Ray Lough is Vinton’s Corvair whisperer

The instrument said the car was in tune, but Ray Lough's ears told him otherwise.

“This engine has a rhythmn to it, and that rhythmn was gone,” Lough said.

With just a day before his 1966 Chevrolet Corvair would compete in the Corvair Society of America's autocross at Hawkeye Downs in Cedar Rapids, Lough went with his ears.

“I set (the engine's timing) by ear,” he said. “I took it back to what I know it should sound like.”

And on June 24, Lough's Corvair won its class - Improved Stock 5 - at the autocross, part of Corvair owners' 50th international convention. Lough's friend Dan Higdon was behind the wheel, because Lough is blind.

“We have a lot of fun together,” said Higdon, 56, also of Vinton, a former dirt-track racer who's known Lough about 15 years. “He's very thorough, makes sure that everything's right.”

His blindness is the least remarkable thing about Lough (pronounced “law”), 48. There's the children he and wife Trish have adopted, and a few more besides.

“We've adopted six, but there's nine we really see as our own,” helping when they need it, he said.

The nine were among the 41 children for whom the Loughs have been foster parents.

“It's pretty rewarding,” Lough said of the foster experience. “It's pretty fun, actually.”

Lough, a former Benton County Attorney, now works for Bethany Christian Services, a private adoption agency with offices in Des Moines, Pella, and Cedar Rapids. Trish Lough practices family law in Vinton - the couple met at Drake University.

Lough recently beat “a low-grade form of soft-tissue cancer,” but only after 14 surgeries and multiple trips to the Mayo Clinic over the past five years. It was during the cancer treatment that Lough restored another of his Corvairs - remember, this story started out to be about Corvairs? - a 1961 Monza coupe that's now bright red, matching his ‘68 convertible.

“It was a great project,” he said. “I was struggling with all the surgeries, and I wanted something to help me get back on my feet, and this was it. The only thing I don't do is the paint.”

Lough said he was a car guy even as one of nine children growing up in Vinton, where his father ran a truck stop and repair business.

“I used to drive my dad's mechanic crazy back then, asking, ‘why? how?'” he recalled. “My philosophy is, you're never done learning.”

Lough was blind virtually from birth. He lost his left eye to cancer when he was 10 weeks old, and the vision in his left gradually deteriorated.

“I just grew up with the assumption I'd never see,” he said.

Lough bought his first car for $50, rebuilding the engine in high-school shop class. He first encountered Corvairs in 1988, when he and his oldest daughter went to an estate auction in Van Horne. They hoped to bring home a station wagon to replace the family's worn-out van.

Outbid on the wagon, Lough came home instead with a Corvair convertible. He said his wife “wanted to kill me, but I put a battery in it and it started right up.”

Since that accidental acquisition, Lough has become an expert tuner and vocal partisan on behalf of the offbeat compact. Built in two generations over the 1960-'69 model years, it remains the only mass-produced rear-engine American car.

“Air-cooled, rear engine,” Lough said. “Porsche-like.”

Popping the rear hood on the competition ‘66, Lough shows how he keeps its four carbeurators in tune. He moves the throttle linkage, nodding at a click that's barely audible with the engine off.

“When I'm tuning it up” - with the engine roaring through its competition exhaust - “I just have to feel that ‘click' at both ends,” he said.

“He's pretty smart with all that stuff,” said Higdon, who recalled a recent night tweaking the Corvair's engine as darkness fell.

“He said, ‘Come here and take a look at this,'” Higdon said. “I said, ‘Ray, I have to get a flashlight.'”

Lough follows Higdon's performance on the tight, twisting autocross course.

“My first run I got the car a little bit loose a couple times,” Higdon said. “I came in and he said, ‘Yeah, I heard you spin the tires.' He knows just by sound and feel pretty well what's going on all the time.”

Lough thinks he may have an advantage over sighted mechanics, especially working on cars built before computer-controlled fuel injection. But he admits to liking to work on newer models, too.

“To me, it's a challenge,” he said. “Can I defeat this thing? There has to be a reason for it. That's the thing about working on cars - you've got to think.”