66 Nova SS Project

[byndbad914]

been piling on the OT at work lately which is fine in small doses but I needed a weekend off and between a cold day yesterday that was good for machining and a warm one today good for installing, I got quite a bit done on the rack assembly finally.

Going back over the past couple months of the car sitting, there were some photos in my camera so will cover those.

first we have the TO bearing spacer that I had to make to space the living crap out of the TO on the Vette setup. then the custom spacers I had to make to get the PP correct on the clutch.

[byndbad914]

buddy got these done last weekend, turned out really nice. Sturdy as hell as I build it to live thru an off-track mishap The second shot is rough placement, I will have to work on shock mounting next time around.

[byndbad914]

Set the rack up to just miss the mandrel for the dry sump, slotted the mounts for Ackermann adjustment from zero Ackermann to whatever I measure at full lock once the suspension is all in. Don't need much, 1/16" is a ton and I think there is enough adjustment there to get me from 0 to 1/16". The center take off (CTO) rack is nice because I can offset it and just make sure to build in the offset when I extend the tie rod bar. You can see the pinion box and I have some round bar hanging off to make sure I can clear the headers without a lot of angle.

I trimmed down the way-too-short one this S10 had and will extend out with round bar to the exact width I want. Finally, the last shot shows the tie rod is up near the upper A arm pivot, so I can get a good approximation for tie rod pivot axis based on the upper pivot axis to minimize bump steer.

[byndbad914]

the oil pan finally showed up after over 3 months (quoted 2.5 wks back mid-January) so I am close to yanking the engine out and getting that swapped and the block drilled for the mini-starter. Sucks that it is the only pan I can find with a standard part number that has three evenly spaced outputs on the sump. The hold up now is waiting on Unisteer to send me the right parts - they sent the wrong ones a couple weeks ago, was supposed to send the right ones early this week, I called Friday to see if anything happened and of course nothing. And people wonder why someone who loves cars so much ran away from the automotive world as fast as I could when I got my engineering degree Customers rarely believed me when I swore the screwed up lead times weren't my fault - they just assumed I dropped the ball. Anyway, old wounds open back up easy I guess. I want to have the engine in place next weekend when I have those parts (hopefully) and make sure I get the steering input I want without hitting any of the pulley items on the front of the engine.

I also bought some universal seat sliders from Summit and got those installed. The seats were sitting rather low in the car and I was going to quick fab up some spacers, but then just decided to go this route for much more adjustability. Racing series won't allow them but I decided I am not going to try to SCCA this car but just open track day it as I have for quite awhile now. W2W sounds like fun, and actually can be really fun, but I don't see the need to do it with this car at this point. If I change my mind, it is a matter of minutes to swap these out for spacers if I really feel the need. I also took a painstaking amount of time to notch the pedal box out to move the pedals further forward - all the gas pedal linkage was hitting otherwise - and then right when I finished and put the pedals back in I realized I could just move the linkage around and bypass all of that. So I relo'd the linkage and it all fits quite nicely of course. Hey, at least it is right in the end I guess

Got the rockers mocked up in and verified the wheels will turn enough and not hit anything. All about squeezing it all in. It will be easier in the rear of the car as the tie rods are on the back side, not the front. I also made another adapter for the tie rod cross bar to put super long tie rods in and added even more adjustability to get best overall Ackermann once it is all together and testing on the track.

[Payton King]

Looking Good! Packaging is always a problem with these cars. Price you pay for the cool body lines.

[byndbad914]

Been a little while and I just keep picking at it here and there. Had a 4 day weekend and ran out of welding gas on Sat AM, right about the time the welding shop closed of course. I knew I was getting low, just didn't expect it to go so fast Anyway, engine is out, new pan is on, a little massaging with the hammer cleared one offending hose end, need to order a forged one for the pressure in to clear the pan tho'. Also drilled the frame for the sway bar mounting and lathed up some ends to use bushings I get from McMaster-Carr. Did this on the Porsche and it worked really well. 1.25" Speedway Engineering sway bars will fit in nice and tight. Test fitting a link too to get an idea of how wide the bar needs to be. Getting close to where I just need to bite the bullet and get the shocks on order but would really rather figure out how I intend to mount without them, get the car on the ground on tubing and get real corner weights of course. Redid the mounting for the core support and that got me a cross bar that I can weld the radiator mounts to. I have another spot I hope to make my oil coolers fit but as a backup I have already cleared out an area under the core support to mount both of them.

dammit - all my pics need resized, I will add them another day.

[byndbad914]

had the engine out for the pan install, got most of the front end all welded up as it is looking to be the finish product. Got the sway bar mounts fully welded. PITA getting both sides lined up and staying in place during welding so I have to run a pattern and move the welding around to ensure the mounts don't move. Radiator pulled back a little for example which is what it is but sucks nonetheless as I had it jigged to be tight to the top of the core support. Pulled back 1/8", nothing much, just enough to tick a guy off a bit. Looks like I should be able to mount the electric water pump to the right of the radiator (shifted it a little bit left in the car) and try to keep as much weight to the right as I can overall.

Other than that I hope to get the oil coolers tacked in this weekend under the radiator, fans blowing from underneath thru them. Once I get a splitter made and lower valence waaaayyyy down the road, they will be hidden and protected should I have an off-track adventure. I intend to make a removeable skid plate for the coolers and pan and hopefully integrate it all with the splitter for a single piece - time will tell.

For now, a couple images. Way back early on I thought I would lay the radiator down, tipped forward like I had it in the Porsche to keep weight low but the grill is really close to the core support on these cars and such, and with the oil cooler placement and where the alternator will need to sit, it just worked better to give up the fight and plant it in a more normal orientation. I also went ahead and hacked out the core support of factory metal as it was just not going to work out - I will get thin steel and fab/weld something up when the time draws near to actually drive the car.

Will need to work on the rear of the car a bit and have a plan to lower the fuel cell down a little bit more so hope to do that this weekend. Have a bunch of fittings on order from Summit to route the dry sump once the coolers are mounted, here next week, and some more fuel fittings to start routing fuel lines, so I hope to have a productive weekend and 4th of July weekend. If I can stay on current pace, it might be possible to set this on the ground in a month if I had the shocks

[Redliner]

I couldn't help but notice the first picture you uploaded of a Chevy Nova II race car was that of Norm Beechey who ran that car here in the 1970's to terrorise the Mustangs of his two rivals Pete Geoghegan & Bob Jane. Beechey was the FIRST person to import and race a Mustang here into Australia. I knew Beechey's Mustang & that Chevy Nova well because I was then a teenage motor racing photographer who snuck into the pits without a pass to get trackside so I could capture my heroes on film. Being the first to bring USA Muscle Cars created the Australian motor racing phenomenon known as “Beechey Mania”, where crowds would storm the pits and maroon Norm on the top of his race car just for the chance to get close to their hero for an autograph.

So I thought you might like this one I took of Norm at Warwick Farm to add to your collection & to cheer you on as you continue this great build.



I also have rare 16mm footage of this Chevy running at a very tight mountain track at Katoomba (long gone now), but the Chevy got beaten by two Mini Cooper S's. It WAS a very tight, narrow track and it WAS raining - but I'm sure you won't be bothered by any of Alex Issigonis' wee shoeboxes in your monster!

[byndbad914]

thanks for the history on that car and that great shot! Keeps me motivated to get this thing on the ground soon.

as for updates, I had a "revelation" of how I would like to mount one oil cooler and shift the radiator way off center for overall weight balance and preferential airflow to the oil cooler, so I ordered a CBR radiator to move the outlets from the right to left side, put the filler directly on the radiator, and get rid of that laid forward design from the Porsche and do a standard, upright radiator. Same size, just relocating outlets mostly. Chunk of change to do that, but frankly it will be overall better to just go new in this case. THat should be on my doorstep Friday. I have the fuel cell mounting in place with a steel "blast plate" welded in under it over the transaxle in case that should let go, and have an empty Penske shock on order and should hopefully be here Friday as well to test run it at all four corners thru range of motion. Assuming I haven't stepped on my ding-ding and that all works out, I could have the car sitting on the ground with steel tubes in place of the shocks by next weekend. I am a little concerned tho' that the shock mount is going to want to bind with the rocker so I have fingers and toes crossed that is not the case. That would monkey wrench things if that is true.

assuming the radiator shows up Friday I will try to post some update pics this weekend.

[Payton King]

That would be great. Someone needs to be making progress on their project....might as well be you.