Russ Brandenburg - Cincinnati, Ohio - Founder of the V8 Registry
Russ passed away on December 8th, 2020
After I bought my first V-8 Vair I had no one to talk to about what worked, what didn’t and what is the best setup. I knew that there were others out there like me so I founded the V-8 Registry in February of 1993. The Registry started with twenty-five members of which sixteen are still in the Registry. The membership has fluctuated from around 200 to about 130 most of the time. There are members in England, Austria, Netherlands, Canada and the biggest part in California. The southern California group has formed a group that has meeting and get-to-gathers. One of the members, Chuck Rust, car was used to make the Vairy 8 Hot Wheels car. Now I can say that I have driven a Hot Wheels car. In the September Hot Rod magazine there is an article of twenty project cars. The very first one is about a V-8 Vair that is using Archibald’s new kit.
The Crown kit was designed and developed by Ted Trevor. Ted Trevor is a member of the V-8 Registry. He is a pioneer and has a long list of accomplishments with the V-8 Vairs. He sold over 1,500 kits before he sold the company. They are out there and we are still finding them.
The Crown kit was designed and developed by Ted Trevor. Ted Trevor is a member of the V-8 Registry. He is a pioneer and has a long list of accomplishments with the V-8 Vairs. He sold over 1,500 kits before he sold the company. They are out there and we are still finding them.
Here is a slide show of more Brandenburg history!
Click on the big photo, then hit the play button in the upper left.
My first experience with a V-8 Corvair came in 1974 at the National Convention in Chicago. I had just met Burt Nuner and he introduced me to CORSA. Burt has been my best friend since. Where we worked our parking lots were next to each other and we would come out and have lunch and sit on our Corvairs. I had a 65 Monza with Cragers, 13” front and 14” rear. It was my 3rd Corvair. There were, if memory serves me correctly, about 6 or 7 V-8’s at the convention in ‘74. I remember one coupe that had a Crown installation with white pearl paint and a ghost flag down both sides. There were also two convertibles there. I wanted one, bad. It took me ten years before I could get my first V-8 vair, 1984. I bought it from a guy in Xenia, Ohio, who had a 16 year old son that wanted to drive the car but dad would have nothing of it. It was an original Crown with all the original Crown stuff. The car has a 327-4 speed with a 4 bolt main, double hump heads and a great cam. It had the original Crown interior. The cover over the engine would try to come out of the car at speed. I used Zus fastners to keep it in place. The seats in an original Crown were molded buckets that fit into the engine cover. The engine cover was fiber glass and had spray foam insulation on the back side to keep the heat out. That worked, if you think that 180 is cool on your backside. The buckets were covered in a black plastic stuff that allowed you to slide around. I put seat belts in the car because I couldn’t drive from the passenger side of the car. Who ever built the car had some serious short comings when it came to engineering or simple mechanics. They mounted the alternator to the frame of the car. Duh! Every time I would get on it the belt would decide to take a hike. A friend of mine made me an alternator bracket that would work with the Crown setup. The front radiator was from an old Hemi mounted just like it was supposed to be in the Crown manual. I changed it to a later model Corvette which worker very well. This car was my daily driver for two years. I installed a heated and defroster so I could drive it in the winter. The exhaust was really nice and I parked in a garage at work and everybody knew when I got to work. I took a friend of mine for a ride, he has built street rods and other cars, and still to this day swears that it was the fastest ride he has ever had. I auto crossed the car locally and at the time owned Yenko Stinger #48. I raced them both and the V-8 was so much different to drive. The handling of the V-8 car was excellent. As life would have it I had to sell the V-8 car because of my job change. I sold it to a friend of mine in the Registry that has not driven the car since I sold it to him in 1986. However, I get first refusal when he wants to sell it.
My second V-8 came some years later. I bought a basket case that I got the standard comment from my wife, “You paid what for that?”. I bought the car in 1991 when I moved back to Cincinnati. It was a Crown conversion. The car came from Texas so there was no rust but it had been beat to death and bondo was everywhere. It had two and a half fender flares. The wheel wells were cut out and the rears were bondo and flared. One front one has the metal flare welded in and the other one had the well lip cut out and no flare. They did this to accommodate rather large tires. The interior was done nicely. It had VW bucket seats and the engine cover was cover with carpet, or what was left after the Texas sun ate most of it. When I bought the car there was no drive train in it, no rear suspension, only the swing arms and tires, no interior, no radiator and the engine had the timing chain cover and valve covers on it. Everything else was in boxes. It took me three months to assemble the car. It was 10:30 at night, with only headers on the motor, and a fuel line to a gas can when I started it for the first time. The whole house shook and the neighbors came out to see what the heck was going on. My wife came down and said “I’m impressed”. The next night I drove it up the street after I hooked up the gas line. I set off my neighbor’s car alarm. It was sweet. I put the interior back in it and drove it to work, once. By the time I got to work it developed an oil leak in one of the oil lines. I drove it home, took it apart, cut the body into six pieces and took it to the junk yard. I sold all the Crown stuff and made more money than it would have taken me to fix the problems with the body. It was an ugly car anyway. I still have the rear section with the tail light in my garage with the temporary tag still on it.
I was able to buy a V-8 from a friend of mine in Michigan. It was a Kelmark conversion. Kelmarks are a breed of their own. The rear end is flipped so the engine sets back further in the chassis. This allows you more room up front. The only draw back is that it runs off the back side of the ring gear and you have to make sure that the gears get oil or it’s bye bye rear end. I had the Kelmark top plate on the rear end that had a baffle so the oil got to the right place. One of the first things I changed on this car was the shifter. Because the trans is all the way at the rear the linkages is really long and sloppy. There are no speed shifts unless you thing counting to five between shifts is fast. I replaced the universal joint and made some major adjustments in the linkage to make it shift close to normal. I really liked this car. It was a bright Corvette yellow 66 Monza. The tach and gauges were mounted on the dash in the bullet shaped units. The tach was right in front over the steering wheel. The oil pressure, water temp and amp gauge were over the radio. It looked really bad. The interior had no carpet and the seats were in need of some repair. The car had been stored and not taken care of. The body was in amazing shaped however. I worked at getting it to my standards. I’m not sure what the horse power of the motor was but it would rock the car at idle. It would smoke the tire at will. It had a 4” roll bar that had a plexiglas window between the front and rear. There were no back windows. The fronts rolled up next to the roll bar so the heat could get out of the back. The tires that came on the car were biggins and I changed them to more streetable tires. The first thing I wanted to break lose was the tires, not the rear end. The engine had a lot of chrome and looked great. One of the neatest things about this car was the running light that were mounted on the roll bar just below the window line. You could light up the motor at night. I was coming home from work one night and came up next to this big box truck with three in it. I got next to them and turned the lights on. You would have thought that I showed them a picture of a naked woman. They went nuts. They were waving, bouncing up and down and pointing for me to get on it. Great opportunity to do so, and I did. My son was graduating from high school and because he had done well in school I told him he could he could drive it to school on the last day. My boss lived near the school and when he came to work called me to the office. He said he didn’t know how to ask me but did I know that my son had my car at school. I told him it was OK. He said that he would have not noticed except for the crowd that had gathered around it in the parking lot. My son was in seven heaven. He still talks about that day. I was setting at a stop light one summer where the intersection on the other side went from four lanes to two. I was in the outside lane. Some kid pulled up next to me in a Honda Accord and you could see that he was going to beat me across the intersection. He was looking straight ahead and then he heard my exhaust rumble. He looked over and just dropped his head like he knew that there was no way. He didn’t even try. The intimidation factor of the V-8 Vair is so high that you don’t need to prove a thing. They already know. I had the car about two years before another car came up for sale. I sold it to a guy in Florida that painted it a very nice red. He sold it to another enthusiast and he raced a Viper with it. He said he couldn’t get away but neither could the Viper. Wonder what he told his friends. He couldn’t out run a Corvair. The shame of it all. My wife and kids were not happy when I told them that I was selling the Kelmark Vair.
Archibald Evans had found a V-8 convertible in California. One of his friends had wanted to buy it but didn’t have the capitol. I contacted the owner and made him an offer. He waited for me to sell my car so I could buy this one. He didn’t want it going to someone that didn’t appreciate what it was. Archibald borrowed a friends truck and tow bar, drove eight hours to get the car for me. He took it to a shipper that sent the car on a space available shipment. It took seven days to get it here. The guy that dropped it off didn’t want to come down my street because he didn’t want to get his custom trailer scratched by trees. It was at noon when he delivered the car. I cleaned it up and had it setting in the driveway when my wife came home. She got out of her car walked up and around the side of the car and said; “You know what I said about the yellow car, it’s OK”. Which means I did OK. Thank goodness. The body has no rust and is straight. The paint job is a custom that I could not repeat unless I win the lottery. When it arrived it had swivel high back bucket seats, a fire wall and not much else. The motor was in bad shape. I have changed the interior and added bucket seats from an ‘87 Conquest Turbo. They are great. Small and have all the adjustments, lombard, headrest, side bosters and under the knee adjusters. I took the engine out and a friend of mine re-built it. It is a ten over 350 with flat top pistons, 10 ½ to 1 compression, double hump heads and a very nice cam. The one thing I likes about the car is it had the big car powerglide in it. I had it rebuilt with a shift kit. The rear was a 3:55 so the motor was working at speed. I replaced it with a rebuilt 3:27 four spider posi. The suspension is all heim joint. Rick Norris made the heim joint Crown bars for the rear from me. I traded a drawing I did of a friends race car for the heim joint lower strut rods. I installed from disc from a S10 Chevy pickup. Power brakes from Master Power Brake. The car also has a telescoping steering wheel. I entered the car in the Cavalcade of Stars Car Show at the convention center in Cincinnati. I won first place in my division and Best Engineered and Design for the show. I have won other first places trophies and awards from local car shows. No matter when I am out in the car someone always gives me the thumbs up. I drove it to work one day in the summer and had a guy follow me. He said he had to know what that sound was. It’s funny to watch people when they realize the car has a V-8 in the middle. At the Cavalcade people would walk by and see a Corvair and then the V-8. They would stop in the middle of conversations and use language that Earnhart got fined for. Like “Holy S##*” look at that. There were always the same questions: Is it hot? Is it loud? and Is it fast? I told them they would have to catch me to find out the answer to the first two questions.
There has not been one person that I know who had a V-8 Corvair that has sold it and not wanted it back. I have my last one. There is only one more thing I want to do and that is to install one of Archibald’s kits. When you take people for a ride that have never been in a V-8 Vair come back with this incredible grin on their face that doesn’t seem to go away. You ask them about it later and the same expression comes back. The best thing about building a V-8 Vair is that you can beat a car that cost two and three times as much both in a straight line and most certainly in any corner.
Russ Brandenburg
Founder
V-8 Registry
My second V-8 came some years later. I bought a basket case that I got the standard comment from my wife, “You paid what for that?”. I bought the car in 1991 when I moved back to Cincinnati. It was a Crown conversion. The car came from Texas so there was no rust but it had been beat to death and bondo was everywhere. It had two and a half fender flares. The wheel wells were cut out and the rears were bondo and flared. One front one has the metal flare welded in and the other one had the well lip cut out and no flare. They did this to accommodate rather large tires. The interior was done nicely. It had VW bucket seats and the engine cover was cover with carpet, or what was left after the Texas sun ate most of it. When I bought the car there was no drive train in it, no rear suspension, only the swing arms and tires, no interior, no radiator and the engine had the timing chain cover and valve covers on it. Everything else was in boxes. It took me three months to assemble the car. It was 10:30 at night, with only headers on the motor, and a fuel line to a gas can when I started it for the first time. The whole house shook and the neighbors came out to see what the heck was going on. My wife came down and said “I’m impressed”. The next night I drove it up the street after I hooked up the gas line. I set off my neighbor’s car alarm. It was sweet. I put the interior back in it and drove it to work, once. By the time I got to work it developed an oil leak in one of the oil lines. I drove it home, took it apart, cut the body into six pieces and took it to the junk yard. I sold all the Crown stuff and made more money than it would have taken me to fix the problems with the body. It was an ugly car anyway. I still have the rear section with the tail light in my garage with the temporary tag still on it.
I was able to buy a V-8 from a friend of mine in Michigan. It was a Kelmark conversion. Kelmarks are a breed of their own. The rear end is flipped so the engine sets back further in the chassis. This allows you more room up front. The only draw back is that it runs off the back side of the ring gear and you have to make sure that the gears get oil or it’s bye bye rear end. I had the Kelmark top plate on the rear end that had a baffle so the oil got to the right place. One of the first things I changed on this car was the shifter. Because the trans is all the way at the rear the linkages is really long and sloppy. There are no speed shifts unless you thing counting to five between shifts is fast. I replaced the universal joint and made some major adjustments in the linkage to make it shift close to normal. I really liked this car. It was a bright Corvette yellow 66 Monza. The tach and gauges were mounted on the dash in the bullet shaped units. The tach was right in front over the steering wheel. The oil pressure, water temp and amp gauge were over the radio. It looked really bad. The interior had no carpet and the seats were in need of some repair. The car had been stored and not taken care of. The body was in amazing shaped however. I worked at getting it to my standards. I’m not sure what the horse power of the motor was but it would rock the car at idle. It would smoke the tire at will. It had a 4” roll bar that had a plexiglas window between the front and rear. There were no back windows. The fronts rolled up next to the roll bar so the heat could get out of the back. The tires that came on the car were biggins and I changed them to more streetable tires. The first thing I wanted to break lose was the tires, not the rear end. The engine had a lot of chrome and looked great. One of the neatest things about this car was the running light that were mounted on the roll bar just below the window line. You could light up the motor at night. I was coming home from work one night and came up next to this big box truck with three in it. I got next to them and turned the lights on. You would have thought that I showed them a picture of a naked woman. They went nuts. They were waving, bouncing up and down and pointing for me to get on it. Great opportunity to do so, and I did. My son was graduating from high school and because he had done well in school I told him he could he could drive it to school on the last day. My boss lived near the school and when he came to work called me to the office. He said he didn’t know how to ask me but did I know that my son had my car at school. I told him it was OK. He said that he would have not noticed except for the crowd that had gathered around it in the parking lot. My son was in seven heaven. He still talks about that day. I was setting at a stop light one summer where the intersection on the other side went from four lanes to two. I was in the outside lane. Some kid pulled up next to me in a Honda Accord and you could see that he was going to beat me across the intersection. He was looking straight ahead and then he heard my exhaust rumble. He looked over and just dropped his head like he knew that there was no way. He didn’t even try. The intimidation factor of the V-8 Vair is so high that you don’t need to prove a thing. They already know. I had the car about two years before another car came up for sale. I sold it to a guy in Florida that painted it a very nice red. He sold it to another enthusiast and he raced a Viper with it. He said he couldn’t get away but neither could the Viper. Wonder what he told his friends. He couldn’t out run a Corvair. The shame of it all. My wife and kids were not happy when I told them that I was selling the Kelmark Vair.
Archibald Evans had found a V-8 convertible in California. One of his friends had wanted to buy it but didn’t have the capitol. I contacted the owner and made him an offer. He waited for me to sell my car so I could buy this one. He didn’t want it going to someone that didn’t appreciate what it was. Archibald borrowed a friends truck and tow bar, drove eight hours to get the car for me. He took it to a shipper that sent the car on a space available shipment. It took seven days to get it here. The guy that dropped it off didn’t want to come down my street because he didn’t want to get his custom trailer scratched by trees. It was at noon when he delivered the car. I cleaned it up and had it setting in the driveway when my wife came home. She got out of her car walked up and around the side of the car and said; “You know what I said about the yellow car, it’s OK”. Which means I did OK. Thank goodness. The body has no rust and is straight. The paint job is a custom that I could not repeat unless I win the lottery. When it arrived it had swivel high back bucket seats, a fire wall and not much else. The motor was in bad shape. I have changed the interior and added bucket seats from an ‘87 Conquest Turbo. They are great. Small and have all the adjustments, lombard, headrest, side bosters and under the knee adjusters. I took the engine out and a friend of mine re-built it. It is a ten over 350 with flat top pistons, 10 ½ to 1 compression, double hump heads and a very nice cam. The one thing I likes about the car is it had the big car powerglide in it. I had it rebuilt with a shift kit. The rear was a 3:55 so the motor was working at speed. I replaced it with a rebuilt 3:27 four spider posi. The suspension is all heim joint. Rick Norris made the heim joint Crown bars for the rear from me. I traded a drawing I did of a friends race car for the heim joint lower strut rods. I installed from disc from a S10 Chevy pickup. Power brakes from Master Power Brake. The car also has a telescoping steering wheel. I entered the car in the Cavalcade of Stars Car Show at the convention center in Cincinnati. I won first place in my division and Best Engineered and Design for the show. I have won other first places trophies and awards from local car shows. No matter when I am out in the car someone always gives me the thumbs up. I drove it to work one day in the summer and had a guy follow me. He said he had to know what that sound was. It’s funny to watch people when they realize the car has a V-8 in the middle. At the Cavalcade people would walk by and see a Corvair and then the V-8. They would stop in the middle of conversations and use language that Earnhart got fined for. Like “Holy S##*” look at that. There were always the same questions: Is it hot? Is it loud? and Is it fast? I told them they would have to catch me to find out the answer to the first two questions.
There has not been one person that I know who had a V-8 Corvair that has sold it and not wanted it back. I have my last one. There is only one more thing I want to do and that is to install one of Archibald’s kits. When you take people for a ride that have never been in a V-8 Vair come back with this incredible grin on their face that doesn’t seem to go away. You ask them about it later and the same expression comes back. The best thing about building a V-8 Vair is that you can beat a car that cost two and three times as much both in a straight line and most certainly in any corner.
Russ Brandenburg
Founder
V-8 Registry
