I have begun my airplane building project with the engine. Why? It was the cheapest and easiest part to acquire so I could begin my build immediately. This also leaves open the option to build something other than the Air Camper if I happen to change my mind.

I got pretty lucky on the Corvair engine core. It was very clean and in good shape.

It has most of the core parts needed for the conversion. I think everything except the distributor was included for $400. It had been mounted on a trike and a prop boat before that and was very clean. I found a distributor for that core on eBay for $50 after shipping.

The only caveat was that the heads were “smog heads”. These are unfortunately not suitable for aircraft build. However, it looks like Azalea Aircraft may still be able to accept them for core value. More on that when I get to it.

The disassembly went quite easily and took me a little more than a day. Here are some of the parts almost ready to be packed and shipped out for processing:

The first thing to build is the short block and Integrated Fifth Bearing. I used Purple Power ($6.50 per gallon at Dollar General) and a pressure washer hooked up to my hot water heater. Using hot water with the pressure washer is highly effective.  I will deburr and detail clean the case in the next article. Stay tuned!