How could this great video be hidden in a corner of UA-cam and only have 55 likes (including mine) after 2 months? Super interesting, especially the combustion chamber and conversion to water cooling!
Fascinating video thank you. I am a retired Porsche tech who specialized in air-cooled 911's. Porsche's philosophy in regard to cooling was to use oil cooling - this was so important to them that they considered their engines as much oil cooled as air cooled. A large oil pump/dry sump setup up with a large oil reservoir and dual oil coolers with oil sprayers aimed at the underside of each piston carried heat away. As a side note Porsche used a special alloy head stud called "DILIVAR" that expanded at a similar rate to the cylinder/heads/cam housing and eliminated the stretching, breakage, and case pulling prone to the earlier studs. These do not necessarily require replacement after every build, but careful inspection for issues (corrosion, cracks etc.).
Can we get another video explaining how the heads were made/assembled? I was fascinated by the part from 10 mins - 11:45. Would love to know more about how the chambers were affixed to the heads/cylinders.
That is awesome, I have thought about converting motorcycle engines to water-cooling I was thinking just mill down most of the cooling fins. Leaving the top one and bottom fin, mill a clear coolant path in the remaining fins. With a coolant crossover to jump cylinder to head, with the head having aluminum sheet welded to it just as the cylinder. With milled down fins. Possibly mill around the sparkplug hole, and weld in an aluminum tube with the sheet welded to the tube. All this welding and milling would be a nightmare on a 6, 8, 12cyl engine,. Possibly even a 4cyl. Could stressful.. I was thinking single cylinder or two cylinders. I am very interested in this engine. I had a corvair as a kid, and always wanted to drive it. Really wanted to work on it ,modify some things. But it's only 2-3 I ever seen around here. As in for parts I seen none. I like the 4door rear deck area to trunk, the two door look all stretched out to me. I would love to shorten it a bit. Not the whole rear door length, maybe half way. Weld it back together. Making a 2 seat with cargo area. With the remaining doors welded closed. Swapping out the 2speed .for a 4-5 speed. I even thought about mounting a 3.8L v6 Buick in transverse. Even with the transverse version of the 4l60 or whatever. Most recent, after discovering lost foam , lost pla casting. Where anything you can 3D print or can carve from dense foam . Can be cast into aluminum easily. With a possible better than die cast finish. I saw a guy who makes replica intake manifolds, carburetors even. And lots more. Looking as good or better than the original parts. So why not cast some water cooled cylinders that bolted to the case, with thick aluminum jackets and about 1" thick decks 1" thick head with a o-ring groove, and either a dead soft aluminum or copper head gasket. Squeeze in about 1.5"/2.02" valves if possible, and possibly two sparkplugs, and custom pistons with a hemispherical dish in the center. With the head only having about 20cc of chamber in it. With a compression ratio around 8:1-9:1, with a pair of turbos, on methanol, laced with a bit of nitro. And either press in top hat liners, or chrome the cylinders having the O-ring groove in the liner, to seal the sleeve to the head with about 8 bolts(arp studs) per cylinder with flanged nuts, having a 11/16"" or 3/4" hex. (7/16" thread )To spread the clamping pressure. And while at it. Polish the crank and rods , removing all excess material. Leaving a basically polished sculpted finish. Removing stress risers and leaving a stronger crank and rods. And improve oil passages also. Cast a aluminum manifold/ mounting block to accept a either SBC short water pump or big block pump. That Mounts to the rear of the engine. Runs a 1/2" shaft to the front in a bearing mounting flange with pulley. To be crank driven. The manifold block having plugged ports , with two 1" ports connecting to each bank. With three 1/2" ports per cylinder, with 3, 5/8" -3/4" outlets on the head going into a 1.5" outlets into a tee, and possibly a 2" with a 1/2" bypass. The tree having a thermostat using a SBC thermostat. And possibly look into getting a fluid damper harmonic damper, to keep the crank happier! And flow testing the heads, using the info to order a custom grind camshaft. To take advantage of the flow characteristics of the heads, casting 4valve dohc heads would be awesome. Possibly using modified Subaru heads? Doubt they have 8 bolts, or room for them. Maybe a bolt change to allow the use. Maybe cast near replicas of the Subaru heads, keep the cams and valve positions. And modified everything else. Raise the ports , make a more straight shot to and from the valve. With shallow combustion chamber. Thick decks and ceramic insulation coating on the piston dome, combustion chambers, valves, and inside the intake and exhaust ports. And both sides of the turbo tubular manifold. Possibly cast from stainless steel, with 3mm wall, and 10-12mm flanges. (1/8, and 3/8-1/2") with bolt holes for bracing, to prevent breaking tubes. Reduce vibration. With the crack being sandwiched between two engines. It should handle a fairly large power gain. As long as nothing actually breaks from excess RPM, 4x power+ should be easy even 100hp per cylinder,+ turbos and nitro!! Maybe reverse the valve sizes, run a 1.85" intake , with a 2.10" exhaust,. With a huge port, and 1.75" or larger header , with 2valves , 1.5"/1.65" for 4valve. It would be a heck of a project. Someone would either be rich, or own the equipment and have the ability to do the work. And possibly have friends with the ability to machine and cast, CAD design, 3D printing, and willing to help. Because nothing would be available for this. Not even gaskets so I'm thinking cast aluminum valve covers. With enough material to use a o-ring rope as the gaskets , a spark plug tube seal and perimeter seal from a roughly 1.5mm o-ring cord. Someone with waterjet access or EDM to make head gaskets from, .020"- .050" copper without work hardening. And the head o-rings from stainless, could be EDM cut. Slice . 030" thick slices off a stainless tube. Or later weld stainless wire. It would be costly, I! Think corvair should have lasted until the early 80's at least, there could been a race series using them. It could been soo much more..
Looks a lot like a $10,000 to $12,000 Corvair engine. Now you need Toronado rear hubs and 1-1/2” half shafts connecting to a suitable Porsche transaxle. Add trailing arm suspension with cantilever coil overs and all the supports, brackets, bits and pieces and you have a $25,000 to $30,000 back half of an unpainted Corvair body. I would absolutely love to do it if cost was no object but just a pair of triple Webber carbs and Porsche intake manifolds are out of the question. Question: you put a ton of engineering into the water system. Could you cast each cylinder bank as one total aluminum unit that was all fins with the cylinders cast into it? Given a known amount of heat to be dissipated can fins accomplish that task? How much air at 90 degrees Fahrenheit must pass over the fins? Or drop in an aluminum 264 (?) Buick and call it good?
How could this great video be hidden in a corner of UA-cam and only have 55 likes (including mine) after 2 months? Super interesting, especially the combustion chamber and conversion to water cooling!
Glad you liked it! Lloyd Taylor felt the same way--now it's on display at the National Corvair Museum in Glenarm, Illinois.
Fascinating video thank you. I am a retired Porsche tech who specialized in air-cooled 911's. Porsche's philosophy in regard to cooling was to use oil cooling - this was so important to them that they considered their engines as much oil cooled as air cooled. A large oil pump/dry sump setup up with a large oil reservoir and dual oil coolers with oil sprayers aimed at the underside of each piston carried heat away. As a side note Porsche used a special alloy head stud called "DILIVAR" that expanded at a similar rate to the cylinder/heads/cam housing and eliminated the stretching, breakage, and case pulling prone to the earlier studs. These do not necessarily require replacement after every build, but careful inspection for issues (corrosion, cracks etc.).
I had never seen this motor before, way interesting!
Can we get another video explaining how the heads were made/assembled? I was fascinated by the part from 10 mins - 11:45. Would love to know more about how the chambers were affixed to the heads/cylinders.
That is awesome, I have thought about converting motorcycle engines to water-cooling I was thinking just mill down most of the cooling fins. Leaving the top one and bottom fin, mill a clear coolant path in the remaining fins. With a coolant crossover to jump cylinder to head, with the head having aluminum sheet welded to it just as the cylinder. With milled down fins. Possibly mill around the sparkplug hole, and weld in an aluminum tube with the sheet welded to the tube. All this welding and milling would be a nightmare on a 6, 8, 12cyl engine,. Possibly even a 4cyl. Could stressful.. I was thinking single cylinder or two cylinders. I am very interested in this engine. I had a corvair as a kid, and always wanted to drive it. Really wanted to work on it ,modify some things. But it's only 2-3 I ever seen around here. As in for parts I seen none. I like the 4door rear deck area to trunk, the two door look all stretched out to me. I would love to shorten it a bit. Not the whole rear door length, maybe half way. Weld it back together. Making a 2 seat with cargo area. With the remaining doors welded closed. Swapping out the 2speed .for a 4-5 speed. I even thought about mounting a 3.8L v6 Buick in transverse. Even with the transverse version of the 4l60 or whatever. Most recent, after discovering lost foam , lost pla casting. Where anything you can 3D print or can carve from dense foam . Can be cast into aluminum easily. With a possible better than die cast finish. I saw a guy who makes replica intake manifolds, carburetors even. And lots more. Looking as good or better than the original parts. So why not cast some water cooled cylinders that bolted to the case, with thick aluminum jackets and about 1" thick decks 1" thick head with a o-ring groove, and either a dead soft aluminum or copper head gasket. Squeeze in about 1.5"/2.02" valves if possible, and possibly two sparkplugs, and custom pistons with a hemispherical dish in the center. With the head only having about 20cc of chamber in it. With a compression ratio around 8:1-9:1, with a pair of turbos, on methanol, laced with a bit of nitro. And either press in top hat liners, or chrome the cylinders having the O-ring groove in the liner, to seal the sleeve to the head with about 8 bolts(arp studs) per cylinder with flanged nuts, having a 11/16"" or 3/4" hex. (7/16" thread )To spread the clamping pressure. And while at it. Polish the crank and rods , removing all excess material. Leaving a basically polished sculpted finish. Removing stress risers and leaving a stronger crank and rods. And improve oil passages also. Cast a aluminum manifold/ mounting block to accept a either SBC short water pump or big block pump. That
Mounts to the rear of the engine. Runs a 1/2" shaft to the front in a bearing mounting flange with pulley. To be crank driven. The manifold block having plugged ports , with two 1" ports connecting to each bank. With three 1/2" ports per cylinder, with 3, 5/8" -3/4" outlets on the head going into a 1.5" outlets into a tee, and possibly a 2" with a 1/2" bypass. The tree having a thermostat using a SBC thermostat. And possibly look into getting a fluid damper harmonic damper, to keep the crank happier! And flow testing the heads, using the info to order a custom grind camshaft. To take advantage of the flow characteristics of the heads, casting 4valve dohc heads would be awesome. Possibly using modified Subaru heads? Doubt they have 8 bolts, or room for them. Maybe a bolt change to allow the use. Maybe cast near replicas of the Subaru heads, keep the cams and valve positions. And modified everything else. Raise the ports , make a more straight shot to and from the valve. With shallow combustion chamber. Thick decks and ceramic insulation coating on the piston dome, combustion chambers, valves, and inside the intake and exhaust ports. And both sides of the turbo tubular manifold. Possibly cast from stainless steel, with 3mm wall, and 10-12mm flanges. (1/8, and 3/8-1/2") with bolt holes for bracing, to prevent breaking tubes. Reduce vibration. With the crack being sandwiched between two engines. It should handle a fairly large power gain. As long as nothing actually breaks from excess RPM, 4x power+ should be easy even 100hp per cylinder,+ turbos and nitro!! Maybe reverse the valve sizes, run a 1.85" intake , with a 2.10" exhaust,. With a huge port, and 1.75" or larger header , with 2valves , 1.5"/1.65" for 4valve. It would be a heck of a project. Someone would either be rich, or own the equipment and have the ability to do the work. And possibly have friends with the ability to machine and cast, CAD design, 3D printing, and willing to help. Because nothing would be available for this. Not even gaskets so I'm thinking cast aluminum valve covers. With enough material to use a o-ring rope as the gaskets , a spark plug tube seal and perimeter seal from a roughly 1.5mm o-ring cord. Someone with waterjet access or EDM to make head gaskets from,
.020"- .050" copper without work hardening. And the head o-rings from stainless, could be EDM cut. Slice . 030" thick slices off a stainless tube. Or later weld stainless wire. It would be costly, I! Think corvair should have lasted until the early 80's at least, there could been a race series using them. It could been soo much more..
Looks a lot like a $10,000 to $12,000 Corvair engine. Now you need Toronado rear hubs and 1-1/2” half shafts connecting to a suitable Porsche transaxle. Add trailing arm suspension with cantilever coil overs and all the supports, brackets, bits and pieces and you have a $25,000 to $30,000 back half of an unpainted Corvair body. I would absolutely love to do it if cost was no object but just a pair of triple Webber carbs and Porsche intake manifolds are out of the question.
Question: you put a ton of engineering into the water system. Could you cast each cylinder bank as one total aluminum unit that was all fins with the cylinders cast into it?
Given a known amount of heat to be dissipated can fins accomplish that task? How much air at 90 degrees Fahrenheit must pass over the fins?
Or drop in an aluminum 264 (?) Buick and call it good?
A Corvwater motor.....