Deserter GS, 2 by Alex Dearborn
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Newsletter of the Lehigh Valley Corvair Club (LVCC) the fifth wheel APRIL 2014 HTTP://WWW.CORVAIR.ORG/CHAPTERS/LVCC ESTABLISHED 1976 Inside this issue 1966 Corvair Photo, 1 Weidner Collection Deserter GS, 2 By Alex Dearborn LVCC Meeting Notes 4 From March 1969 Ignition Rotors: 5 A Visual Comparison Rotors! By 6 Chastain & McKenna Even More Tech 6 Topics! NECC at New York 7 Safety Track! Search for the Holy 7 Grail. Thermistors! LVCC Calendar 8 Of Events LVCC Classified 10 Ads Next LVCC Meeting 10 April 23, 2014 LVCC Officer 10 Contact Info The Fifth Wheel is published monthly by the Lehigh Valley Corvair Club (LVCC), Inc. We accept articles of interest to Corvair owners for publication. Classified advertising of interest to Corvair owners is available free of charge to all persons. Commer- cial advertising is also available on a fee basis. Please contact our newsletter editor, Allan Lacki for details. LVCC is one of the many regional chapters of the Corvair Society of America (CORSA), a non-profit organization that was in- corporated to satisfy the common needs of individuals interested in the preservation, restoration, and operation of the Chevrolet Corvair. LVCC caters to Corvair people who live in and around the Lehigh Valley Region of eastern Pennsylvania. This is a very special car club! LVCC dues are $10 a year for CORSA members or $15 a year for non-CORSA members. PAGE 2 THEFIFTHWHEEL APRIL 2014 The freedom of expression implicit in the SCCA rule book, went to Lime Deserter GS the molded body on VW platform ig- Rock to mix it up with the sports cars. nited a sleeping market for car enthusi- (Therein lies another story.) by Alex Dearborn asts with moderate mechanical skills. Engineers and entrepreneurs dreamed While the Deserter line was my con- of ways of improving on the genius of cept, the actual protoypes and produc- Corvair-Powered Mid- Bruce Meyers’ fiberglass body design. tion parts were made next door to Dear- Engine Autocross Car At Dearborn Automobile Co., we born Automobile Company (in Marble- tapped a pool of racing-car designers head) at Autodynamics, then the largest Preface: Alex Dearborn’s car career from Autodynamics to produce mid- manufacturer of racing cars in the started during his military days with engined dune buggy-like street ma- country. Company products included the US Army in the 1960’s. He spent chines, and went racing at Pikes Peak the SCCA National Championship off-hours buying, selling, and racing and on paved circuits. Others devel- Caldwell Formula Vees, the D9 For- Porsche 356s. Realizing his aptitude oped VW powerplants to make double mula Fords (by 1970, the car to beat in for the motor trade, he went to work for their original power, and sand rails got SCCA) and D10 Formula SuperVees. Ray Caldwell at Autodynamics while intense development, as races such as In addition, Ray Caldwell had designed honing his competition skills. There, the Baja 1000 proliferated. Small ac- a Formula 5000 car for Brett Lunger, Alex designed the Deserter, a series of cessory makers became big corpora- and was working on a new Can Am car cars uniquely blending sports car and tions with worldwide dealer networks, for Sam Posey. dune buggy with VW underpinnings. and, as in real life, fortunes were made The original Deserter GS raced Pikes and lost. The company had a dyno shop, chassis Peak in 1971, and examples were sold fabricating facilities, a fiberglass shop, thereafter as kits. Today we see a resurgence of interest and engineers Ray Caldwell and Fred in buggies. The rise in values of sixties Jackson. All of us knew that we could The following article is copied from sports cars has enthusiasts paying build a Corvair-powered rear-engined Alex Dearborn’s personal website at $60,000 for Austin Healeys and Deserter with readily available parts, http://www.dearbornauto.com/ We $100,000 for Porsche Speedsters, so its but we also knew that it wouldn't han- thank Mr. Dearborn for granting LVCC no wonder that some brand-name dune dle well enough to be competitive. permission to publish his article here, buggies are becoming collectable. The in our Fifth Wheel newsletter. restoration parts market is also ready. Deserter GS Back in the sixties, we struggled to achieve 90 bhp from a VW Type 1 en- I asked Ray Caldwell and his chassis Dune buggy history, 1965-2005 gine in our dynamometer-equipped en- builder, Bill Woodhead, to design a gine shop. Now, one can order such an mid-engined layout for the existing De- The history of Volkswagen-derived engine as a turnkey product for about serter Series One buggy body. We dune buggies is a wild one. From the $4,000, a fraction of the 1968 cost, ad- knew that the doorless "tub" of the De- metal-clad homebuilts of the early six- justed for inflation. A rebuilt transmis- serter was very light and pretty rigid, ties to the well-engineered cars and kits sion in a crate is a mail-order item at and we had this idea that a floor pan of the late sixties and seventies, the $450. Bruce Meyers has recently intro- could be molded out of fiberglass, in- genre grew in sophistication and popu- duced a new buggy kit. I have restored corporating the seats in the same piece. larity. a 1969 Deserter GT 912. (Not for pro- And so it came together. A mild steel duction). tubular frame was designed, and the Denise McCluggage, the noted sports "floorpan" was cast fiberglass with two car racer and automotive writer, said in Deserter Series One impressions of my butt in it. These two a 1968 article about Deserters for Town pieces were bonded and riveted to- & Country magazine “………..Man the Our original '67 Deserter dune buggy gether to form a mid-engined frame Driver has become bored enough to – was visually a shameless clone of more rigid than the company's Formula ugh – walk! Now something else has Bruce Meyers' ingenius design, the Ford chassis! Pickup points were in- appeared to alleviate driving boredom - Manx. In order to make the car more corporated at the front for VW beam the Anti-Car, the raw-vehicle side of roadworthy, however, we extended the axles, and in the engine bay to carry cardom.” Just as the USA anti-pollution body to fit on a VW pan shortened to Corvair or 911 or VW engines. The and crash-safety organizations EPA & 84" wheelbase, instead of the then- best we knew about swing axle suspen- DOT were gearing up to standardize, customary 80". This in turn enabled us sions was used to locate the VW trans- dumb-down and emasculate regular to hang a little more horsepower off the axle FV style, behind the engine bay. production cars, along came the little back end. In '68, we built a Deserter fiberglass wonder called Dune Buggy, Series One with a 1600 Porsche Super The result was an 85" wheelbase De- saving the day for car enthusiasts. in the rear, and, after a quick review of serter GS, which weighed in at under APRIL 2014 THEFIFTHWHEEL PAGE 3 Nicely restored Deserter GS, by Dearborn Automobile Power by Corvair! Mid-engine location is evident in Company. this photograph. Deserter GS, doing what it was designed to do. Earlier Deserter GS is easily distinguished by its free- Autocrossing. standing headlights. Potent tail of the Deserter GS. Tires are enclosed by High-performance turbo Corvair engine. The black fiberglass pods for street. seats are molded into the fiberglass monocoque. PAGE 4 THEFIFTHWHEEL APRIL 2014 1300 lbs with a Corvair amidships. and kits were selling smoothly, I hard top header. A hard top was de- The weight distribution was nearly wanted a new body design for our cars. signed with gull wing doors. The rear 50/50 instead of 30/70 for a (rear- Most Deserter customers were using fender wells were made wide to accept engined) Deserter GT. their cars on pavement, so I envisioned the longer 1967 and later VW swing a sleeker body with the same adequate axles with 15X10 wheels mounted. We called the mid-engined model engine and tire coverage. "GS"; not after the Buick Gran Sport I sold the business to Autodynamics in but after the ski race "Giant Slalom". I A stunning, clean-looking new design late 1971, and Reeves Callaway be- believed that the real market for the car emerged among all the "second- came the sales manager. Deserter cars was for autocross competition and generation" buggies....... the Bounty and kits are no longer made by Dear- street use, not the SCCA sports racing Hunter. I quickly made arrangements born Automobile Co., and we do not classes then dominated by Can-Am with its talented designer, Californian sell or trade used Deserter cars or parts. cars. Indeed, Bill Goodale became Brian Dries, for the rights to use his The Deserter information contained SCCA National Solo Champion in a design for the next Deserter body style. herein is for historical purposes only, Deserter GS during the 70's. and it is hoped that it will assist restor- Our challenge for this new Deserter GT ers. We did make a few kits available to was to take the Dries style, stretch it 4" customers for the annual hill climb at to fit VW floor pans of 84" wheelbase, Alex Dearborn Pike's Peak, and we built a GT-style assure that it could be licensed for road GS/VW for me to do the 1971 event. use in every state, keep the kit pieces to After the event I ran this car with a a bare minimum for easy manufacture, LVCC MEETING Corvair engine in SCCA and at a few and retain the quality of easy assembly 1/4 mile ovals.