Corvair Illustrated Rebuilding Guide

Ever since Pietenpoll in 1966, many people have spent countless hours refining the Corvair six-cylinder engine (sometimes referred to as a Boxer engine) into a reliable aircraft powerplant. Information is available from a variety of sources, some updated, some not; some helpful, some not.

The truth of the matter is that rebuilding a Corvair engine for aircraft use is hardly a "conversion" - just ask any mechanic old enough to have worked on 1960's cars. Bernie Pietenpol proved this by flying it in his aircraft with almost no modifications. Corvair engines were used straight out of automobiles with virtually no changes except to bolt a propeller flange onto the crankshaft. However, to optimize the engine for aircraft use, we do recommended a few upgrades. Talk to any experienced mechanic or parts supplier and the following recommendations are ubiquitous and obvious:

- high-lift camshaft for generating highest possible horsepower at normal prop speeds like aircraft engines

- forged pistons just like aircraft engines

- hardened (nitride heat-treatment) crankshaft just like aircraft engines

- deeper oil pan for better oil cooling like aircraft engines

- large oil cooler like aircraft engines

- propeller hub modified from a licensed and certificated propeller entension (not something a mechanic drew up on the back of a napkin to make money with)

- vacuum pump adapter (for those pilots who want to use standard gyros or for those safety-conscious IFR pilots who want a backup to their glass panel) despite some of our competitors claiming that this is "impossible" on a Corvair

That's it! You can talk to some folks who will claim to be geniuses for applying aircraft practice when using an auto engine in an airplane but we just call it common sense. Nitride-hardening is just one example. Chevrolet did it since the 60's on high-power Corvairs and on aircraft engines it has been standard for over 50 years. Why some of our competitors needed to wait for broken crankshafts to realize this, we will never know.

The downside to being this honest with our customers is that it makes it difficult for us to charge a 300% markup on our accessories. So we won't. In our opinion, this is very good thing because this means that the original design was so close to our needs and the fewer modifications to a properly-engineered engine, the better.

And you will still have to add an aircraft carburetor, some type of exhaust, instruments, etc., but this is the actual extend of the "conversion." And don't believe any "experts" who claim that it is impossible to use the stock exhaust manifolds. Like adding a vacuum pump, we've proven that pretense false.

If you already have rebuilt a Corvair engine and have been tearing your hair out with the deceptive and confusing order of assembly from other sources, you can download our abridged Engine Assembly Checklist (Acrobat Reader required to view and print this PDF file) which is a highly condensed version of the GM Shop Manual. This serves only as a systematic checklist of what you have to do when you are rebuilding the engine and does not offer detailed instructions - on the other hand, it is free so what do you expect? Those of you who have labored through a rebuild will appreciate the chronological order and directness of it.

For a successful rebuilding of the engine, you will need acquire detailed information on what parts to order, where to order them, detailed instructions on how to assemble the engine, etc. For this, you need to purchase GM's Shop Manual, Clark's catalog, Corvair Underground catalog, find someone who has experience with air-cooled engines and perform hours of research to find the parts that you need. Or you can purchase our Illustrated Rebuilding Guide that contains everything you will need - we thought of calling it our "Conversion Guide" but then we would have had to double the price and there may have been some confusion with other folks who sell a "conversion" manual. Let us emphasize immediately that we are in no way related or endorsed or working with William Wynne - his lawyer threatened us if we did not make this abundantly clear. To make our Guide, we rebuilt several engines using the GM Shop Manual and information from reliable sources like Clark's Corvair. We think that anyone who never figured out how to mount a vacuum pump in over 10 years is not the most reliable source for anything.

Venturay's Illustrated Rebuilding Guide is a simple step-by-step guide with photographs of the entire assembly process. It also provides sources and part numbers for all the parts you will need. For anyone who has never rebuilt an engine, this is going to be intimidating - but it shouldn't be since this is an incredibly SIMPLE engine. Again, just ask around your hangar and you will likely find some grizzled pilot or A&P who used to own a Corvair. This is NOT a modern high-tech computer-controlled engine - it is a barebones, incredibly simple, reliable engine from the '60's just like the Continentals and Lycomings in most GA aircraft. Our Guide includes a glossary that defines everything from A to Z. With this Guide, you do not need to buy an array of other publications, hunt down part numbers, track down the latest updates, and have 3 different manuals in front of you while you are rebuilding the engine. In fact, the only other material we recommend is the Corvair Shop Manual for reference.

Our Engine Rebuilding Guide is 60 pages of concise instructions with color photographs of all the parts and how to assemble them and, most importantly, in what order. We could have made it 100 pages by adding useless filler like one of our competitors but we decided that our customers are smarter than that. If you want precise, methodical directions for rebuilding a Corvair, this is the book for you. If you want berating comments that you have to read through 6 times to digest the few useful bits of information, we could direct you to someone else's website but his lawyer told us to remove all links to him. Competition is what makes America great; just don't try to tell that to Mr. Trademark or his fancy New York lawyers.

Let us reiterate what we wrote elsewhere on our site. We have received many enquiries regarding the sale of individual parts to pilots who have had enough of waiting for parts from some of our competitors. So let us clarify one point: we do not sell individual parts for the time being and if we did, they may not match any parts you currently have installed. For example, our propeller hub is based on a very popular prop extension so it may not interface properly with components you may have purchased from other Corvair suppliers. The reason we chose this design: it's an aircraft component designed by aeronautical engineers, not some improvised design by some mechanic somewhere.

Corvair Illustrated Rebuilding Guide

Corvair Illustrated Rebuilding Guide $100.00