How they shipped Chevrolet Vegas

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Originally Posted By: A_Harman
Corporate politics had something to do with the Vega engine. Chevrolet had a nice OHC iron block, aluminum head engine for the car, and Engineering Staff designed the aluminum block, iron head engine that was selected for production. Low manufacturing costs are probably what swayed the decision. The die-cast aluminum linerless block had been a dream for a long time at GM.


By corporate politics, do you mean Ed Cole, the father of the Corvair?
From what I understood, the nightmare that was the early Vega engine was mainly his dream.
It was even an ugly engine in its installed form.
I remember this from my days of Vega ownership.
The engine was a very rough runner at higher revs, but the car was geared tall enough that you wouldn't notice this at any cruise speed.
The car had wonderful ride and handling on very smooth roads.
Throw a couple of bumps in there and you'd swear that the car had no suspension at all.
Take the same platform and throw in a SBC and you ended up with a very nose-heavy little car with a very stylish shape, no interior space and no real performance. This platform had a huge tranny bulge and driveshaft tunnel to begin with.
That the Monza didn't end up with unacceptable understeer is a tribute to GM's chassis tuning engineers of the time.
The Vega had enormous promise, as did the earlier Corvair and the later Citation.
All of these cars failed to deliver on what they promised.
I've also owned a couple of Corvairs and a V-6 Citation.
Of the three, I'd now buy and enjoy a good Corvair, although the Vega was a handling fool on smooth roads while the Citation was quite fast for a small car of its day and had a ride that was quite smooth and even floaty, very much like GM's larger cars of the day. It would also corner very well, although not as well as either a Vega (on smooth roads) or a Corvair.
 
Ya know.....forty years later, those cars don't look half bad. Very spiffy looking, and instantly recognizable as a Chevy. Too bad they didn't live up to their looks.
 
Spiffy is right ... the only car I've had since that was as nice looking was my BMW 530 E34. Remember the paper temp licence plates issued in CA?
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False brinelling on wheel bearings during transport is a constant concern in our business. I wonder how vertical transport fits into this. We're they still held by the wheels?
 
Kestas, I think because they have elastic suspension components, tyres, et al, that there's enough slop to keep them relatively safe...heard the same things about cars on a flatbed versus a transport locked gearbox on a flatbed.
 
Originally Posted By: fdcg27
Originally Posted By: A_Harman
Corporate politics had something to do with the Vega engine. Chevrolet had a nice OHC iron block, aluminum head engine for the car, and Engineering Staff designed the aluminum block, iron head engine that was selected for production. Low manufacturing costs are probably what swayed the decision. The die-cast aluminum linerless block had been a dream for a long time at GM.


By corporate politics, do you mean Ed Cole, the father of the Corvair?
From what I understood, the nightmare that was the early Vega engine was mainly his dream.
It was even an ugly engine in its installed form.
I remember this from my days of Vega ownership.
The engine was a very rough runner at higher revs, but the car was geared tall enough that you wouldn't notice this at any cruise speed.



I suppose Ed Cole could be considered the instigator, because he was always pushing for advanced technology. Starting back in the early 60's with prototype aluminum small block Chevies, and the aluminum Buick and Olds 215 V8's. GM worked with Reynolds aluminum through the 60's to develop alloys that would be acceptable for cylinder bore wear. A390 aluminum casting alloy was developed that had free silicon particles in the microstructure that were hard enough to form a good wear surface when properly finished. GM was using linerless aluminum cylinder blocks in some of their CanAm big block racing engines, and thought the technology was proven well enough to put in the Vega engine. The Vega recall debacle ended the life of that particular technology at GM, but Mercedes and Porsche later used it in some of their engines.
 
Was it the aluminum/silicon bore the problem in this engine, or was it the very weak cylinder block?
If you took the head off a Vega (I did), the siamesed cylinder bores were just kind of sitting in the water jacket and weren't overly thick.
This engine might have held up a lot better were it a closed-deck design.
The Vega could produce good fuel economy in typical use and other than the roughness at higher revs, not unexpected in an undersquare four of 2.3 liters, the scoring of the cylinder bores and resultant very high oil consumption was the only real rap on this engine.
 
Originally Posted By: fdcg27
Was it the aluminum/silicon bore the problem in this engine, or was it the very weak cylinder block?


It was the aluminum bore, but other high-end manufacturers managed to get buy with similar designs.
One thing I do remember about this engine was that all the automotive magazines at the time had advertisements for companies that would take these blocks, bore them out, and then put iron sleeves in them. They would then last as long as any other engine of the era.
 
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