unfortunately Penske forgot to send the shock so they are going to next day one on Monday (hopefully). Interestingly enough, this is what happened when I ordered my last set for the Porsche. Anyway, a lot was hinging on getting that shock in for progress this weekend.

That said, I went to the track yesterday to watch Porsche Club and got to check out a couple Cup cars and sho' nuf they run spring rates in the 1500 lbs/in range as base setup as I had heard. The springs are marked in N/mm so I had to calc that out and it came in at 1485 lbs/in, so I am of the mindset to stay heavy on the springs like I learned on the 914. Considering those cup cars are 5 seconds/lap faster than the 914 was, I suspect there is nothing wrong with that :)

New rad is in, had to cut out the old rad mounting as even tho' they are the same size radiators, they aren't quite the same actual size. Added in the oil cooler and basically the nose is full of cooling devices. I am hoping I do not have to run the second oil cooler like I did on the 914 as this will have way better air flow than the placement on the 914 did.

Also mounted a ball valve for the fuel line so I can easily disconnect the engine. Lastly I made an upper cage that is tied together to mount the rear rocker arms to and tacked it in. Overkill for sure but safe. I can mount the fire bottle and/or battery in the recess.

looking good Tim,

On the spring rates do you know what ratio they are running on the cantilevers?

Vince - I think you are asking me what the motion ratios are? If so, the fronts are struts so the motion ratio is essentially 1:1. On the rear, I do not know exactly what the ratio is but I believe it to be in the 0.8:1 (spring:wheel) range. I know they have to run stiffer front wheel rate than rear in an attempt to balance the oversteer and one guy in particular was having understeer issues with his Cup car but was more in the "enough money to track a Porsche Cup" category and less in the "know how to tune a track car" category :thumbsup: Were it mine I would have swapped out springs between sessions and solved the problem.

The Nova has two different mounting holes where I can set the ratio at either 1:1 or 0.8:1. So essentially I should be able to get similar motion ratios and the Nova will be a bit heavier - those Porsches are in the 2600 lb range with full fluids IIRC. I know they list as around 2500 lbs from Porsche but believe that may be dry weight. This implies I may need higher rates yet to achieve best results.


I can say that every single time I went up in spring rate in my old track car the car went faster. I was set to increase it again and then decided to sell and do a Nova project instead. I was at wheel rates higher than many people run in spring rate. There are two basic schools of thought (and this is a rather serious simplification but at the fundamentals accurate) = use the spring to control the car and the shock to control the spring, or use the shock to add control for the car along with a lower spring rate.

The difference is really the individual's ability to tune. I do not have a team from Penske follow me to the track like Pro teams do to revalve shocks based on track data but I can swap a spring in about 15 minutes per corner :D so as long as I don't move too far in spring rate and overcome the rebound control that is valved in it, I will have a similarly good car. In the end, I will never be as fast as having a team of engineers following me around, but I will be as fast as I can be if I focus more on springs and less on shocks. Basically the engineer at Penske told me he would set me up at near zero compression and let the spring do the work which is exactly what I did on the Porsche with them previously. Having the ability to tune in 0 to around 150 lbs/in equivalent compression is nice to have to predict if I expect to go faster with the next stiffer spring.

To make the discussion more interesting we would get into the characteristics that springs have a linear stiffness that starts at 0 lbs and increasing with translation whereas shocks have a stiffness that is far more dynamic and based on velocity of wheel motion v. total travel. That is where the engineers can come in and balance the overall setup and even tho' I am a degreed mechanic turned degreed mechanical engineer, that stuff is way out of my realm/expertise.

Holly Mother of God! Loving your build Tim! :thumbsup:

Awesome stuff here!

thanks guys! Shock showed up yesterday and I did a test fit, there is some interference but fortunately it doesn't appear to be too bad so I hope to machine some clearance in this weekend and verify I am good to go. One thing I didn't recall is that the monoballs are narrow in these shocks - narrower than a typical monoball from Aurora/FK/etc - so my high angle spacers are too wide. I need to call them and see if they can swap them out for a more typical monoball with the correct width for my spacers. The rockers are already machined based on the "typical" width so I can't just narrow up the spacers.

The joys of doing custom stuff.:superhack:

edit - well, dammit, turns out I am too used to using heavy duty rod ends and spherical balls. There is a bunch of bearings that are 1/2" wide, not 5/8" wide. The problem is I can find some "wide" bearings but the housing also gets wider so they can't swap in. Will have to custom turn the spacers down and then make what is essentially washers to fill in the gap to make up the 1/8". Irritating but solvable.

Tim you sure are doing a super fine job on this build,love these novas:thumbsup:

thanks! now, that said...

MAKEUP!

Anybody remember the Daffy Duck cartoon where he kept getting his face blown off and would walk "off set" and scream MAKEUP?

Well, I am a little bit there. The 18" shock was just going to bind at full extension and that was not going to be a huge issue as it was just a little clearance grinding to solve. However tonight I got in there and got the base of it held into place and started to run the shock through motion into compression... well... I knew I lost 1" of compression asking for an extended eyelet at the one end which indeed minimized the binding as I had hoped. However, what I didn't realize is that I was going to lose another 1.5" with the extended spring cup - the shock body bottoms out on it! It all makes perfect sense since they have to be the same size to fit the spring, but not something that crossed my mind and was apparently a non-issue on the Porsche as I had the exact same setup on it.

I took a shock with 6.2" of motion down to a measured 3.8" and it bottoms out at about 1/2" of bump :bang:

So I will need to knock the mount tabs off and flip them over to move the rockers over the support, not under. Not a big deal really, just one of those things. What it does mean is the tubing I have cut and tapped for drop links to the suspension and could be used for the sway bars now all need to get longer as I have to fit a shock at least 3" longer to get full travel back.

Hopefully that is all I need to do; I need to really look at it again tomorrow and think it through some more and try to make sure I am not missing anything else :waveflag:

This is definitely the most awesome thread I've looked through on here in some time. I'll look forward to seeing your swaybar mounts. We should re-name this thread Steel Porn--you are definitely a producer!

thanks, that is a great compliment! :) The sway bar stuff will be pretty straight forward using Speedway Engineering bars and arms.

...and life can get in the way...
 

I just received a formal offer from a company I worked for in SoCal today so it looks like we are moving back to the LA area :relax: While I am looking forward to being back to the hustle and bustle and beach air I am not looking forward to the downsizing on the house and being back to a 2-car garage. I will literally buy half the house for twice the money v. where I am at now but then again I will be within a few miles of the beach and never shovel fricken snow ever again.

I am going to hammer as hard as I can during the next month but then the car will have to go into the trailer for hibernation until I find a new place and get situated. We have 5 cars right now + the enclosed trailer so it is going to get exciting fast...

Well selfishly I like the news Tim.. as I will more likely be able to see the car sooner and run on the same track.

Best of luck with all that. Kinduva big deal. :D

Congrats Tim (!), I think?

:cheers:

Yeah, it is gonna be a really good thing, just stressful trying to get it all in line. We have lived in CO for 7.5 years and I was ready to move somewhere else for about the last 5 but finally Kristi came around within the last couple so we have been wanting to make something happen. We were discussing Texas or back to CA (if Austin had businesses in my industry we would probably already be there); fortunately my previous employer just won a big contract and her old employer offered her a job as soon as she called them so that is all in order.

I really need the humidity! I developed allergies and all sorts of weird sinus crap living in the desert here and, as an example, we were in Chicago for the weekend last week and literally in less than 12 hours I was able to breath, my throat cleared up, and I generally just felt right! Same thing happens when I visit CA - everything clears up almost instantly. Austin last year was the same thing. I grew up in IA and worked farm work every summer and never once had an allergy or barely a sneeze. Kristi developed some weird allergies as well. So, heck yeah, looking forward to being back! Just dreading the house stuff - we ended up finding a really nice house out here but it is pretty much the only thing I am going to miss other than new friends.

I really cannot wait to get back on Willow Springs :woot: The track here just east of Denver is really nice and damn close at 60 miles but WSIR is just too cool.

Back on topic, the longer shock showed up from Penske today and the quick mockup looked promising tonight so I hope to confirm it will work this weekend and keep plowing on the suspension. I have to get this car in a trailer in roughly a month :wacko:

OT - Allergies...

So you developed weird allergies living in the desert?

I was born in Ohio - grew up in the Chicago area - I moved to Charlotte, where there is plenty of humidity, and my allergies are off the scale down here in the spring.

I blame all the trees in the Appalachian Mountains - but what do I know...

yeah, seems counter-intuitive but there are allergens out here that affect me pretty bad v. anything in the areas you would expect me to have them. I had friends growing up with bad allergies but I can go to CA or the Midwest in the spring and have no issues, put hay up in barns and have no issue, so forth. There are different plants/trees of course in the desert than wetter climates and they wreak havoc on me. There is some funky tree out here that causes Kristi's eyelids to get raw and itchy and my co-worker's wife has the exact same reaction coming from NorCal and this year it has been wet actually but that makes that tree bloom like mad. I have heard this year is the worst for allergies actually because we have had a lot of rain.

Maybe fresh air is bad :D We maybe need a little smog to grease the pipes hahaha.

Crank up the SBC and kill the ozone/green allergen trees!

LOL.

Disclaimer: I cannot be held responsible for erections lasting longer than 4 hours :D

Been a mad dash trying to get to this point... car is officially on the ground and ready to roll into the trailer! This is a pretty big milestone for me as it is the first time I have built a complete chassis by myself and did all of the welding as well :woot: Car has a nice ride height in the end; I wanted it to sit up a bit and mostly just look like a hot rod and mask the fact the central frame and all running gear is 6" off the ground and how wide the tires are. Unfortunately, pretty much can see how wide the tires are without much effort and the transmission in the back is pretty obvious, so I will definitely need to make a diffuser that covers most of that up.

I am really digging the rake that I built into it! The car is set up at exact ride height here with all lower A arms parallel to ground, the frame is parallel to ground, but as you can see, the car rakes down which IMO gives it that cool 60s car look and again, deceptive in that the frame is flat to ground. Of course, there might be another advantage to this, say, I dunno, 160 mph at Willow Springs maybe, the air might be pressing the car into the ground and expose any aero mods I might add in the future like a large spoiler to the rear. Maybe. Just sayin'. Not lookin' at a top fuel funny car and gettin' any ideas on body wedge...

Finally, stuck the old bumpers on it just to put them somewhere, I have new ones I will save 'til the end to install. Actually the pics are okay at best but not great, I will get more once I roll it out of the garage and get ready to winch it up into my trailer in the next week or so.

Nice work Tim, looks bad azz!!

Looks great Tim!

thanks guys! Started working on floor pans yesterday, hope to get those roughed in the next couple of nights. Fronts are in, just need to do under seat and rear area, then down the road I will trim out around the factory tunnel and splice that in for a factory look and console mounting.

Any updates on this car? It's been too long!!

ugh, tell me about it...
 

it has been too long. Packing up and moving back to SoCal has been a rather large chore so the car has been waiting patiently in the trailer since last August :shakehead: We bought a house that has a nice sized 2-car garage but I still have a ton of crap in it and the Vette, so until I can get all that stuff unpacked and put somewhere the Nova sort of sits. That and the house needed some updating, which of course helped with the price, but takes time to actually do and that has been a PITA as well :drowninga: I keep telling myself it will be great in the end while it looks like post war Europe right now.

So while I wish I could say more, the day it went in the trailer was the last day I really even touched it. I hope in the next few months to get the last of the random crap cleared out of the garage as I pick at it each weekend and then get the car in, back up on the frame stands and leveled.

Hey Tim,
I followed the 914 build the first time around (my favorite build) and was always a big fan of the youtube vids. I always figured you'd move on to another build sooner or later after reading that you wanted to do the same to a Mach 1....if memory is correct. I'm pretty excited that I may get to see this thing run at willow!

thanks for the props. You are correct about the Mustang plan - I had a 70 fastback in the 90s and wanted to get another one and do a 500-inch engine build with a Pro Stock block and drop in it, detuned down to around 800-900 HP for a more streetable setup. But I also always wanted a 66 or 67 Nova and since I didn't have one before and a ton of Chevy parts from the 914, it won out.

Good news is I spent all weekend (in near record heat, not good news) adding a 100sqft workshop/storage onto my garage and hope to finish up siding and painting it this weekend, so I can start moving stuff out of the garage and into it. Then I can get the Nova out of the trailer. Just need to do a little more of this to the garage wall :superhack: Halloween will mark exactly one year in the house and not touching the Nova once so I need to get my priorities straight :)

I like the way your brain works Tim.

Hope to see progress on this soon!

In looking back through this thread, I found some firewall/pedal support ideas that I'm going to steal . . . for whenever I get back to my Falcon . . .:goggles:

steal away! maybe one of us can get a project done then :)
funny, reading my post again it is a bit crazy to refer to 850 HP as a streetable setup. Only 1.7 HP/cube at the 500 cubic inch range so while pretty easy to do, would make for quite a tire burner haha.

Man how time flies
 

Just over 4 years of radio silence. I spent right up until about April 2018 renovating the house in SoCal to put it on the market and move to TX in July that year. A year of projects with the new house including setting up my music studio and recording 7 songs, and finally dusted off the car last Fall. Spent 10 straight days over Christmas break hammering out details and welding. Then every weekend since plugging away.

Mounted the steering column, split and relocated the dash and notched around the cage tho will weld it in after I do the firewall sheeting, relocated the wiper motor inside behind the dash, fabbed up an exhaust, mounted the fuel regulator and water pump, went to PRI and ended up getting a custom steering rack from Coleman so had to make new brackets and start mounting that. I no longer have access to legit machines so will have to pay a shop to machine a custom tie rod mount bar that will have the ability to allow for Ackermann adjustments. Routed the cooling system from leftover Porsche project stuff so will get new hoses to finalize. Mounted the shifter for the sequential and the reverser lever. Will cut the shifter arm off and fab a bracket to attach a Hurst shifter for the right look when I put the SS console back in. Redid the pedal assy mount and fabbed up mounting for the fuel pedal cable and set it for wide open throttle. Refabbed my Holley carb mount to better align the springs and cable as that was always a bit janky. Crazy what can get done in 2 months, wish I had 6 months 5 years ago, would be driving it haha

See if I remember how to add a pic

Couple more. Stock speedo still fits, just out for ease of fabbing

And getting that column in, dash set, pedals and seat all lined up was a chore in itself. I will be 49 this year and don't think for a second I didn't sit in that seat and make car sounds and spin the wheel like a 5 year old when I finished. Whether I even had my pants on at that point is questionable :unibrow:

Shifter thru floor while I worked that out and the reverser down low by the driver door to keep it as hidden as possible.=

Can sorta see the exhaust. Bought some 4" DOM to create a pass thru in the frame for each exhaust to have the turn downs just in front of the transaxle. I gave up and cut the rear seat area out to get access to weld tne frame and so forth. Will weld it back in later.

This is what happens when you watch too much MAV TV... Ian Roussel convinces me that no matter the fact I have zero experience with sheet metal fab, I just need to cut things up and figure it out as I go.

The dash shot is in rocket orientation so just rotate your screen as required...

Will get pics under the hood tomorrow when I am measuring the rack. I also came across a Rodeck block a few months ago so am collecting parts to do a new engine. Will be a flat tappet engine just like this one, actually same cheap cam will be used because I love it, so the aluminum block is more about wanting it than needing it.

Old engine is pretty tired but will be used to run this car in. Built it in 05 and tracked pretty hard for a good 7 years. Last shot gives the idea of the set back... I wanted to just touch the cowl so pretty much nailed that. Typical 10 lbs in a 5 lb bag with the rack, cooling and dry sump plumbing on the front.

Same 10lb problem with the rack and dry sump. The rack has the angled shape upper center of the pic. The mount bracket is just above the spring there. I have about 3/4" between it and the alternator pulley/upper A arm bolt and the 1" height of the mount to squeeze a cross bar support into there over the dry sump pulley. I can then offset all the pickup points for the tie rods from there. The good news is a pretty straight shot from the rack shaft to the column.

Upskirt of the exhaust. Hard to tell from the 2nd pic but the edge seams of the mufflers are the only thing hanging below the frame at this point. Just missed having enough room

Another weekend cranking away... have some tie rod items being machined at a local shop so got around to reinforcing the lower control arms and relocating the pickup points better suited to the rocker arms. Round tubes are generally fine since they have the pickup points way out to not bend them but my dealio needed a set back so I added 1.5" square tube to the outside and plug welded it together. In the future if I need a new one I will have Coleman just ship me the tab so I don't have to cut them off and notch around the leftover base. Coleman makes nice stuff to jigs so better to sleeve it than go from scratch in my garage. Will be rigid as heck doubled up.

More work on the camouflage... tucking the sequential mechanism into the console. Hurst handle looks old school trick. Will have to bring the cable thru the interior but can tuck it by the seat and hide it with a cover and carpet.

Picked up the cross bar and tie rod mounts from the machine shop today. Will need to put it in the car as a separate piece so just fitted together here for the pix. The 3 holes allow me to adjust the tie rod rotation point if I change the upper A length for different camber gain. I can space the tie rod off of the bracket to alter Ackermann.