let's begin :)

A beautiful morning here in Pow-town, so I decided to grab some wrenches and get started taking off some of the accessories.

First I started with removing the idler pulley.  Some of the earlier Corvair conversions used the original cooling fan and associated pulleys and belts (and I think exact Pietenpol replicas still do), but it has been eliminated completely in the latest conversion instructions:

With that removed, next to come off was the mechanical fuel pump.  Again, in early conversions it was used but not in the latest versions, so off it comes:

The fuel pump is held on with a small pinch bolt

Next inline is the "GM Delcotron Adapter" which has 6 functions.  It contains the oil filter mount, the oil fill tube, the fuel pump mounting hole, the oil temp sensor, the alternator mounting pad and makes up the top of the oil pump/cover assembly  All that great engineering, but nothing (except the oil fill tube) gets used for the conversion....LOL

With the fuel pump and idler pulley removed I can access all 5 bolts that hold the Delcotron Adapter in place:

I didn't get a picture of the underside of this adapter.  I would have expected it to be dirty but it isn't.  There doesn't seem to be a speck of oil or varnish.  I wonder if is was a new part, or maybe had been taken off and cleaned previously.  Either way it's spotless and should be an easy sell to someone (apparently they are rare).

With the Delcotron Adapater removed, you can see how clean everything else is.  In the FlyCorvair video, oil comes gushing out when this is taken off.  Here it is bone dry and very clean.

You might notice one of the bolts missing from it's hole (the one on the right).  I accidentally dropped it down the hole in the top of the oil pump/cover... oops.  The cover also gets taken off the block, thankfully I'll be able to grab it later.  Also somewhat visible is the mechanical fuel pump shaft.  It should pull right out, but I suspect it's stuck by some varnish.  I ran out of time to working to remove it.  It has to come out before removing the oil pump/cover, so I'll tackle it next time:

The mechanical fuel pump actuator shaft sticking up. (black coloured, directly behind the harmonic balancer)

The conversion plans replace the entire Delcotron Adapter with a CNC machined adapter like this one: 

Gold (anodized) oil filter adapter (picture shows different sides of same adapter)

This moves the filter to a better position, provides ports for oil temperature and pressure measurements and a source of high pressure oil to feed the 5th bearing that will be added to the engine as part of the conversion (more on the 5th bearing later in the build).

One thing is very obvious.  This core has been apart already (dry and clean internals).  I can't believe how clean everything is and how easy bolts are coming out.  I just hope everything is good inside too.

Next up, removing the harmonic balancer which will give me access to the bolts holding on the oil pump/cover.