Setting the Stance

Nathan had asked me to bring in my front wheels for setting up a height reference.

It is quite obvious the car will have a lower stance than factory, but the factory never dreamed of putting a 10" wide tire on the car, either.

 The car will be fitted with 15" rally wheels.  These wheels are correct for that era.  The front will tote an 8" wide wheel(s) with a 4" back offset.  The rear will be showing off  12" rubber mounted to a 10" wide wheel(s) with a 6" back offset.  This allows the wheels to line up evenly as you are looking down the length of the car.

The Chassis: Part 2

You saw the front end piece on the jig table.  There are lines that represent the Nova's center width, wheelbase center & the front & rear axle centers. 

This is for a starting reference for the build.

Other front suspension mounting brackets were produced to incorporate the C4 control arms & the front spindles.  Pretty cool, huh?

The Chassis: Part 1

This is is the 1st component built for the chassis.  This piece will support all of the front suspension, engine mounts & the power rack & pinion unit.

As you can see, Nathan is really a stupendous welder / builder!  His attention to detail & quality is noting short of phenomenal.  With that being said, part 1 is complete.  The build begins:

The Engine

The 307 cid motor that came with the car was....well, it was a smog motor from the 70s.  A very low horsepower and all the smog goodies of the time.  Needless to say,  goodbye to that motor.



Good-Bye



Well, it just happened that Chris was parting out a 1977 3500 (1 ton) Chevy truck at the time.  Mmmm, "Oh Chris, doesn't that heavy truck have 4-bolt mains?"  "Why I believe it does!", Chris replied.  Anyway, Chris & I did some horse trading so I wound up with the heavy motor :).

With help from Chris, we stripped that motor to almost nothing.  I kept the block, crank, crankshaft caps & the piston rods.  Everything else was either sold off on eBay or went to the motor parts boneyard.

Took the block into a local machine shop for inspection.  Block was OK but needed to be bored another .030" to clean up all the cylinders.  The crank and piston rods met spec, also.

The shop that did the (350 cid small block) engine build for me was King Precision in Glendale.  A local that builds a lot of 'old school' motors.

I purchased all the parts for my small block build from "Summit Racing".  A regular candy store for gearheads.

The crankshaft & piston rods got heavy duty bearings.  Edelbrock 'retro' roller cam, Comp hydraulic roller lifters, Summit pushrods and Summit roller rockers.  Summit aluminum pistons & Summit aluminum heads for the gen 1 chevy motor.  Double roller timing chain set with heavy aluminum cover.  Summit 8" harmonic balance & atop the heads, a Summit aluminum manifold.  Holley 750 cfm carb.

The details include a piston pump fuel pump.  Mildon high volume oil pump & pan.  Yes,... a Summit aluminum high volume water pump with March Performance aluminum pulleys.  Sanden A/C compressor, 140 amp alternator, and a GM type II power steering pump.  All the aluminum brackets are from Zoops Products.  Ignition is MSD and Accel.  It should put out about 400+ thoroughbreds :) :).