3.8 Intercooled Corvair?

[buickgs71]

I got to thinking it would be interesting to build a rear engined buick turbo powered car. There are quite a few corvairs out there that were converted to small block V8s for racing and it may not be too big of a deal to swap a 3.8 Turbo into one of them.

Has anyone ever seen one of these before? Does it sound practical, or insane?

The Corvairs are relatively unpopular and very nice condition cars can be had at a pretty good price. The 65-68 cars aren't bad looking. And I reckon the wheelstands could be awesome under turbo power.

 

[Sleeper]

Do a search on GNVAIR. Lee had done this conversion and has all the info on the in's and out's of this swap He may even have some leftover parts.

Paul

 

[GNVAIR]

I did it. It wasnt easy. My car originally had a Crown V8 set up with a 350 Chevy. I had to make a new subframe to bolt the Buick engine in as well as getting a different bell housing.
To be quite honest, it would work a lot better with a Hot Air engine than with an intercooled engine since you will play hell like I did with the plumbing. I modified the passenger side header to mount the turbo off the back of the driver side head. We made new passenger side header as well as a new cross over and down pipe. The intake was turned around 180° to have the throttle body point to the rear. All of this was done to gain seat room since the turbo in the stock location would have made it hellacious to fit an engine cover and run the intercooler plumbing.
I unfortunately lost interest in the project and removed the engine (which is now in our Monte SS). I sold the car and all the parts last June to a guy in PA who wanted to put another small block into it.
Best bet is to find a car with a Crown V8 kit and start from there as it gets very expensive very quickly if you start from scratch.
65-69 Corvairs can be picked up relatively cheap........try to find one that isnt rusted to hell is the key. The transaxle you need is the 66-69 Saginaw 4 speed. The 65 box wont work. There are kits now to adapt a regular Powerglide from a fullsize Chevy/Nova/Chevelle,etc to a Corvair transaxle. It would make the swap a lot easier.