66 Nova SS Project
 

Figure I will call this project Body Slam. The car will be a full frame car built for road racing and street use. Bought the roller in July 2012. We will see how long this takes overall, hopefully it doesn't turn into a year long project.

Started with a pretty good shell, the body appears to be nice and straight and that is what I was most concerned with given the level of modifications I will be doing to the car otherwise.

started on full frame
 

I built the main frame section over my holiday break at the end of the year. Square and level. Actually, having a square and a level meant I already started with more tools than the average large scale, spec home builder :peepwall: I am lucky enough to have access to engineering tools at work so I was able to perform various analyses and optimize tube locations and actually reduce the weight of the cage by quite a bit from my first cut with a fair amount of triangulation "by eye".

Attached is the analysis model of the proposed chassis design. The cage in the rear will house the sequential 5 spd transaxle I have and the engine will be set back about 6" to get nearly all of its weight behind the front wheels.

I am gutting my current road race car to build the Nova, so instead of a Porsche with a mix of Chevy parts, I will have a Chevy with a mix of Porsche parts :D The 16x11 and 16x12 wheels will be utilized on this car for road racing and I may bump up to 18s for the street use as there is a good selection of 11" to 13" rubber out there for that diameter these days.

Crazy how much cleaner my garage was then :D

The 914 has a de-stroked 400 (353 cubes with a 327 crank and 6" rods). Simple flattop combo with alum 23deg heads and tappet cam. 525HP/438 ft-lbs when I broke it in on the dyno 7 years ago in Placentia CA with only a 1% correction factor. Been beating the hell out of it for 7 years now and she just keeps rockin'.

Took the car out last Saturday for the final hoorah on an open track day and it was the fastest car there and ran a lap 2.1 seconds faster than the SCCA Super Production class record which happens to be held by another 914 V8 but it has a 402 cube all alum brodix tall deck engine and 150 more HP. In fact, even in light traffic, I have over a dozen record breaking laps, so it makes it hard to tear it down but I need something new.

I intend to have the ride height the same as the 914, about 4.5" at the front of the rockers, a 1" rake overall, and then hope to find someone local to build a good air dam and put the splitter at 4" just like the teener as well. Frame clearance will be 4" front to rear, parallel to ground, with the body raked.

Started installing the rocker rails and frenching them into the existing floor pan. I am likely going to just do a full floor but for now want to keep the body and interior pretty stock looking. It would be way easier to just replace the floor pans so I may just do that in the end. The driver's pan will need a fair amount of work anyway as I have one of the first Tilton floor mount pedal assemblies and intend to keep using it so that will have to be worked in.

I set the main frame section under the car and will now be working on frenching that in as well. Got the torch out for easy interference removal on the lower control arm/engine mount and the caster links.

Killer project. Really enjoyed your videos with the P-car.

:thumbsup:

Nice project My favorite years 66-67.

thanks guys. I have to admit, I am going to miss the 914 for track days but look forward to having a more streetable car all the same. I finished editing some video from last Saturday and some laps from my last track day are on Youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Io3V...bYVTLw&index=1

The rear was really loose in the less than optimal weather conditions here in Colorado in January and still posting some awesome times. I really believe this car, in the late spring or early fall here would be a 1:53 car on the local track. I ran one day a friend timed me in three segments and traffic varied a fair amount, but the best pieced together lap of the fastest of the three sections was a 1:53.8 and I am actually better and a couple sections now than I was then. So it makes it hard to tear the car apart.

I too like the 6 and 7 the best, just a great overall look of a 60s era car.

Excited to watch this one come together
 

...and I will miss the P-car as well. I assume that you will keep it and maybe bring it back to life one day?

I am waffling on the 914 - once I have everything transferred over to the Nova, what is left is the tube chassis, wiring and body/dash work. Otherwise all suspension, brakes, so forth go to the Nova. So, if I can find a buyer for the "scraper" for a price I deem good enough, I would let it go, otherwise I am more likely considering tying some pulleys into the roof of my garage, hoisting the scraper up over the Nova, and just keeping it in case I get the jones to go crazy again.

I also thought about buying another 914 tub, cut it up to replace the super hacked up tub I have now, go back to full doors, wipers, all lights working again, a 377 cube destroked 400 and a more standard transaxle in it and make it a driver again as well. That would take a lot of work tho' but if I fitted an A/C-heater assy that it never had into it I could have a hell of a daily driver! Suspension I can just copy again from all my engineering files. I have so many 914 parts over 20 yrs of messing with them including the doors, good decklids, blah blah I could do it. 550HP, 2500lb daily driver with a 72" wing on the back :idea:

little update of yesterday's work, was out with friends planting lead into hillsides up in the mountains today but hope to get some more progress tomorrow as well.

got a little further today - took about 5 hours but I worked and worked until the car was perfectly level, then the main frame section, then got is squared up in the car, plumb bobbed like a freak, and finally cut two of the tie tubes that will go between the rockers rails and the main frame and tacked them in. That should be the hardest part of the build - getting things square and level - especially when I am dropping points off of a nearly 50 year old body = a major PITA.

I took one of the wheels I used to run on the front of the Porsche a few years back and tucked it up in the rear to get an idea of overall ride height. For those not in the know, "2 by" and "4 by" chunks are completely scientific. Actually it measured out to be within a ±1/8" of what I expect the height to be so this should be close. And those 245s barely fit up in there, my 275s were close but no cigar, so going to a 13" wide tire is going to take a fair amount of cutting in the rear. Good thing I won't need the rear subframe anymore :thumbsup:

Hard to tell from the somewhat uneven floor (in Colorado the ground moves a fair amount so your garage is level for about the first month) but the frame is level here and the rocker rails are leveled as well and set for ride height, so you can sort of see the rake that I put into the body. Without front fenders it is a bit tough. Rockers at the front should end up about 3-3/4" ground clearance with the setup I finalized on using the 16" wheels and 24" front tire, 25" rear tire. For the street I will likely go 18" wheels as mentioned which will push front to 25" diam and rear around 25.5", raising the rocker to 4-1/4" on the street. 'Course, that is probably ±1/2" until I finish it and actually measure it hahaha. This is a garage project after all.

Oh yeah, I had those tires stacked on the front because I found the cg of the body with the jack at one point. The front was rather light while I was messing around getting things in place. Now everything is pretty solid but I figure I would rather stay safer than sorry.

So talking with some co-workers and showing some photos of the progress, I was looking at how far the rear tire was tucked up in, then looking at my 914 and realized the front tire on the 914 is almost completely visible thru the fenderwell. That car was meant to be 5" off of the ground... the Nova, not so much. I grabbed a fender out for the Nova, placed that 245/50/15 tire and wheel at ride height on those blocks of wood, and I can say there is no good way I can put the car that low and turn the tires! The tire runs right into the fender immediately. If I spaced it in about 1-1/4" I could get enough motion to make a turn, and I planned to run steering stops for track use anyway (going near full lock with 11" tires and manual steering can rip the wheel out of your hand pretty easy) - but I don't like the look of the tire tucked in that far, nor do I like the idea of loosing another 2.5" of track width - the flared 914 already has a 2" wider track than the Nova.

So I am at an interesting point in the build already - either narrow the track which while being low would look cool and keep weight low, I think will look weird overall, or I raise the car up a couple more inches and see if that helps. I can keep the center part of the frame low, physically just raise the body up, which keeps the bulk of the car (all the drivetrain) at a 4" ride height which is probably what I will do at this point. Gives me more room under the hood for the tall intake and so forth, just sort of a bummer to not have the car as low as I wanted. Guess I didn't need to french the center frame into the floor after all which is also a pisser. Good excuse to replace the rusty floors anyway I guess - look at the bright side, right! :bitchslap:

The joy of going from paper to the real world! The other thing is those old cars have a fair amount of scrub which sweeps the tire around when turning - my custom suspension I designed on the 914 to have 1" of scrub on an 11" wheel so the tire pivots more than it sweeps, which while good for track use, I think exacerbates this issue.

Flares! :peepwall:

:thumbsup:

:lol: I know, right! Sadly, the early Novas are called "box Novas" for a reason - I have looked at the car since getting it trying to see if there would be a good, clean way to introduce flares into the design and I am not seeing it. The Porsche, and your Camaro for that matter, have a more rounded shape to them so flares fit well and look like they belong - I may need to figure out some way to pull the fenders out and not disturb the overall look. The body line right down the side of the car sort of honks up any good ideas I thought I had as well :sieg:

Maybe I will just graft some 914 GT flares on it and call it a day! The cars do have similarly shaped fender openings and the 914 had pretty flat sides :computer:

Here is an idea...
 

well it is not mine but I liked it. Ring Brothers did the black and orange mustang. Widened the car 2 inches on each side, and brought the doors out to match. You could go wider if need be, but you would still keep the car visually intact.

http://ringbrothers.com/1965_mustang_producer

The Mustang coupes are pretty dang boxy and I think this looks bad ass.

http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/f...psfc0bafb0.jpg

I do like old T/A cars with flares. I had considered cutting the car in half front to back because the lines are sooooo simple on the car left to right and just widening it out 3 or 4 iches but then that is custom glass, etc etc. I was going to do that to the 914 originally and it was going to be an overall pretty brutal expense. Then, along the lines Payton points out, I thought about trying to flare front and rear like an 80s BMW M3 or Porsche 944 and just cut at the upper body lines and pull the fenders out. Physically moving the whole thing out like that Ring Bros car, oof, again, rough on the pocket book but certainly more subtle! Slick idea, and seeing their cars in person at SEMA is pretty impressive, but :G-Dub: I am a baller, I just don't mention I run in the Little League crowd :D

Number one problem I have is I want the car to look like a basically stock 66 SS with a simple roll cage and nice wheels, lowered - a typical restomod. With the large backspace on the wheels, you wouldn't even think they were wide unless you knelt down and actually looked from the front or rear to see how wide. Sleeper concept. No cowl hood, no nothing. I plan to use the stock console even tho' the sequential has a funky, 2-handle shifter that will stick up through it. Flaring of any type will detract from that because that Nova is seriously as flat as a barn down the side. I was talking about the BMW/Porsche thing with a friend last night looking at the car and he said basically that same thing I have thought - the sides are just too flat so anything will become noticeable.

It will be more of a sleeper at 6" height than 4" height, and I am only raising the body and interior, so at least most everything else will be low and centered and shouldn't impact handling too much. At least that is what I have been telling myself the past couple days waiting for the reality to sink in haha.

seeing that Mustang made me think of this picture, let's hope the Nova doesn't handle like this when I am done :lol:

after a couple weeks, back where I was...
 

I lowered the frame center section down another 1-3/4", so now I have a 2-5/8" delta in height from the main section and the rockers. That should net me around 5.5" clearance at the front of the rockers, 6-1/8" at the rear of the rockers. Still pretty low. Bummer is I would not have had to french the floor for the center section so I will now have to go back and fill all of that in :rolleyes:

Nice thing tho' is there is more room for the torque tube and the high rise intake from raising the body up more, and it allows me a better way of putting the roll cage in but still being able to lift the body off. Engine should fit under the hood completely without cutting out hood bracing now, even with the tall filter.

Having a couple degrees of neg camber on the front for the track will help it all work out as well.

Next step pretty much is to pull the suspension out of the Porsche and start fitting it in here. I cut the inner fenderwells out of the rear today and I can see I need to go ahead and cut the rear subframe out of my way as well too, so I need to figure out some rear support for the trunk first. No way I can get that massive 13" wide tire back there with the subframe in the way :thumbsup:

But I sort of want to hit the track in the 914 again, it was just too much fun last time out as usual. Been looking at C6 Vettes again but I need to finish a project before I start another :getout:

Cut the rear inners out and chopped the subframe back so I could fit the rear tires in. I also stripped the 914 last weekend so I am going to get plowing forward on this project with some more steam now. Will start fitting suspension next. Here are a couple quick shots with the race wheels and tires that will be on the car roughly fitted and blocked up to actual ride height. I can tip the front tires at -1deg to -1.5deg and keep the bottom out for track width while getting enough clearance from the fender to turn the tires enough to get around a track. Won't be busting U-turns with it unless they are 3 pointers but that doesn't bother me for a hot rod.

I think it will look pretty bitchin' even at the higher ride height. Still need to figure out how I am going to get the rear tires off with the IRS, I will have to make it so it can easily detach limiting straps so it can drop down 4" per side. I will also have to lift the rear as a unit so the sway bar droops. PITA making a car that serves two purposes v. just a track car - I would just get fiberglass rears and Dzus 'em on.

Carbon fiber hood is supposed to show up today from Anvil. They had a 50% off sale on what was left in stock - they had one mixed FRP/carbon trunk which is 18lbs v. the 50lb lump I took off (holy SH!T that is a heavy trunk lid on these) and my mom picked that up. the hood wouldn't fit in her little SUV so it was trucked out here and that is the full carbon version that is also 18 lbs v. the 45lb stocker. I will be painting them (not the type to wear my pants around my hips with my boxers out and bench racing my carbon look) so I didn't want the full carbon hood but it was the only one left. Lemme see, $749 for a new mixed one and 10wk wait or $800 for the full carbon shipped that day... hmmmm :G-Dub: :lol:

Plan to run my NASCAR dual core double pass radiator and keep it low and slanted as shown in the pic. Keep all the weight as slow as possible. I will need to find a good body guy to make a front spoiler so I can duct air from below the bumper into it as well. The oil coolers will mount low in the front as well. I will just block off the upper part of the stock opening. Maybe I will just cut the core support a bunch and skin it, we will see how motivated I am to do that in the future.

...and the Anvil hood just showed up a bit ago. I unpacked it with the driver here to inspect it for any damage and he about flipped when he saw the full CF hood. He immediately recognized the car was an old Nova too and his brother had a 914 back in the day so he knew the cars :D

While I don't have my pants low as mentioned, I did have to drop them completely for a few minutes after mounting it on the car. Don't worry, everything is all cleaned up for the pics :thumbsup:

One of my all time personal favorite body styles....


This will be interesting because after reading from the beginning -- I ran thru by pea brain and couldn't come up with a single road race Nova (these years) in my memory. Makes you kind of wonder why. I haven't a clue.

:thumbsup:

Only Nova I have seen set up for road racing was II Much and I am not sure how much track time that car even saw in the end. Camaros are the more obvious choice given the Trans Am history there. The nose on the Nova will make it a flying brick. They are usually drag raced since they are a light V8 car to start with, I guess I just need to go against the grain :bitchslap:

After closing the hood down on the car, I will have to cut the center of it and reshape it - it is completely flat along the back edge and the car has a bit of a roll to it at the cowl, so it doesn't fit right. If someone wanted a raw CF look I am not sure how they would get it with this hood unless they left the fit as is and just lived with it. It is down a full 5/8" so this is going to take some serious rework to fit - I will have to call Anvil tomorrow and see what we can do about it. Half off doesn't do much good if I have to spend $500 with a body guy to cut and bondo it all back together :headscratch: You can see the corners are at the right, flush height... rather bummed right now.

Those tires look great tucked under there.

:lmao: That's awesome.

Um... :hello:

http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/f...ps8d2d88a7.jpg

http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/f...ps8d2d88a7.jpg
Perfect shot to point out the issue I was having with the low ride height I originally was shooting for - notice how far in the front tires are on II Much, that is what I am trying like heck to avoid. I saw that car at PRI in Florida something like 7 years ago now and it was at SEMA as well so I looked at it a fair amount and he did some nice work, but I am not a fan of that sucked in front tire look. I would rather raise the body up a bit than to run that setup. Having the track width on the front narrower than the rear is a bad idea for cornering as well.

When I said I was trying to come up with a road race Nova.... I was referring to HISTORICALLY -- as in back in the late 60's early 70's... Not just the one PT car build. You know - ala Penske Camaro etc...

Say what you mean Greggers.. not mean what you say. :bitchslap:

I hear you - Trans Am is what I would refer to for that (as I did with the Camaros in an earlier post). TA started in 66 and I don't think Chevy campaigned anything until the 68 Camaro, so that might be why there was never a road race Nova. If they were going to run a small sedan it would have been the right choice to run against Mercury Comets/Ford Fairlanes and Dodge Darts.

the only one I was able to find was Dan Spiegel the driver of a 66 Chevy II Nova.

Are you going to rework the cowl vent to fit the hood. That is what I would do if they don't wanna work with you. That way you can still keep the carbon fiber and not have to do fiberglass work. Any other ideas on this?

Cut the cowl, heck, fill the thing and wiper delete it:bang: :bang: :bang:

Talked to Tracy at Anvil today and he gave me some tips on how to reform it without cutting it, and then they approved a discount I asked to have put to credit my card to cover me having my body guy do the work locally so the customer service has been great. Manal was really helpful with the purchasing and approved the credit within minutes of my conversation with Tracy so I have to say I am happy with the company's willingness to work out the issue. They were also willing to bring it back and ship me another but I didn't feel the need to go through all of that for something that sounds resolvable with simple rework.

Tracy suspected that it may have been pulled from the mold a bit too early and sagged and that while it isn't common, he knew of some ways I can reform it and pull the hood back up to match the cowl. I am going to be painting it so any minor rework causing some finish issues won't matter to me. I didn't want to rework the cowl because if I had an issue with the hood down the road and replaced it with another, I would then be reworking the cowl to put it back.

This weekend I am hoping to get a start on placing the front suspension pieces. I have some tabs I ordered that have 1/2" thru holes and I need 5/8" and had just planned to drill them. Holy chit they are HARD so it killed my bit immediately - I need to find a bitchin' drill bit to get through 'em :D I have done all the math in my engineering software to know my pickup points and so forth, just need to get the darn tabs drilled :rolleyes:

As for that Spiegel car, thanks for the info on that. I went to a TA website I know of and saw that exact photo. On the same website there is info on the car that started me road racing back in the mid 90s.

http://www.historictransam.com/Drive...Mustang78.html
http://www.historictransam.com/images/wc040264.jpg

I had a 70 Mustang, met a guy named Mark Behne at a huge Ford show in SoCal that had restored this car (looked different back then, now it is completely a spec restoration, I liked his paint scheme a bit better back then and still have a photo of the car in my office) and owned it back then. I was drag racing my car at the time but loved the TA stuff; he invited me to his house, so forth and after becoming friends he invited me out to Willow Springs to watch the car run. He told me I would only have to road race once to never drag race again. I went out to watch and he offered the wheel to me! Literally having never been in the car or road raced, I hit the track in it and put down a few laps. He was right, I stopped drag racing that day :lol:

Tacked in the front lower control arms today and then was able to truly test fit the wheel in the fenderwell and visually verify the placement of the wheel center looks correct. I am going to have to get a bunch of custom tabs either plasma or waterjet cut to finish up and do the rear - I had a bunch of tabs I custom designed for the 914 and a few were left over that worked absolutely perfect for placing the susp components on the Nova too. I designed the tabs so there is either flat surfaces that align to square tube so there is no thinking, just attach it square, or they have a surface I can set level to ground and then adjust the height along the tube. In this case, the tabs are perfect as they align with either the top surface or the bottom surface of the tub and get the hole center exactly where I want it for correct ride height.

I took a break and went back to the old susp design files I had on the Porsche and updated them for this car. I set a lot of the lengths to things I can either measure with a tape or angle finder for ease of install. There are a bunch of (reference) dims that auto update as I mess with bump and so forth to verify toe doesn't change thru bump or verify camber gain. Certain dims are set such as the upright height as it is a welded piece that won't change (at least not without a trip into a wall). Those pieces were all designed in the same software for the Porsche.

Front sups has the 2.821" roll center height, rear is 3.470". All of that is what it ends up, I didn't force it to those weird dims :D Well, I guess I sort of did by using defining all of the other dims but nonetheless, that is a driven dimension by the design so I work all the other stuff to get those numbers roughly where I want them.

Interesting enough, the modern Vette has similar front suspension setup dims as the Porsches dating clear back to my 1972 car, so it is a pretty proven design. The front susp has a 10deg KPI and 6 to 7 deg caster and that is what Vettes and Porsches basically have. So on the front, I work the design to get the upright angle at 11.5deg - that is 10deg KPI with 1.5 deg of negative camber for the tires. The rear uprights have an 8.5deg angle built in so I went with 9deg to have 0.5 deg neg camber on the rear as a base setting. This is what the 914 had and showed perfect tire wear on the track with Hoosiers. Good thing is that won't chew the street tires up too bad at those settings. The fronts I will have to rotate on the wheel periodically to even out the wear.

Static RCs are inline with modern Vettes and Porsches as well.

Edit, pics attached. Note on the close up of the front tabs I have a flat spot on them I can use magnetic angle finders to hold flush with he top of the chassis. That is what I meant by having custom tabs with placement features. I want to try to come up with a rocker mechanism so I can run the Penskes internally.

had a productive weekend...
 

weather was nice and I picked up a plasma cutter so I was able to have the garage door open to help alleviate some of the fumes as I cut away at the car. Got the rear frame in as well and mounted up some of the rear suspension. As for the front, I welded together the core support and other items to make it a rigid piece, then on the lower part I have some 1x2 that I bolted to the frame. That way the nose can still come off from the frame and firewall. The square holes in the front are where the 3/8" screws pass thru that I used with the 1x2.

few more updates this weekend...
 

we had some snow - heaven forbid that would happen in the Denver area - so the steel place I source from was closed Saturday so I couldn't pick up the pieces I need to really roll this weekend. Here is how far I got before I ran out of 1x2 and still need some round bar to do the front upper A mods.

At the front I added the tabs for the upper A rear mount and cut the existing rear upper, which was longer than the existing front caster link, to start the front (I have to redo that for the rear as well). I also test fit the radiator; this is probably a bit premature but I want to make sure my front bracing didn't affect my plan to lay it down as shown. Keeping the weight low and I can exhaust out of the hood if I choose to later. I will close off the cowl above the radiator after final fitting - it will be nearly the last thing to actually go in.

At the rear, I placed the toe link tabs and set that link in place. After adding the tie, jacking it up to get the lower A parallel, all of the other links came in within a degree of what my CAD modeling states so they are essentially spot on. It is nice to see a rough check be so close.

I also placed the 1x2 from the main frame to the rear bumper- I will be cutting this up near the main frame and adding in a brace or bolted interface so the body can be removed. This will be the diffuser mount. I also tied in the rear body right at the rear bumper mounting so I can carry the stock bumper, and that is obviously a bolted joint in the photos - again, the body is meant to lift up and off from the frame and drivetrain assy. It probably looks a little flimsy (it did to me) but once that is all bolted up you cannot shake the rear, it shakes the whole body.

I will be out of commission for the next couple weeks with travel next weekend and friends in town the following, so I am bummed I couldn't get the tubing I needed to roll hard today... I would have had the front done for sure.

Loved your "P" car and this is shaping
 

up to be one of my favorite builds. Appears that you are really moving when you do have a chance to work on it.

Look forward to more progress.

back on it a little this weekend finally...
 

got the upper As built for the front - I have seen them done this way before, not totally sure if I am a fan yet. Having a caster adjustment with the clevis, then treating the two rod ends for just camber seems like a slick idea, but I am not totally sold on it. Having two adjustable ends on the upper A (clevis and rod end) means that arm can float up and down until it the jam nuts are tight - it is hard to describe but it seems to me like if one gets loose it could loosen the other and then the arm would just collapse. I can more or less decouple camber and caster with the two rod ends and no clevis, so I may just weld the clevis solid. I can also utilize the lower A to decouple the camber as well.

Not a lot of thought probably gets put to this stuff but when I am at the track, making a caster adjustment without affecting camber is nice - I always have to adjust toe but at least removing one adjustment would be nice. Any time you start rotating the A arms to get caster, then go back and adjust camber, it will pull the pivot at the upright along that angle, so caster is coupled into camber adjustments. Probably no real way around it.

Anyway, pics of the front susp tacked into place. The upper A can be shimmed up (or down with removal) at the upright, just below the large rod cup on the upper, to adjust roll center. Also got the lower As level all around and the final ride height is set. These are 16" wheels and the front tires are 23.5" diam so while they may not seem tucked up in the fender, if I go with 18s for the street they will be up in there another inch. At the front rocker just behind the front tire I measure 6". With some tire squish once it is on the ground probably 5-3/4". The Porsche was around 4.5" or 4.75", so not a whole lot higher than that car was, an inch or so.

Its looking good.

Crazy build I think you should have tried a wide body for front tire clearance. I'm gonna subscribe wanna see how this project turns out.