corvair about 80% of the time. I purchased this car from Nickey Chevrolet in Chicago. They had sponsored a few racing teams and had quite a hi-performance department. While the car had a Power Glide transmission, it did have some hi-performance options. It had heavy-duty suspension, metallic brakes, and an 102hp engine. I really enjoyed driving this car, it was fun to drive and handled like a champ. After a about a year I figured that I would like to make it go a little faster. My first endeavor was to put a 4-barrel on the car. I purchased a manifold from JC Whitney and got a Carter 4 barrel carburetor from my local parts store. After installation I worked on it for about 6 months and finally figured out that this was not the way to go. The carburetor is just too far from the heads. Then after doing a lot of research I got a 4 carb kit from JC Whitney, it was the John Fitch setup. While there was the Eelco setup as well, I liked the Fitch setup better because you could leave the carb linkage in the stock configuration. I had to change the linkage for the 4-barrel setup and it was a pain. I traded in my 4-barrel carb and purchased 4 Corvair primary carbs. This worked great. I could get off the line quicker, got better gas mileage and increased my top speed from about 90mph to a little over 100mph. This was true miles per hour. I was in upper Michigan on location after I had installed the new setup and though I would give it a try. In upper Michigan you can go miles and miles without seeing anyone. I was cruising along on a two-lane highway at about 75 and though this would be a good place to see how fast the car would go. I pushed down on the gas petal and let it go. The speedometer went up way past 100 and was buried, but the tack did read 5000+rpm. This would indicate that I were going at least 100+mph. After a few miles I cut it back to 75 and continued down the road. This was on bias ply tires, and needless to say the car can get a little squirrel on these tires. Most people today don’t realize what a improvement radial tires can make. After driving on radials I would never drive on anything else, at least for general driving. I got my first set of radials on my 67 convertible but that’s another story.
After working on this car and learning a great deal about Corvairs I became really hooked on the Corvair. I tried a lot of different thing and had a lot of fun working on it.
I keep this car with the 4-carb setup until I traded the car in on a 1967 Corvair convertible. Another great car, another story. Bill
By Bill Reider
I bought my first Corvair in August of 1962. It was a Monza Convertible, white with red interior and a black top. I’ll bet your wondering why I bought this car. The family and I had been on a trip to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and I had seen a number of ads for the new Corvair Convertible on the trip and I though, that is a neat second car. I had always wanted a convertible and this looked like a great way to go. At the time we had a 59 Chevy Station Wagon, which was great for hauling the kids around, nice for going on location at the studio, etc. We also had a 53 Chevy Bel Aire coupe, which was a nice car but was getting a little tired. Ever day I drove to the near north side of Chicago (20 miles one way) so we really needed another reliable car. I would be able to take the Corvair if I weren’t going on location, I was able to drive the Corvair about 80% of the time. I purchased this car from Nickey Chevrolet in Chicago. They had sponsored a few racing teams and had quite a hi-performance department. While the car had a Power Glide transmission, it did have some hi-performance options. It had heavy-duty suspension, metallic brakes, and an 102hp engine. I really enjoyed driving this car, it was fun to drive and handled like a champ. After a about a year I figured that I would like to make it go a little faster. My first endeavor was to put a 4-barrel on the car. I purchased a manifold from JC Whitney and got a Carter 4 barrel carburetor from my local parts store. After installation I worked on it for about 6 months and finally figured out that this was not the way to go. The carburetor is just too far from the heads. Then after doing a lot of research I got a 4 carb kit from JC Whitney, it was the John Fitch setup. While there was the Eelco setup as well, I liked the Fitch setup better because you could leave the carb linkage in the stock configuration. I had to change the linkage for the 4-barrel setup and it was a pain. I traded in my 4-barrel carb and purchased 4 Corvair primary carbs. This worked great. I could get off the line quicker, got better gas mileage and increased my top speed from about 90mph to a little over 100mph. This was true miles per hour. I was in upper Michigan on location after I had installed the new setup and though I would give it a try. In upper Michigan you can go miles and miles without seeing anyone. I was cruising along on a two-lane highway at about 75 and though this would be a good place to see how fast the car would go. I pushed down on the gas petal and let it go. The speedometer went up way past 100 and was buried, but the tack did read 5000+rpm. This would indicate that I were going at least 100+mph. After a few miles I cut it back to 75 and continued down the road. This was on bias ply tires, and needless to say the car can get a little squirrel on these tires. Most people today don’t realize what a improvement radial tires can make. After driving on radials I would never drive on anything else, at least for general driving. I got my first set of radials on my 67 convertible but that’s another story.
After working on this car and learning a great deal about Corvairs I became really hooked on the Corvair. I tried a lot of different thing and had a lot of fun working on it.
I keep this car with the 4-carb setup until I traded the car in on a 1967 Corvair convertible. Another great car, another story. Bill
US Customs and Immigration/Larry Yoffee
So, it's Thanksgiving weekend , 2006. I have just bought my first corvair in 38 years and now I need to get it home. A friend of mine fronted the money to purchase the car, mil grazie Felix A. , and even offered to store it for me but I decided to roll the dice and drive it almost 300 miles to Albuquerque. It was the coldest, windiest of days and I had no working heater,no automatic chokes no sense at all. The tires looked good though.
Anyway, I hit I-25 north and all is well. I can't feel my feet anymore but I am committed at this point. Anybody who travels this way knows that you will be diverted to US Customs and Immigration for inspection north of Las Cruces. Maybe it was the weather but the officer was pretty much waving everyone through . He was until he saw me. He threw up his hand to stop. I rolled my window down . He approached .He looked to be about 25 yrs.old. I said, hi. He says, "hey, what kind of a car is that?" Geez guy, it's really cold and you want to know what kind of car this is. Now normally, I would have been very happy to spend a good half an hour extrolling the virtues of the Corvair. But like I said, it was really cold and windy. "It's a 1965 Chevy Corvair" I said feeling somewhat proudly but thinking to myself , are we done here. He says, "well cool, ok have a good day !" And I'm on my way. When I pulled into my driveway, I seriously thought I had frostbite on my feet.
But I made it in my new, old Corvair. Larry
So, it's Thanksgiving weekend , 2006. I have just bought my first corvair in 38 years and now I need to get it home. A friend of mine fronted the money to purchase the car, mil grazie Felix A. , and even offered to store it for me but I decided to roll the dice and drive it almost 300 miles to Albuquerque. It was the coldest, windiest of days and I had no working heater,no automatic chokes no sense at all. The tires looked good though.
Anyway, I hit I-25 north and all is well. I can't feel my feet anymore but I am committed at this point. Anybody who travels this way knows that you will be diverted to US Customs and Immigration for inspection north of Las Cruces. Maybe it was the weather but the officer was pretty much waving everyone through . He was until he saw me. He threw up his hand to stop. I rolled my window down . He approached .He looked to be about 25 yrs.old. I said, hi. He says, "hey, what kind of a car is that?" Geez guy, it's really cold and you want to know what kind of car this is. Now normally, I would have been very happy to spend a good half an hour extrolling the virtues of the Corvair. But like I said, it was really cold and windy. "It's a 1965 Chevy Corvair" I said feeling somewhat proudly but thinking to myself , are we done here. He says, "well cool, ok have a good day !" And I'm on my way. When I pulled into my driveway, I seriously thought I had frostbite on my feet.
But I made it in my new, old Corvair. Larry
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