Builders:

In 10 days I am going to open up the registration and sign up for our November Barnwell South Carolina Corvair College. read: Barnwell Corvair College, 2020, it has a video link about this very special event.

Although it is a number of months away, It is very important to plan and get started on prep work with Heads, Cranks and Cases, now. These critical items come from the Weseman’s at Sport Performance Aviation, the Panther people. For the sake of efficiency, they are done in batches. In speaking with them last week, we covered getting a large number of builders ready for fall building and the Barnwell College. Looking at the time lines, it is very important that builders who want to make progress or run their engine at Barnwell need to send in the three long lead time items above. This next batch will get into the process pipeline in the next 2-3 weeks. They will be done long before Barnwell, but projecting forward, the next batch will be mid-September, and that round isn’t guaranteed to get all done, and back in builders hands before Barnwell. Thus, it is critical that builders planning on running at Barnwell have their critical components in to SPA very shortly.

Heads are the longest lead time item, and the sooner your cores get to SPA the better. Occasionally, during the disassembly inspection phase, it turns out the builder needs 1 head or would be better off with nicer cores. We can track these down, it isn’t a big deal, but it is far easier if this is discovered earlier. Even if you are not planning on attending Barnwell, but are serious about advancing your engine sooner, get on the phone and speak with SPA about scheduling.

There are several options on processed cranks through SPA, but the most popular is using your 8409 GM forged core crank, after complete reprocessing, mated to a Weseman Gen II fifth bearing. Again, this has lead time on it, and it is important to get these in the works. If you are considering a 3.3L engine, they all have Billet cranks, and right now SPA has a limited supply on hand. The Billet crank is optional on other engines, and you can cover the pros and cons of this with them, great motors can be built based on either crank.

On the subject of Cases, if you are building an engine 3,000cc or more, the cases have to be machined. For this, they need to be sent to SPA. Again, this has a bit of lead time. For engines smaller than 3,000cc, you can just clean up your case at home, and await the return of your crank and heads.

Planning and action are critical for progress. To get your components into the progress pipeline, call SPA at 904-626-7777, and you can get pricing and core shipping information. The crucial element is that you can’t wait until mid summer to act on this, the train for Barnwell is leaving the station soon, make sure you are on it.