Tidewater Corvair Club
Southeastern Virginia
HOME OFFICERS VAIR FAIR WANT ADS PHOTOS
GIVE-AWAY CAR
TCC's Give-Away Car !
a.k.a. "The Project"
TCC will donate a portion of the profits to The Corvair Preservation Foundation
Well a lot of things have been happening with the Give-away-car. We have several sponsors now and have enough parts to make this a car to be proud of!
Clarks Corvair Parts continues to be an awsome presence in the Corvair world. They brought to the table a new RED interior kit. If you have never seen a Clarks interior in red, prepare yourself! I would venture to say that their quality in vinyl and craftsmanship is first rate. Even the gentlemen in the Corvette clubs wish they could get that kind of quality. It surpasses OEM. Period.
And guess what? they are scheduled to be at the Vair Fair in VA vending when we give this beauty away! So start making your list now!
As for the outside, MAACO of Chesapeake has come through for us and has agreed to paint this car a metallic silver. MAACO is "America's Bodyshop" and certainly one of the better choices around here, in the Corvair price range. There are many Corvairs around Tidewater sporting a MAACO paint job.
And to keep the outside from getting into the inside, our friends at Steele rubber have provided a complete weatherstrip kit.
And we have called upon our friend Lon Wall at Corvair Underground for some items also to help with the finishing touches
For a slide show of the progress go to this site and see the latest pictures and follow it backwards through time to when we first rolled it out of the garage.
or view the album here.
So lets go over just what we have here:
1964 Chevrolet Corvair Monza Convertible
Silver mettalic with a new black vinyl top
4 speed manual transmission
110 HP low mileage engine (we were told around 3K) and have compression tested it and have no reason to doubt it
Body has been gone over and anything that even looked like a pin hole or bubble was cut out and replaced with new steel and/or NOS patch panels
New Clark's black vinyl top and back window
New Clark's carpet and interior (red vinyl)
Interior panels were painted and new vinyl door panels were installed
Trunk was stripped to bare metal and refinished with proper spatter paint
New weather strip was put on top, doors, trunk and windows
New brake cylinders, hoses, and metal lines where needed
Fuel tank was cleaned and flushed as were the fuel lines
Suspension was checked out and items that need replaced, were
Wheels were sandblasted and painted, new whitewall tires were installed
Under carriage was sanded, scraped and wirebrushed and POR-15 was applied under an enamel top (bottom?) coat
Engine was tuned and an alignment was done.
This fine automobile will have a new home on May 4th...Will it be at your house?
Tickets are a $5 donation, email us at tidewatercorvairclub@usa.com and we will be happy to send your club a book to sell or give me a call, Dan Jones (757) 838-2322 and I can make arrangements for you have a chance at this fine car.
It all started February 2007 when we found this 1964 Monza Convertible locked in a garage in Poquoson Virginia.
Covered and filled with household items the silver convertible seemed like a sweet find.
It came with a new gas tank, and a new vinyl top, and a parts car. The project was outlined and presented to the club for a vote. The first snag was finding a home for it while it was being freshened.
A couple of members stepped up to the plate and the retrieval commenced. Both cars were trailered to their temporary homes and the evaluation process began.
The initial cost of the car(s) has now began to seem insignificant as the cost of "freshening" looks more like the national debt as we begin to look at correct and proper fixes.
We are all in agreement as to proper service and hope that this project will lend itself to beneficial tech sessions and evolve into a rewarding experience.
We have a long way to go right now and we will more than likely be seeking sponsorship in the way of parts, funds and even elbow grease and services. If you would like to help in this endeavor, please email me and we will talk. There are opportunities for commercial advertisement and the like.
Email Club at TidewaterCorvairClub@usa.com 
Its March now and there has been progress on the project. The drivetrain has been completely removed as well as the interior and all wheels and brake parts. The gas tank is out and what threads of vinyl were left on the top have been stripped away. The engine was turned over and had two dead cylinders. The diff turned out to be from a 1963. Not a good thing for a 1964 suspension. So we now turned to the 1964 parts car for help. It isn't pretty but we opened that package and found an engine with very good compression. Fluids were changed and carbs were bolted on to see if it would start. Wouldn't you know it, it fired up. There may be hope yet!
April already! Well,the drivetrain is now in the convertible and we're about a week from putting it on it's wheels again.
With any luck we'll have a new top on it by the end of the month, and I'll be able to tow it to the
Vair Fair. The engine bay has been cleaned and painted, the sheet metal will be painted and installed
this coming week, and we should be able to drive it back and forth between Smitty's garages to do
any other work we have to do. Everything is progressing well, and we'll soon be ready to start on
the body work.Here are some pics of the engine compartment prior to installation.
May brought us a few good days in which we got the top installed. 5-9
After a somewhat major glitch progress continues. Don't know how far back to go to pick up on things that have been done that haven't been already mentioned. The 64 requires a special rear motor mount cover to clear the thickness of the harmonic damper and the AC pulley if used. None were had in the local stashes of parts so one was made up of an earlier cover, and along with that a rear engine seal retainer was made. There was no tailpipe support bracket on the car. On an Early the muffler and pipes have to move with the motor when it moves around so it takes a special bracket to accomplish that. One was cobbled together from original parts and a Midas support strap. Probably outlast the muffler. The top installation tech session ran into some difficulty I think due to imprecise instructions from Clarks and the shop manual as well. This resulted in irrepariable damage to the rear curtain, which had to be replaced with a new one. Smitty and Bill H spent one day getting the rear window and curtain on. That resulted in a beautiful fit. THey also got the top positioned and partially fastened down. The next day Hank came over and helped Smitty finished installing the top. Not the best job ever done, but a nice job never the less. Dean had volunteered to clean and dye the carpet which he was given at the Social. At the business meeting he informed us that the carpet was too fragile to be saved so he ordered and delivered a new one. This is a considerable expense and we thank Dean for his contribution to the project.
Next part of the work is really two parts. One will be the cutting out and welding in of metal where it is rusted through. The other will be the sanding of the entire body to provide a smooth surface for the paint to be applied on. That work can be done by a work session but there is no reason it can't be done by anyone with a little free time that can contribute an hour or so here and there. My compressor only supplies enough air to run one power tool at a time anyway so that is not "all" bad to do it a little at a time.
Saturdays tech session on the project car was mostly directed toward getting the paint sanded off and repairing one of the rusted fender flares in the rear. The car is pretty solid and it won't take much body work to make it nice. John had patched two small rust holes in the right door last week and they will only need a small skin of bondo to finish them off. Robert tried his hand at wire welding the fender patch and really seemed to be enjoying himself. The first coat of bondo will tell the truth on how well the metal was matched up. The rest of us were involved mostly in the drudgery of wet sanding the body. The sanders were Jim, Dan J, John D, Mike, and Smitty. I can tell you that my fingers are no longer up to the job of sanding very long. Skin is nowhere as thick nowdays as they used to make it. The next day I had blood oozing through my fingerprints. I would bet I was not the only one. I am sure others such as retireds and office workers have thin skin too. Thankfully it grows back very quickly there.
