Late last year when we were discussing ways to enhance member value, a number of ideas were mentioned. One proposal was to create a private message board. This would serve as a forum for SFBA members to interact with one another. Questions, requests for help, or local interactions can quickly get lost on a regular forum board. And even worse, they can vanish or get hijacked in a Facebook group post.
While looking into how to do this with as little development and maintenance as possible on one end and ease of member use on the other end, we ran into some issues. Not to bore you with all of the details, it was decided to put the project on the back burner until the time could be taken to do it correctly and not impact the rest of the SFBA website.
A few years ago, CORSA took over the Corvair Center Forum after the San Diego Corvair Club decided they wanted the org to run it. While under the control of CORSA, it has been upgraded (both in appearance and software) by the two CORSA directors who have overseen it, initially SFBA member Greg Vargas and currently Dean Gemberling, and its resident IT guru Alec Carlson.
With some of these changes, new opportunities have come to light to benefit CORSA, members, chapters and Corvair owners.
Some time back, a private forum was created for the CORSA board of directors and recently, a private forum was created for the Corvanatics chapter of CORSA.
I reached out to Dean to see if there was a possibility of having a SFBA private forum for members. There is!
If you are interested in participating, we have a couple of requests of you.
- Set up a free account with the Corvair Center Forum. It’s easy to do and only takes a few minutes. Once your account is set up, email sfbacorsa@gmail.com and let us know your username. Just your username.
- If you already have an account on the CCF, do the same as above emailing us your username so you can be admitted to the private SFBA forum.
Using the Corvair Center Forum is beneficial to all of us in quite a few ways.
Although it may seem old and archaic by modern internet standards, the CCF is the largest database on the web of Corvair tech advice. Nothing else is even close. When you ask Chat GPT or any other LLM a Corvair question, you can be assured the answer was scraped from the CCF. Ask a question in a Facebook group? Almost as likely the responder either already answered it on CCF years ago or referenced it to answer your question.
It is also free of AI slop, pop-ups, spammers and scammers. It is a tightly run ship. The private SFBA forum will be even more so as it is invitation only and only visible to members.
When you are logged into your CCF account, it will look like it always does. The exception is that there will be a special “private forum” block at the top of the page.
This will be exclusive to SFBA members to discuss anything Corvair related you choose. Events, tech tips, asking for in-person help, going on a cruise, going with Corvair buddies to a show. Successes. Failures. Buy/ sell/ trade cars or parts locally….
It’s not live yet, but will be soon. We will be admitting members as they come to us to be included.
We want you to find value in your SFBA membership, and think this private forum can prove valuable. If you have any questions about the Corvair Center Forum, the SFBA private forum or anything else, don’t hesitate to ask!
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