Projects 1962 Corvair Monza Wagon: my rarest project yet

I just picked up a dilapidated old Corvair Wagon. It's a true Monza wagon, one of only 2,362 IIRC. I'm not sure how many are still out there, but you sure don't see them every day.




I'm not tearing it down for a full resto any time soon. The plan is to get it running and make a driver out of it. I'll need to replace the springs right away, as someone took a torch to them years ago, making the car nearly useless. Then I'll patch the floors and try to make the interior less nasty. Eventually I want to use it as a tow-behind for our vintage RV (a certain OT but FWD variety with an Olds 455).

 

A miniature long roof! Cool!

 

The Key most missed with Corvair safety was, suspension service and maintenance
Confident you will do right
Thanks for the before view

 

Thanks, and you're right. Most people couldn't even inflate the tires according to MFG recommendations. That didn't help the handling. My first order of business is fixing the camber. There are five "columns" of tread blocks on the old tires. One is completely gone, and the other four are practically untouched! You can't drop these swing axle cars and expect things to work right. I can't wait to get new springs. This thing was a real pain to get off the trailer--it kept getting hung up even with all the 2x6 stacking we were doing. Then I couldn't even get it onto my lift without a bunch of jacking and messing around. Ugh.

 

Sounds like you have the same RV I have.
Looks like a nice start.

 

Had a '64 Monza with a Powerglide and a '62 Spider with a four speed, loved them both. great looking long-roof.

 

This is cool, I’m subscribed!

 

The first order of business was to swap out a fast leaking tire. As luck would have it, I found a guy selling a set of four wheels with center caps on Marketplace for 10 bucks with good tires. He said they were from a Chevy but didn't have any other info, but I saw the telltale four lug pattern. I took a chance, and they seem to be a perfect fit on the Corvair. I've only swapped one for now, but it's nice to have it holding air. Good grief, does this thing sit low.

 

The frunk area looks pretty decent. There might be a pinhole or two to patch in the corners.



Cargo area looks pretty good too. Under the battery on the left hand side has a few holes, of course.



All the glass is good except for the wing windows. This is great news, since the wagon roof is 2" taller than the other Corvairs. This makes the glass unique, and much less available. In fact, I've heard the windshield is pretty much the hardest Corvair part to source. The wing windows have a little bit of delamination in bubbling, and I think cracks on one side of one of them, but since they're double layer safety glass they won't be falling apart. I can live with that for now.



I'm seeing new parts. This is probably a bad sign of things to come for the starter. Maybe we'll find out why it was parked?



I also found a spare trans in the piles of junk inside. Perhaps another bad sign...

 

I like how low its sitting but one can imagine its appetite for tire edges.
New springs!

 

Corvair estate, very kewl, yada, yada, yada...are we talkin GMC Urban Assault Vehicle?

 

Hypothetically, if I did own four of those, I wouldn't be able to talk it about it here. So enjoy a photo of a slightly cleaner Corvair with nothing interesting in the background.

 

Luckily, there are a couple of really good Corvair parts vendors. Clark's Corvair in Massachusetts and California Corvairs are both great to deal with, and parts are more readily available than they are for many older cars. They're simple cars, but they're so much different from a front-engined anything that it takes a little bit to get used to the little details. I've had my '65 convertible for 16 years, and I should have bought a better one, but it's a fun car to drive, and you get used to working on them. The only other Corvair I'd really want would be a '61 or '62 wagon. Nice find!

Oh, you may want to check out corvaircenter.com. I've learned a ton there over the years, especially when I was first figuring the car out.

 

very very cool! i have two 63 corvairs. one spyder, one 500

 

Very nice, wagon and OT longroof as well

 

Nice old Corvair. I'm with you on returning the ride height to normal. I think in this case it will look better, plus it will give you some load capacity.

 

That thing sits perfect.

 

Corvair wagons are really rare to find these days, and yours appears to be more solid than most Corvairs are after all these years. Nice project to start off with.

 

Thanks. This is actually my second Corvair, so I've been all over the forums. I actually work with the daughter of Rex Johnson, one of the club VPs and renowned Corvair mechanic. It was a small world when I learned that her dad was a Corvair nut, but I'm happy to have a good contact.

I'm thinking the same thing. I have visions of cruising up and down the coast with the wife, the two kids, and our two large dogs plus gear. That's why it makes such a great tow-behind, it weighs the same thing as my Chevy Sonic, but has a lot more cargo space.

I mean, it does kind of look neat, but it's completely unusable. I actually want to use this thing a lot. If it was bagged, and a guy could actually put it at a reasonable height for handling and tire wear, I wouldn't mind. But for something with a swing axle, this just won't do. Did you see those pics of the tire wear above?

This one was definitely worth saving, but the floors are awful bad. I'll post more on that later. I'm just hoping I don't discover cancer under the windshield frames and such. Most of the body seems pretty decent. The interior was almost non-existent, unfortunately. Door panels, headliner and carpet are gone, seats are completely destroyed.

 

The engine looks surprisingly non-gunky and leak free. That's surprises me, given the Corvairs reputation. Maybe this has been gone through already? Tires are dated 2009, and someone clearly drove it enough to wear them out with an improperly set up suspension. Exhaust looks like it might be obnoxious, I guess we'll see.


And now for the rust! We all knew this was coming. Yep, the PO was rocking the plywood.


The fuel tank looks promising; this makes me happy.


Rusty floorboards.


One of the spots where the trailer got friendly.


More rusty floorboards. At least the "structure" appears to be okay.





Another spot where the trailer got hung up real bad. Might not have been such an issue if we didn't have to unload it in the dark.

Well looky there, someone used a training wheels bracket from a kid's bike has an exhaust hanger. That's a first.

Well it looks like a lot of work, and of course, we all know rust is always a lot worse than it appears at first glance. So I guess that means I've got quite a project ahead of me. Thankfully I'm not doing a restoration at this point. Maybe when my kids are grown, if I still like the car a lot, I'll sink all the extra work into it. But for now it'll just be a driver with patina. It'll be good to have a functional interior, weather stripping, full functionality of all the features, etc.

 

Late '60s - early '70s I made a lot of $$ replacing clutch cables in Corvairs ... the last gas station "mechanic" that had the engine out wouldn't take time to hook up the 4 ground straps from the body to the engine shrouding. Clutch cables make poor ground straps.
We also tried welding the flywheels back together when the rivets came loose, which proved to be a bad idea.
I wonder if there may still be a set of Douglass Trombones on a shelf somewhere ....

 

If you have welding experience, doing the floors on one of these isn't bad. Clark's sells really good reproductions, too. The frame stubs on yours look like they're in good shape, so it's a job worth tackling.

 

Right now I'm vacillating on whether it's worth it to shell out for the Clark's floors which really add up after shipping, or if I should spend a bunch of money on a bead roller and a bending brake instead. I think I'm leaning towards the latter since I've got other cars that need floors too.

 

if it had LM suspension I would agree.

however its a swing axle, hes asking for trouble with it lowered

 

Being that it's a mostly flat floor anyway, I don't see anything wrong with doing it that way.

 

It’s easy to spend other people cash and time.
Is it possible to install the 2 joint rear suspension?
Just curious

 

i believe so, bolts in with no modification. i havent done it though. so do your own research on the forums.

 

Definitely OT but you might want to check out Matt's Off Road Recovery on U Tube. He is a Corvair Geek in addition to other things. There is one segment that includes driving a Corvair wagon that his wife surprised him with from Montana to Hurricane, UT. Some of the video seems scripted but the wagon is clean and original.

 

Just get a 65 and later.

 

That's a whole lotta roof in one photo.