Introducing myself and my 72 Nova!

[nickcornilsen]

Once the exhaust was done, I purchased my Vintage Air kit, test fit it, and built the passenger size footwells.





I figured i'd better check and make sure my AC kit would fit. I wanted a low mount one. It fits, quite snugly!




So, back to the pedals.

I needed to make a bracket to test the location of the gaspedal. It wasn't working to test the pedal placement without the pedals returning, so I rigged up some springs.



Now, I'm not a guy who invents the wheel when he doesn't have to. So I borrowed heavily from RomanCommander's build, and used the same bracket, booster, and clutch master he did.

[WSSix]

Glad to see you're still plugging away at it all. Good luck with it!

[nickcornilsen]

More progress made!



This shows my AC unit installed under the dash, as well as the access plate for the top of the torque tube. That will be how I bleed the clutch.





Firewall Completed! This took alot of fidding, and thinking everything through. I had to buy and install the throttle cables to make that work, install the pedal assembly, and so on. I wish I didn't have to make such a patchwork, but to get everything to fit, and given my tooling limitations, I did the best I could.





3 Coats of Southern Polyurethane Epoxy!

The next phase of this project is to finish the core support, inner fenders, steering linkage, and swaybars.



Core support installed.




Motor placed, radiator just set in for reference. Lots of room for a fan! You can see the downbars, and swaybar tube mounted. the C5 bar is too wide, given that I narrowed the suspension up by 4 inches. I bought a speedway Engineering hollow tube, and pillow blocks.

[nickcornilsen]

At this point, it was time to finish the steering shaft. I purchased a KWIK bracket set to mount my alt and PS pump. Perfect clearance!




Bumper mounts...



Bumper mounted. It's only roughly aligned. There is plenty of room to make it right, but I don't want to spend much time on it now. The car is looking much more nova-like than it has in a while!



Now that I satisified my need to see tangible progress, I went back to the swaybar arms. I hacked up the arms that came with the swaybar kit. I had someone lasercut some metal that I could fab the arms out of. They worked like a charm! they are all welded up, but I need to spend some time grinding welds to make them look nice before I share a pic!



#novaProject. (The styrofoam # came with my radiator. I just had to.)




I mocked up the suspension, and couldn't turn the wheel at all. So, borrowing some inspiration from Bouncer's 'Germany Style' nova, and am raising the wheel wells. I'll probably do the same on the back tires.

[nickcornilsen]

Mini update:

In my last update, I showed the wheel well openings on the front driver side cut out and raised up. In the end, I was able to raise the openings by 2.375" on each side.

Some notes for those who seek to do this:
-There is no vertical portion of the wheel well opening... so when you raise the opening, you end up with a wierd jog. So you have to slice the lower part and re-work it to fix it.
-Cut about 1/4" above where the wheel opening lip meets the main curve of the fender. This lets you work the lip and the main fender curve for a better fit.
-ESAB EZ-Grind wire is worth the cost, if you are mig welding. It hammers out nicely and is relatively soft for MIG wire.

Drive side welded up:



Checking the wheel for clearance, to figure out how to do the inner fender.



This is how/where I cut it on the passenger side.






The next step is to rebuild the little brace that the inner fender bolts to, then to modify the inner fender to clear the tires.