66 Nova SS Project

[byndbad914]

got my tubing bender last week and picked up a bunch of 1.5" .120 wall (11 ga) tubing last Friday and started figuring out how to bend tubes I got the bender all leveled out as a starting point and then figured out there was about a 3 degree spring-back/relaxation, but managed to nonetheless hammer the main hoop out in less than a day and get it pretty square so I thought "this is a breeze".

Then I started in on the down tubes and I opted to go the hard route by making the tube extend from the main hoop all the way to the footwell to get me a maximized tight fit to the roof line and A pillar so I could keep my stock sun visors. Well, that basically took all of yesterday and most of today; I wasted about 28 ft of tubing and ended up bending 6 tubes to get 2, but I managed to get a really nice fit and I think it looks pretty darn professional if I do say so myself. The pisser was the compound angles going from the narrower roof line to the rocker width - when I figured it out I have to admit it was really obvious considering hindsight is 20/20 but an interesting learning experience nonetheless. The real beotch was getting the notching correct where the tube bent in to meet the main hoop at its bend. That took me 4 hours of nonstop marking with a pen, cut, fit, mark, cut, fit, and so on knowing that it should only be 2, maybe 3 rather squarish cuts. When it was done, I took the cutoff wheel and had the left tube in place in about 1/2 hour. All while making sure the rear window handles didn't hit the main hoop, the lower kick panels/vents fit and the vents fully open. PITA trying to keep a mostly stock interior.

The cross beam at the visors was about 20 minutes Straight pipes are about as easy as they come.

So after 3 days I have a 4pt cage tacked into place. The tubes from the hoop to the rear transaxle area are next on the list and should go pretty quickly I think, then tying into the forward bulkhead. Then I need to figure out the forward tubes and how I am going to pick up the rocker for the inboard shock mounting.

[byndbad914]

among the items from yesterday, today I got the forward bulkhead all tacked in, original steering column support bracket modified to mount up with the new bulkhead, and pedals fitted.

In the last image it is clear I am adding some thin-wall 1x2 to bring the floor up in the car and to have beams to build seat supports off of. The nice thing about this is that under the car in that 2" area tucked up in deep will give me a clean route away from the heat of the exhaust and away from the driveshaft to run the rear brake lines down the driver side and the fuel line down the passenger side. Both are a straight shot to where they need to "end".

the first shots were to show the mirror-like similarity in the down tubes, then the cage tacked in as 4 points so far, the last few shots are from the day growing dark and my camera really hates when the lighting gets weird - close enough as they say.

[byndbad914]

some that didn't fit above

[byndbad914]

I ran out of tubing before I got both front forward tubes bent up, but I got one done and mocked into place. I need tubing for the door bars and seat belts as well but those will be easy. I order up a bunch of interlocking clamps to make the door bars and diagonal all removable so those are on their way - as for the seat belt bar I am trying to figure out if I want external clamps to get it completely out of the way for back seat egress or not.

inline interlocking clamps

external clamps that will come completely out of the way but are bulky


I might make the door bars have the same external clamping but worry about the rigidity in a crash. Issue is I don't think any of these items are SCCA legal so having a car I can run in Super Production may be out of the question. The joints that SCCA allows in the rules are straight out of the 60s and about as fugly as they come - I don't understand why they haven't updated the rules to allow for the much stronger, nicer, modern interlocking clamps but I will find out if they do by the time I am ready to tech the chassis. I can understand if they balk at the external clamps since they are able to rotate and tear the bar off in a crash, but the inline ones are as strong as it comes.

Nonetheless, some update shots with the one forward tube mocked in which gives me plenty of room to build suspension rockers off of, the rear down tubes, and I have the oil tank mocked up and feel really confident I can keep it there and it does indeed fit better with the firewall out of the way and back on my new bulkhead. One pic as the front tire turned a bit and even at full rotation it never gets in the way, but the rotation shown in the image is more than I ever expect to turn it. On the track I would turn less than 1/2 turn on any corner in both the Porsche and the new Vette and those have about the same travel/rev (around 2-1/8"/rev. The pic shown is more like one full turn of the wheel and I intend to limit the rack to ~1.5" travel (about 3/4 turn) with a 2"/rev pinion.

The third image shows an S10 rack that Unisteer sent me for test fitting - I will be giving them new dims and mount items I need and get a rack coming hopefully next week here.

Last shot I took the old dash display apart and cleaned it up a bit - really bummed because the speedo numbers started to wipe off with just water and a paper towel! Even so, I intend to leave this in there showing the 64,228 orig miles the car had before I hacked into it and I hope to replace the fuel gauge with a new one if it matches the ohm output of my fuel cell (I have a GM fuel sender in it but I think there are a couple different ohm ranges over the years). I have a carbon fiber gauge but want to use the stock one of possible and then get a Racepak dash and mount it on top of a radio delete panel in the center of the dash.

[byndbad914]

been slow since the project was hindered by delivery delays, but since the last update I got more tubing so the other forward down tube bent and both are tacked into place. I also bought a chunk of 6061 alum and began machining rockers instead of using the welded steel approach I started with. I have them all roughed out and the plan is a buddy will finish machine them in a CNC to get the bore for the bearings interpolated perfect v. using a vertical mill.

I am going to hold off on installing the removable tube sections until I have the car fully welded and on the ground so I have half a chance of actually getting the tubes back in after removal (there should be no chassis settling). Statically the bars in question have little support for the chassis - it is more about keeping me safe in a crash - so waiting won't be an issue for chassis deflection when on the ground, maybe a few thousands of an inch here and there, just enough to make putting them back together a total PITA.

Did finally get the seat mounts and got them all mounted up on some 1" angle. I had factory Porsche sliders mounted on the bottom in the 914 to have access to the front of the engine easily. I figured no need in this car. Also, sliders are not as safely mounted as a hard mount. Now I am waffling on what I want to do on this car as there will clearly be zero access to the back seat without sliders of some form. I may figure out a way to rig something up on the passenger side so I can keep the driver side hard mounted. We will see. It is good for weight balance of course to sit so far back and with a deep wheel and quick release the steering wheel should come back far enough.

I also realized the other day that Ultrashield has a new version of their seat covers so I asked if I could still get the old version to match these. They were able to still make a set of seat covers and they showed up the other day so those go into the stockpile to be added at the end.

[no go nova]

coming along nicely.

[Flash68]

How we doin Tim?

[driveability]

byndbad914

You build some ass kicking cars ! I loved the 914 and see heart of it sitting under the hood of the new car. I am the guy (driveability) on the 914 club who had the black, flared V8 914 with the 930 trans and the reverse opening trunk. Looking good ! Have you seen my new 914 ?

[Vince@Meanstreets]

yeah! Looking great. My new favorite garage build.

[byndbad914]

thanks gents! Driveability, I do remember you and caught your project earlier this week on here. Should be a rocket when you are done!

As for the past month it has been on-off on the car. I had some travel with work and been clicking the OT clock as well (what the hell, I have to work for this paycheck?) so that has set me back a little. That and the near zero temps pretty much every weekend makes laying on concrete a bit undesirable - I definitely miss living in SoCal during this time of year.

But there has been some progress. I mounted all of the brake calipers and rotors and verified wheel fitment. Looking thru an 18" wheel and seeing nothing but rotor definitely is a turn on

The McLeod clutch surprisingly turned out to be a bit of a machining project given the sticker price on it. There were 6 aluminum spacers that look to be surface treated that space the pressure plate away from the flywheel and then there were nine .018" thick spacer washers stacked on each one EXCEPT for one of the six. That one had a .050" shorter spacer and only one extra washer There should have been 3 extra for a .004 difference but instead 1 extra and a .036 difference. Why shim?? Also on a few of the spacers, they were so thin they were able to fit into the threads of the 5/16" stud and pinch themselves so I am sure that torques up really well.

Not too slick.

So I got some steel and made 6 new spacers that were exactly the right length and dumped that mess of shims and spacers. I would like to have the new ones out of aluminum but I don't care to take the time to find out what heat treat those things were done with for the slight difference in overall weight.

Then I put the hyd TO bearing onto the torque tube section and plugged that into the mix - it was off by almost 1.5"!! Not 0.150" which is what it should be at max, but an order of magnitude higher. I wasted time instead of saving time having them send me a spacer that turned out to be .700" long, irritating story, so I ended up back on the lathe at work anyway making a 1.300" spacer to set the TO in the right spot.

While that is exactly why I take this stuff all apart and measure every shim and standoff, etc, it is also what cost me about 3 weekends.

Further, I ordered a new dry sump oil pan a few weeks back that will work better with this car than the one from the 914 and those are always fabbed per order/not stocked. The prediction was to ship to me on Monday but I have yet to see a tracking number. Now that the clutch is set I can pull the engine out, drill and tap for the mini starter and get the new pan on once it shows up and get rolling again.

My buddy at work has been helping me make some billet aluminum rockers for the suspension v. the steel ones I was going to weld up. I roughed them out and he is fine tuning all of the surface profiles in the CNC when he gets some free time on the weekends. So far we have a couple more ops left but that might take a month - free time is just that so I can only ask for so much of course.

Lastly, I am getting ready to order the custom steering rack so I intend to model up what I want in engineering software so they have a clearly defined drawing of exactly what I expect to receive.