Ace-Garageguy

Very nice indeed.

Considering that at the time of his holy war against the Corvair, he didn't own a car, didn't even have a license to drive a car, had never ridden in a Corvair, and had zero engineering background... There was nothing inherently wrong with the early Corvair (though it could have been better), and in fact, its rear swing-axle suspension design was identical to that used in VW Beetles and 356 Porsches, some production Mercedes cars, and even some highly successful F1 cars built years earlier. The problems were that 1) a simple, inexpensive device known as a "camber compensator" could have been fitted to make the first cars more friendly to Mr. and Mrs. Joe Average Driver ("camber compensators" were common upgrades on hot Porsches and VWs at the time as well...I ran one on my own VW), but the bean counters nixed the idea, and 2) tire pressures were critical to achieving safe and predictable handling of the very first cars in the hands of average drivers too...and GM mistakenly believed that putting the information regarding said tire pressures in the owner's manual would be sufficient. Nope. I've owned every flavor of Corvair ever made, and drove all of them hard. The 1960 (first year) with no camber compensator was indeed overly sensitive to tire pressures, but somehow I managed to avoid flaming death. The later first-gen cars through '64 were great fun to drive rapidly, safe and predictable. For 1965 Corvairs all got a sophisticated fully independent rear suspension design that was actually more advanced than what was on Porsches at the time and they handled great...but GM's gutless posture in the face of Nader's (and the hysterical yapping media's) largely exaggerated attack was what ultimately doomed the car. The last year was 1969. Nader's attack on the Corvair was largely the initial event that allowed the gubmint to push its camel's nose into the car-design tent, and the result has been a legacy of overly complex, expensive, and largely useless (and ultimately withdrawn...can you say 5mph bumpers, boys and girls?) "safety" features. EDIT: VW Bugs (below) and contemporary Porsches with swing-axle rear ends exhibited exactly the same extreme camber change in droop as the early Corvair, and were also sensitive to front/rear tire pressure differentials, but somehow managed to escape Mr. Nader's UNSAFE AT ANY SPEED !!!!!!! tirade.

Battleship armor was much thicker than that of destroyers, which is the reason they (destroyers) were called "tin cans".

"Down two, then left" used to be my location under my avatar, before in the interest of "security" locations were banished.

Yeah, it's pretty common and as you say, one of the easy tipoffs to scammitry...or is it scammage...? However, as "common knowledge" continues to decline and any kind of proof-reading is apparently just too much trouble, I notice all kinds of spllellink and grammur and linguine misteakes everywear.

Monkees don't know what sentences are either.

P.M. ed

"South" has always meant "land of miserably hot and sticky summers" to me, and this year seems no different.

From the definitive search engine whose corporate motto was "DO NO EVIL" to a hypocritical self-righteous dogma and greed driven pile of ...

Mozart probably knew what a sentence is.

Word-salad is a product of stupid trying to sound smart.

The Columbia is made for a "closed driveline" or "torque-tube" setup, but could be converted to an "open" style driveshaft coupling. The only other major mod required would be replacing the buggy-spring perches with semi-elliptic perches welded to the axle housings. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TO sidcharles: The above statement is self-explanatory. It deals with additional modifications required to convert a torque-tube rear to an "open" configuration. Conversely, to convert a torque-tube rear end on a transverse leaf spring to work with parallel leaf springs, the driveline must also be converted to an "open" configuration. Sorry I can't go into more detail but some glitch in the forum's software prevents me from posting a very complete response.

NOTE TO MODS: I've written an in-depth response to this question, clarifying seeming contradictions. HOWEVER, somewhere in the text is apparently one of the keywords or phrases that set your forum's software's hair on fire, and that has triggered the dreaded "PAGE CAN'T BE FOUND" when I try to post it. Sorry, but it's just not my job to jump through hoops to compensate for software glitches when I take the time to write and post complete factual technical information in response to questions posted by forum members.

Turboed cars can be great. Think about the Porsche 930 that set a performance benchmark and was one of the most desirable cars on the planet, even though it was not very forgiving to drive. They also tend to be complex and reliability and ease of service/maintenance can suffer as a consequence. Back in the '80s there were many shops turboing everything imaginable, and while a lot were turkey hack-jobs, some were well thought-out and engineered and beautifully fabricated...and very fast.