72 Nova - C5 Corvette Suspension Swap Project!

[nickcornilsen]

Summer 2017

Here Goes again!

Between now and the last time I posted, I did manage to finish the fuel cell mounts, and even primered the back-half of the car's frame, wheel-wells, and suspension mounts. I did not, however get pictures... and I proceeded to stack parts and materials into the trunk of the car, meaning I won't be getting better pics for a while.





After primer, I got a bit distracted from the car for the summer. Barn parties, house projects, and even some track time in my Chumpcar racer stopped progress from July 15th until about 3 weeks ago.







Anyway, I've been busy though!

I decided to transition to the front of the car. There's alot of reasons for this, but mainly it comes down to poor design of my chassis jig... I can't get under the car if the floorboards are in!

The first step was working on the driver's position, pedals, and steering column.

I bought a column from a '96 camaro. I transferred the Nova columb brackets to it, and shortened it. There's enough info on how to do that out there, that I won't go into it. It's not to hard though.

I realized I was going to have to decide on an exhaust system. After some research, I decided it was either custom headers, or modify some LS7 manifolds.
LS7 manifolds are nice, the have a dual layer, and make really good power.
I purchased a pair, and cut the flanges off. You can see below, I have alot of room for the steering linkage.



The picture below shows the clutch and brake pedals installed. While trying to fit the column and pedals, I found that some of the frame tubes I'd installed back in 2012 would not work, as they took too much of my footwell. I also found out that there was no way to get an exhaust pipe through on the driver side.



Now that I'd determined the stock pedal assembly would work, and that I'd have to hack up the frame a little bit, I dove into the exhaust. You can see below what I THOUGHT I'd do for exhaust.



To prevent any extra encroachment into the passenger footwell, and to allow room for an AC evaporator, it worked best to route two 3" pipes next to eachother, and to join then under the torque tube. I set out to modify the manifolds, and re-did the frame tubes in the area to make room.

[nickcornilsen]

Winter 2017

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.

[nickcornilsen]

Winter 2017

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]

Jan/Feb 2018









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.

[nickcornilsen]

April 2018

Update time!



Once the wheel well openings were both raised 2.25 inches, it was time to patch the inner fender together. The photo above shows the clearance I have a 1" of suspension compression.... which is to say, not much. My goal is to have zero rubbing for any wheel position at 1.5" of suspension compression, and have 75% of my steering range at full bump.






In order to make that happen, I had to cut off the two tabs that held the clip nuts that are at the 10 and 1 positions on the wheel. To replace that, I drilled and tapped some flat stock, and spot welded it to the fender. I then cut the portion of the inner fender off that bolted to the fender opening, and attached it. Then, it was a matter of filling in the gap.



With the inner fenders done, I removed the front fenders and found this rust happening under the window trim. I'm not sure how best to repair this... but I'm going to deal with it later.




Maybe I should just omit the fenders... looks pretty cool!

On to the windsheld wiper motor relocation!
Given how far the motor is recessed into the firewall, the stock wiper motor mount was obliterated. So I read through SevenZeroNova's guide on a relocated wiper motor and purchased a wiper motor and transmission out of a 2001 Pontiac Bonneville.

Motor With Mount plate:



Plate that will weld to the firewall:


And the hole in the firewall:





Now, with the motor mounted I ran into a couple of issues. First among these is that there was not a way to run the linkage directly from the motor arm to the middle wiper pivot.

the other issue was that the linkage is worn out.

To solve the first issue, I built a pivot arm that bolts to the firewall about where the trim tag goes. The second of the pics below shows about where it installs, but it goes inside the cowl and will barely be visible.





To solve the other issue, I borrowed some more of the Bonneville wiper system. It turns out that if you grind of the riveted in ball studs, the shank is about the same size and offset from the wiper pivot plate. I simply moved the boneville's larger ball stud to the Nova's middle wiper stud's plate... and tacked it in! This works for the linkage that goes from the middle wiper stud to the driver side stud, but you have to cut off the ends of the linkage and weld the Bonneville's in place.




I am waiting on the special bolts that hold the wiper pivots in place. I broke most of mine!

[nickcornilsen]

April 2018

Onward to the dash panel area... turns out I had a little bit of the windsheild corner cancer. There is alot of info on how to fix this. And I didn't take pics of the repair.





With that done, I took some parts to be sandblasted, and stripped the firewall and front chassis of rust/mill scale and got it ready to primer.

Here it is done!









A bit of a tangent... but I had the Drive Shaft Shop narrow up my CV Axles and make a carbon fiber driveshaft for use in the Corvette torque tube! They were 8 weeks in the making, but well worth the wait! After verifying the length, they're going into storage for now.

[WSSix]

Coming along well, Nick.