Speedtech Project: 68 Red Nova

[Ben@SpeedTech]

Hey Everyone-

Posting up another cool car out in the shop today. This one is a '68 Nova, recently purchased by our client with a fairly nice restoration and a few upgrades. It has a beautiful deep red metallic paint, came with a warmed over 383 small block backed by a Camaro T5, 17" TTs, and most everything else was restored stock.

[Ricochet]

Nice looking. What's the plan of attack on it?

[Ben@SpeedTech]

When it arrived at the shop it was obvious it needed some suspension upgrades, a ride height adjustment and some fatter meats. We knocked out the first two on the first round of the build. After dropping out the stock suspension, we installed our Road Assault front suspension, including our tubular upper and lower control arms, tubular sway bar, billet adjuster sleeves, and Viking hybrid double adjustable coilover shocks. Keeping the stock spindles we added 13" rotors with 6 piston Wilwoods. Out back we installed our Torque Arm suspension with the car's 12 bolt rear, and topped it off with 4 piston Wilwoods surrounding 13" rotors. The original exhaust consisted of exhaust manifolds through 2.25" pipes, so to help things breathe better we wrapped it up with a set of our stainless headers and stainless custom 3" duals. All these changes made a tremendous difference in handling and braking, and helped squeeze a few more ponies out of the 383. With the new suspension also came getting the ride height where it needed to be.

[Ben@SpeedTech]

Now, 6 months later the car is back to get a little more serious. First order of business was to drop the subframe for cleaning and paint. This included setting the 383 and old school T5 aside for a crate 525 hp LS3 and T56 trans. This new motorvation combo had to work with factory spindles and a new rear mount power rack and pinion steering, so we swapped on one of our new road race oil pans to help with clearance. Doing this swap also gave us opportunity to develop some new parts that we'll have available soon on our website. Basically we're putting together a complete LS to GM frame swap package, including all new motor mount stands, Nova specific transmission tunnel cover, headers, oil pan, etc. The package will be set up to work with both the factory steering box and rear mount rack and pinion steering.

[Ben@SpeedTech]

Next step was to fix up the firewall. It had several random holes in it and had some nasty undercoating all over it. We took it down to bare metal, welded up all the holes and smoothed the dents. Then a coat of primer laid the foundation for the same red base coat sprayed on the body, only for some cool contrast we hit it with satin clear.

[Ben@SpeedTech]

While waiting on the paint booth activities we removed the rear axle and torque arm. The axle is getting narrowed to fit some really cool brand new style B Forged 18x12 wheels and 335 tires, more on that later. To fit the massive tires we cut the old wheel tubs out and installed a set of minitubs. Wayne makes easy work of it, and finished it up with dark grey paint in the trunk and a smooth shot of bed liner underneath.

[Ben@SpeedTech]

Returning the subframe to the engine bay came next. We snapped a few shots while Wayne was beginning hooking up the engine components. The satin sheen gives the firewall and engine covers a smooth and cool look. notice the ATS hand fabricated and TIG welded sheet metal Road Race pan, and the hookups for the oil cooler and remote filter mount. This pan fits great with that rear mount rack and pinion, and our Speedtech headers help create more clearance. The T56 is a little tight with the relatively short Nova trans tunnel, so we developed an exclusive T56 tunnel cover and just saw photos of the first sample from the laser cutter today. When we get them back, we'll weld it up and install it in the Nova. If fitment checks out like our prototype we should have them available for production soon!









More coming soon...

[Ben@SpeedTech]

Thanks Brent! This car is even better looking in person!

[Ricochet]

Guess I was to quick on the trigger to ask what the plan was! LOL! Should have waited for you to post all of the pics! Looks great! Very nice improvements!

[SSLance]

This type of build is more and more becoming my favorite...

Take an older car with a nice restoration on it already, and repower and drive train it to make it run and handle as well as it looks...all while leaving the looks that it came with basically alone.

Nicely done. Love the color of that car.