Sometime around 1970 Martha decided she needed a car. As usual I was little help to her. She searched around and came up with a 1960 Corvair station wagon. It had been driven here from California by a guy going to school at Northern Illinois University. I remember that it was purchased in late spring by her for $125.00. The car had no rust and just a few dents and dings in it. She just loved it. It was a perfect car for her, and she could haul the kids around and do her shopping whenever she wanted.
We did have a little episode, when she had a flat tire. I insisted that she change it. I pointed out to her that the next one could come when she wasn’t at home. She wasn’t too thrilled with me at the time. However, she went out and learned how to jack up the car and put the spare on it. Interestingly enough, for the rest of her life, she never had another flat tire.
Then fall arrived, and we discovered why she had gotten the car so cheap. The heater in a Corvair gets it’s heat from the engine as it is an air-cooled motor. Turns out the push rod tube O rings had failed, and dripped oil on the engine. When you turned the heater on, the car filled with blue smoke. As a California car, this had never been a problem. The original owner discovered the problem in his first winter at northern Illinois.
I learned how to replace the O rings and solved the problem. Martha really loved this car. It would go anywhere, until the day she got in snow deep enough to lift its wheels off the ground due to the depth of the snow and the belly pan of the car. That was just a minor problem. We kept the car until I purchased the Dodge Dart which she kept and sold the Corvair.
