The Founded 1982 More pictures on pages 5 and 6 A Publication of Meeting Sunday, Nov. 13, 9:30 am Golden Corral Woodmen and Powers Chapter 809 of Volume 36, Number 1 November 2011 Page 1
2011 Officers President Steve Goodman 303-278-4889 Rearengine.steve @worldnet.att.net Vice President Jon Anderson 719 572 6747 Jbanderson65 @hotmail.com Secretary Pat Campbell 719 633-8708 pcampbell381@ comcast.net Treasurer John Koll 719 593 1928 jkkoll@aol.com Membership Garrie & Patricia Fox 719-338-5051 gfox80915@yahoo.com Drip Line Editor Paul Campbell 719 633-8708 pcampbell381@ Comcast.net PPCC MAIL LIST CORSA set up PPCC with a mail list. To subscribe, send an e-mail to Garrie Fox gfox80915@yahoo.com telling me you would like to subscribe and I will add you to the list. Same goes if you want to unsubscribe. This mail list is like a small version of the VV s. You send a message to ppcclist@corvair.org and it sends the message to everyone subscribed. The list is setup to block all attachments and convert all formatted text (HTML) to plain text to greatly reduce the chances of transmitting a virus. This list is intended to improve communication within PPCC. It will mostly be used to let us know about meetings, brunches and car shows, cars and parts for sale The DRIP LINE is a monthly publication of the PIKES PEAK CORVAIR CLUB, a chartered chapter of CORSA, the Corvair Society of America. Contents are copyrighted in the names of the authors and PPCC. Articles can be reprinted in any COR- SA publication as a service to CORSA members provided credit to the author and this Newsletter is clearly stated. Deadline for submitting information to the DRIP LINE is the last Friday each month for the next month s publication. Submit information to pdtcamp@yahoo.com or mail to: the DRIP LINE c/o Paul & Pat Campbell 1716 E. Yampa St., Colorado Springs, CO 80909. All correspondence to the PIKES PEAK CORVAIR CLUB or its officers should be mailed to: PO. BOX 15034, Colorado Springs, CO 80935 Business card size ads, advertising business services of both members and non-members are $2.50/month. To save time and money advertisers are asked to send $15.00 for six months or $30.00 for one year s advertising. Simple classified advertising of CARS FOR SALE or PARTS FOR SALE or WANTED are free to members, non-members will be charged $2.50/ month. Send copies of larger ads to PO BOX 15034 Colorado Springs, CO 80935 for quotes on larger ads. All checks for advertisements should be sent to PO BOX 15034 Colorado Springs, CO 80935. Electronic copies of ads may be sent to Volume 36, Number 1 November 2011 Page 2
Christmas Party Dinner Sunday, December 11 4:00 PM Golden Corral Restaurant Woodmen west of Powers Bring a Gift for the Yankee Gift Exchange! If you ve never participated in a Yankee Gift Exchange, it s easy and a lot of fun. Each person is asked to bring a $10 WRAPPED gift. After dinner, each person will draw a number at random. Numbers will be called in order. The first person then picks a gift from the table. The next person gets to pick a wrapped gift but, they also have the option of stealing the first person s gift if they like it better. This goes on until every person has opened or stolen a Christmas gift. You shouldn t spend more than $10! And, It s Even more fun if you buy a funny gift. EVEN IF YOU DON T WANT TO PARTICIPATE, PLEASE COME ANYWAY, WE D LIKE TO SEE EVERY MEMBER! Complete Buffet Dinner Same Price As Breakfast! Only $9.50 per person plus tax and tip Volume 36, Number 1 November 2011 Page 3
John Dowswell John Dowswell died September 29, 2011, at Brookdale Place Senior Living, where following a stroke, he spent the last two years of his life, with loving care from staff and family. He was 92. John was born in Montreal, Canada, on January 10, 1919. In 1926, his family immigrated to the United States. John grew up in White Plains, New York, and graduated from Cornell University in 1941. He then joined the U.S. Army Air Corps and was soon sent for pilot training. During World War II, he was a command pilot in the 93rd Bomber Group in Europe and North Africa, flying B-17s and B-24s. John was twice awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for heroism and was wounded in action. While in England John fell in love with Doreen Mary Rudderham. They were married on April 5, 1945 in Norwich, England. They raised four sons - Richard, Christopher, David and Steven - and he had six grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Following WWII, John pursued a military career completing various assignments, from commanding a fighter group to becoming a material and logistics expert. He retired in 1971. In 1977, John and Doreen returned to Colorado Springs. John was an active member of the Cheyenne Mountain Lions Club. He served as a volunteer driver for Silver Key for 15 years. John liked working with his hands. He built nearly a dozen homes. He regularly used the hobby shops at Ft Carson to overhaul engines, service cars, and build furniture. He was forever helping friends, neighbors and family fix their cars and do carpentry repairs. He loved sailboats and was a master sailor. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of vintage cars and was a long time member of the. He and Doreen loved ocean cruises, once going around the world for 102 days. If you wish to honor John, in lieu of flowers, please send memorial contributions to the: Wounded Warrior Project, 4899 Belfort Road, Suite 300 Jacksonville, Florida 32256 Tell us what you think! Help make your club a better club. If you have suggestions for special events or activities or ways to improve our monthly meetings, write or e-mail us. We need more involvement from more of our members to make Pikes Peak Corvair Cub stronger.. E-mail your suggestions to pdtcamp@yahoo.com or Mail your suggestions to Pikes Peak Corvair Club P.O Box 15034, Colorado Springs, CO 80935 Volume 36, Number 1 November 2011 Page 4
President s Notes By Steve Goodman Hello fellow PPCC members: Thanks to everyone who attended the October meeting. The best thing to come from the meeting was the volunteering (without any arm twisting or threatening letters) of candidates for President and Vice President for PPCC for the next few years. Patricia Fox volunteered to run the club and I think she will make a fine leader, she is energetic, enthusiastic about Corvairs and completely capable of conducting the club business. VP will be Garrie Fox and he has the job of finding door prizes each month and remembering to drive the President to the meetings. Again, thank you both. I managed to set up the 2012 TRI-STATE CORVAIR MEET, it will be in Salida, Colorado on the weekend of May 18-20. The host motel is Gateway Inn and Suites which used to be the Econo-Lodge which was home to the meet in 1999. In fact the same owner is present and she remembered us being there that year. Rooms are in the low $60 range and there is a banquet room attached and the grounds are large enough that the car display will be held there too. The banquet is expected to be in the $20 per person range, I haven't tried to finalize the menu as of this writing. The host club for 2012 is Rocky Mountain Corsa Corvair Club. CNM took the 2011 date out of turn because of the national convention being hosted by RMC. The 2013 date will be on the shoulders of PPCC. I will keep more information coming as I get the small details ironed out. At the end of September I attended the High Plains Roundup in Excelsior Springs, Missouri. It was hosted by the KC club this year and rotates between Wichita, Tulsa,/Oklahoma City and KC. I was lucky to be asked to do a short tech session and I opted for a 'home made tool' display, tools that I have made for myself at the shop through the years. At the November meeting I will bring several small tools along and maybe help someone in PPCC with figuring out an easier way to work on their car. I hope those PPCC members who are not CORSA members have read carefully last months' articles about the $3.00 assessment to the club for the non- CORSA members and have decided to join the part organization. If there are questions about membership feel free to email me or another club officer for details OR attend the November meeting and the subject can be revisited from last month. Since we just had our first snowfall of the year it appears the reality of good driving weather may be fading although around here it can snow one day and be 65 degrees the next. In fact, that is exactly what it will be on Friday the 28th. That same weekend (too late for those reading this, however) the last race of the year for the vintage club (RMVR) is at PPIR. Eric Schakel has got the Stinger ready and will be on the track. By the time you read this YS066 will be tucked away for winter, however. I hope he has great success with his car, the only Corvair entered. The next meeting of PPCC will be November 13 at the Golden Corral on Woodmen Rd and Powers, starting time between 0930-1000hrs. I hope the weather is good and everyone can attend, see you all there. Volume 36, Number 1 November 2011 Page 5
Misadventures in a 1969 Fuel-injected corvair By Garrie Fox It was a great day, as earlier, we had the great PPCC September brunch meeting where John Anderson had agreed to take a listen to what I thought was valve train noise from the newly installed engine head on the fuel injected 1969 Corvair. It was early afternoon when I drove towards the Anderson's home; on the way, I noticed a change in how the engine ran and it was not intermittent; just managed to get it into John's garage bay and shut it down. Thanks to John's "better than mine" hearing we did adjust the offending valve and it still appears fine. It is really outstanding when a member is able to call upon another for help. He and I noticed, and then observed, what appeared to be fuel leaking from the right head's center exhaust manifold gasket. Neither of us had ever seen that symptom manifested on a Corvair. I decided to drive home via Powers Blvd where I could drive a bit faster than other city streets. While driving about 50 mph, I noticed billowing white smoke from the exhaust. The engine quit running and I coasted to a convenient shoulder of the road. Since the '69 has emergency flashers, I put them on and exited the car to investigate. First, I checked the oil and it was slightly above full, but immediately I noticed that the oil smelled like fuel. This caused me to recall coming to the aid of Ben Benzel who called me to report that his crankcase was full of gasoline and request assistance. We discovered his normal fuel pump had dumped fuel into his '64 Corvair crankcase. But with fuel injection, how could this be the case? A quick call to AAA brought a flatbed wrecker to my location and a ride with the driver back to the house. The wrecker operator placed the car in front of the house to await a later diagnosis. I pondered the problem overnight and went out the next day dreading having to possibly work on it in the street in front of the house. I had the garage door open, of course, and decided to see if it would start; it did start and ran weakly as I drove it in the garage. The still obvious fuel on the number 3 cylinder exhaust area led me to start by pulling the fuel ring main which serves the right side of the engine with all three injectors still attached to it. Finding three identical containers to catch the fuel when the injectors batch fired was a concern, but Patricia had socked away some old plastic 35MM film semi-transparent canisters which served perfectly. These three injectors were checked with the fuel pump running normal pressure and indeed # 3 injector had failed and was stuck wide open. They obviously deliver a large volume of fuel when totally open rather than opening for a few milliseconds in normal function. A new, not rebuilt, injector was available within a couple of miles from home. I have been running these two fuel injected Corvairs for 16 years now and this is the first time that I have experienced a component failure like this. Anyway, as I finished up checking the car, I raised the back of it a bit in order to get a really good oil pan drain angle and cranked it over several revolutions to empty the oil pump and passages as much as possible. It was left to drain overnight. The old plugs were entirely saturated with the contaminated oil and six new plugs were found in the Corvair parts stash, gap was set and placed at the ready. Being an IROAN type guy (Inspect, Replace Only As Necessary), I inspected the left three injectors' function in a like procedure. They were found to be totally operational and without any signs of leakage. Amazingly the engine compression was virtually unchanged from my last log book compression test. The next day I filled the crankcase, installed a new 1038 filter, torqued the new plugs, and it fired up at the first try. It has been back on the road for several weeks now as we drove it to the October brunch meeting. Hope to see everyone at the November meeting! Volume 36, Number 1 November 2011 Page 6
Volume 36, Number 1 November 2011 Page 7
SNUFFING THE GENIE So the wife tells her husband in no uncertain terms that for her 50 th birthday she expects something sleek and shiny that can go from 0 to 200 in under 4 seconds. Finally the big day arrives and her wish comes true. She is presented with a brand new bathroom scale from IKEA. Funeral arrangements are pending. Thanks, Wayne Russert Bud & Pon Edwards Steve Goodman Membership Dues SPECIAL NOTICE Our Treasurer, John Koll is changing the PPCC dues billing cycle to a calendar year basis to make the process less confusing for all our members. Beginning in 2012, you will receive a bill for the calendar year. If there are any part year 2011 dues still unpaid, they will be added to that bill. Please pay your dues promptly upon receipt. If you have any questions or concerns you can contact John at jkkoll@aol.com. Please remit $25.00 to Pikes Peak Corvair Club, P.O. Box 15034, Colorado Springs, CO 80935. Any questions, please contact Garrie or Patricia Fox at fox80915@yahoo.com Volume 36, Number 1 November 2011 Page 8
Minutes of Meeting of Sunday, October 9, 2011 Wayne Russert moved the Minutes from September meeting be approved as written. John Koll was not here but Steve Goodman proclaimed the club solvent. OLD BUSINESS: Patricia Fox suggested that since it s been two years we find a new destination for the Fall Tour. Wayne Russert reported he visited the Guffey museum after having been given the key by the locals. Both he and Kermit Shields highly recommended a tour there. NEW BUSINESS: By unanimous vote, Patricia Fox will be our new President and Garrie Fox will be our new Vice President A long-time, possibly original member of PPCC, John Dowswell has passed away in late September. The club will send a condolence card. Steve explained that the national Corsa Club membership provides for our insurance when we have an event and pays for the newsletter. There is a Chapter Report that comes out in March and for any member of a local club that isn t a member of Corsa the local club is assessed $3 per year. Steve feels membership is important because if the numbers dwindle we could lose our event insurance. Paul Campbell made a motion that the club pay for Christmas Party attendance for Bettie Jo Benzel and Bill and Bev Mattics. Steve will call both to invite them. Randy Karl is continuing to do the Website updates. There was discussion of oil filters/gaskets and mention of electronic ignitions and also Corvair and Subaru powered airplanes. RMC is in charge of the Tri-State in 2012. It will be in Salida May 18-20.. Clark s Corvair Parts Clark s has been your supplier for quality repros for the past 37 years. This year, we expect to reproduce even more parts for your Corvair. See the Supplement for the following: Various New FC Items 1964 Trim Turbo parts stainless gas tank senders Late model steering column parts 650 Page 2007-2012 Catalog USA - $6 CANADA - $9.95 Most Other Countries - $12.95 Clark s Corvair Parts 400 Mohawk Trail, Shelburne Falls, MA 01370 413-625-9776 FAX: 413-625-8498 www.corvair.com email: clarks@corvair.com Volume 36, Number 1 November 2011 Page 9
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