what can i do to a 64 Corvair

[Spades95formula]

hey guys
my wifes ex husband just went to jail,and he is staying in there for a long time. he has a 64 corvair that he was starting to fix.his daughter lives with us and we most likely are gonna keep it for her , what the heck can i do to it, as far as performance and body.
i think its an inline 6 ,not sure though

[Injuneer]

The Corvair has an air-cooled rear engine "flat 6".... very similar to the VW air-cooled engine, but with 2 more cylinders. Or... like a Porsche flat-6. Also similar to the Subaru engines. Three cylinders sticking straight out on each side of a block.

There is a "cinder block" sized aluminum block,and individual air cooled cylinders that sandwich between the block and the heads. They tended to blow the "ring" type head gaskets on the cylinders closest to the firewall, since the aluminum components and the very long steel bolts that held the head-cylinder-block sandwich together tended to experience problems with the different expansion rates of steel and aluminum at high temps.

When these were originally on the market, people would throw away the flat-6, flip the transaxle over, so it faced the back seat, and put a small block Chevy engine in the back seat.... the "mid-engine" solved the handling problems inherent to the rear engine weight bias, although it introduced a few issues of its own. It was also necessary to get a special cam made up, which allowed the engine to operate in the opposite rotation.

If you aren't into anything quite that radical, there was a turbo-charged version of the flat-6. Might be interesting to resurect one of those setups and turbo the whole setup, adding an intercooler and some extra boost.

[Spades95formula]

thanks fred , i dont think i would be doing the short block conversion , but that turbo charged flat six sounds more like something im willing to do.

does anyone have any pics of cool corvairs, or any sites with more information on the turbo charged flat 6

[Detroit_Bird]

I'm not sure exactly whats involved, but I've seen a couple corvairs converted to front engine- rear drive cars around me, They look pretty wild, although the engine sits pretty high up and might just make the handling worse.

[wako29]

for a while I was looking at them, and I was gonna do a Fiero GT conversion. Fiero motor and tranny, then convert to a V8 later. Just a thought.