An attempt at subtlety in a crowd of buffoons

[gunchsta]

we gonna need a video of this thing getting of the line, after you posted a pic like that

Not a very flattering video or angle, but my car is in this at 1:09

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4msXOSDyHYY

Love first-gen Novas. <3 It's awesome seeing other vintage iron on here.

Are you planning to do some brake upgrades in the future? I'm sure a 12-second car with unassisted drums front and rear has to be sketchy... That's the main thing keeping me from racing our '69 Nova. Thanks GM, for offering horrible brakes.

Excellent job so far, looking forward to progress!

Thanks!

The drums work awesome, the car is only like 3190# so it stops really hard. Once. But, like I said there's always room for improvement. Stay tuned!

[MommysLittleMonster]

Love first-gen Novas. <3 It's awesome seeing other vintage iron on here.

Are you planning to do some brake upgrades in the future? I'm sure a 12-second car with unassisted drums front and rear has to be sketchy... That's the main thing keeping me from racing our '69 Nova. Thanks GM, for offering horrible brakes.

Excellent job so far, looking forward to progress!

[gunchsta]

I would like to add that at this point the car was pretty well sorted out in my mind, it was running strong, hooked up good on the street and at the track, drove fairly straight ...

so I enjoyed it. I put some miles on, took some smaller trips (it's not exactly set up for 75 mph highway cruising) and had a blast.

This is one of my favorite Pizza places ever, they have great pasta too, and the drive is beautiful around lake Minnetonka getting there. Anyone in Minnesota should check out Joey Nova's.


Jabbering at a stoplight


cruising around the lake


I'd been enjoying the car, but I knew it still needed upgrades. Funny how it seems like there's always room for improvement... you learn a little more and suddenly the last thing you did seems like the first thing you should have done. So anyways, the car still had drum brakes on all four corners, and the car would still go through a set of ball-joints, and consequently, tires, a summer. I still don't know exactly why it ate ball joints so bad, it had been aligned, they'd been replaced 3 or 4 times with whatever the quality replacements were at the time... It could have had something to do with wheelies all over the place (it got pretty sloppy to where it'd do them on the street too, so I mean, I obviously did that every chance I got ), it could be from just really poorly designed suspension in the first place, I don't know. But at the end of the year the wheels always had more camber than in the spring, and they always had like 1/4" of play in the lower balljoints. This was even after I put in the tubular lower control arms. Still needed ball joints. There was also still some serious play in the steering because of the 50 year old steering box.

I explored options: There are a million little tricks people do to the stock front ends on these cars to make them handle better, replace rubber bushings with bearings, box the arms, new bushings, new steering boxes, etc. etc. etc. There was also one very popular and very expensive option that would completely redesign the front end of the car, from the firewall forward. Everyone had told me to do that from the day I got the car, but I had vowed not to in an attempt to keep the car 'vintage'.

Well, that is until it needed ball joints for the 4th time in as many years...





































I exchanged some phone calls, did some research, talked to some people that knew some people, and in a few short weeks this beauty arrived at my work


People like teasers right?

[P78]

we gonna need a video of this thing getting of the line, after you posted a pic like that

[gunchsta]

so glad you kept going with this. that low mount alt looks so good, wish I would have done that on my truck I had.

Cant wait to see more of this. That last pic looks awesome.

Thanks, I was happy with how it turned out.

hi gunch

Sup Teeej

Love the wheelie!

Thanks! I do too!

[DER E30]

Love the wheelie!

[teejsauce]

needz moar stants

heres some inspiration:






hi gunch

[gunchsta]

Fall came around, lower control arms were installed and functioning, I decided it was time to spend more money. I mean address other problems, namely my fueling issue. It's pretty common for drag cars to 'un cover' the factory pickup tube in the gas tank. Under hard acceleration that antiquated design tends to slosh all the fuel to the back of the tank, exposing the pickup tube to air, not fuel. The common fix for this is to build a sump on the rear of the tank, placing the fuel pick up down low and in the rear, or to install a fuel cell. Since I have a wagon, and I wanted the car to not look all tacky and racy, I opted for the sump idea.

I ordered hardware


pulled the tank and gave it to a good friend with more skills (and balls) than I, who washed it out and got to work building the sump.







view from inside


all welded up


painted


external view


Many thanks to my friend Brian who built the sump for me, it turned out great.

That's all for today, more excitement to come soon! Thanks for reading

[hinrichs]

so glad you kept going with this. that low mount alt looks so good, wish I would have done that on my truck I had.

Cant wait to see more of this. That last pic looks awesome.

[gunchsta]

That weekend I actually ended up winning my class which was sweet, though I won more because the other guy lost (ran too fast) than anything else, but a win's a win right?

The car was feeling really strong down low, but on the big end of the track it felt like it was slowing down over the weekend. Seemed like when I clicked it into 3rd gear it nosed over and just stayed flat, it didn't pull hard all the way to redline, it just kinda hung at about 5,500 rpm and didn't gain a lot. Could have been a lot of things, what it ended up being was a blown up transmission. Like a champ the car made the 3 hour drive home with what would later be a failed intermediate sprag, and essentially a lot of small bearings and chunks of material rolling around in the trans. Transmission came out, got repaired without too much hassle or $$$, and was put back in in a couple of weeks.

I ran the car a few more times that summer, noting two things: First and foremost the front suspension and brake situation (arguably the worst front suspension GM has ever designed, and mechanical drum brakes) needed a dramatic update, and secondly the car still had issues on the top end. It pulled a lot stronger throughout the RPM range now that the trans was actually holding in high gear, but I had a fuel pressure gauge on it and it would read about 1psi going through the lights, a carburetor only needs between 6-9 psi but none the less it was low.

I decided to ignore the fueling issue as the car wasn't sputtering or anything indicating an overly lean condition, and focus on the front suspension. I ordered a set of tubular lower control arms that eliminated one of the biggest weak points of the front end- the strut rods. Lots of cars use them, almost all are more efficient than this 1963 design. It was essentially a 5/8" threaded rod that bolted to the lower control arm and had a bushing under the front bumper allowing it to pivot with the control arm. Those bushings go bad, the lower control arms are weak anyhow, you stop hard and you can see the front wheel moving forward and back in the wheel well. It's ugly. I went forward with the new lower control arms, took almost no pictures as usual, but I did find these of them installed.





These helped

[gunchsta]

After completing the wiring and checking along the way to make sure the car wasn't going to burn down, the 350 was installed, battery was re-located, and I made a low-mount alternator bracket to keep the alternator down and out of sight.

I didn't see any low mount kits for this car that I liked, so I took a cheapy chrome one, cut it apart, flipped it around, and used my factory upper mount arm to mount it like this


snug as a bug in it's new home. cleaner than before, but still kinda messy


the new engine felt like a rocket. I have no pictures of shenanigans, but we went out that first night and pounded on it with a car full of people and it felt like a whole new animal. It would smoke the tires at will and it weight transfered like crazy. I was ecstatic.

I later realized I was driving around with approximately 60* of total timing on an engine that usually likes about 36*... but, live and learn. I didn't hammer the bearings out of it or do any lasting damage (I was never on the throttle for more than a couple blips so it didn't have much of a chance to hurt anything too bad). I got lucky, it was silly of me to even run it without a timing light, but it was late, the car was loud, and I wanted to drive it.


Now the glory. I took it to an event at Brainerd I'd ran previously in this story, and was excited to race it with its new, more powerful engine. I had drag radials in the back and drove up there on normal tires with a jack and a lug wrench, to change to the sticky tires for the weekend when I arrived. Highway miles are hard on drag radials. I got to the track, set up my shanty town campsite, and exchanged the street tires for the stickies. Drank some beers, and got excited to make some test runs the next morning on my new set up.

The car passed tech inspection with flying colors, one of the guys doing tech even said he'd have his buddy do it because he just wanted to see the car go and would probably overlook problems. Anyway, I get up to the lights for the first time, stab the throttle as they come to green, the car takes off harder than it ever has, I feel a funny clunk in the steering wheel, and I complete the pass. 13.40. Fastest the car has ever gone. Went fairly straight, didn't blow any fluids out of it, oil pressure was still good. I was pretty pumped.

I got about 2 more runs in like that, making a few little changes and updates as I went, small changes to the carburetor, typical things. Each pass it got a little quicker, better mph, something to improve it. Each time after the launch I felt this odd twitch in the steering wheel 35 feet out. I figured it's an old sloppy car, with even sloppier suspension, it's just the logistics of acceleration. I had an inkling but I was too excited to admit to it.

Finally later on in the day one of my buddies comes up to me and starts hootin' and hollerin' about how my car was leaving the line, it was pretty aggressive he said...

This is one of the coolest things I've ever felt in my car


picture of a picture I know, but there is light under that left front tire! maaaany beers were drank in celebration of my first wheelie that night!

[gunchsta]

love this , coming from an old school American iron background I am already in love. Keep it up for sure , Its reasons like this that makes SW so cool , such a wide variety of cars.

Thank you! I concur

Back to the current state of the timeline, here's another picture of the 350 from the kid I got it from.

[gunchsta]

So I just found some older pictures that are out of order but I'm adding them anyhow.

this is when the rear end was out and built




I also got a ton of extra parts with the car, some of which were extra tail light lenses. So, since my back up lights didn't work anyway I decided to cut up 2 of my extra lenses and make an all red tail lamp.

before


after

[12vsex]

love this , coming from an old school American iron background I am already in love. Keep it up for sure , Its reasons like this that makes SW so cool , such a wide variety of cars.

[gunchsta]

I 'd at this. I've seen it firsthand and it is pretty stupid!

Looks good! Waiting for more to the story!

Cheap chrome dress-up kits, t-shirts to match their bondo-laden cars...


Anyhow, back to the story: So, the manual trans blew up and I replaced it with a more durable, more predictable automatic. I'd been doing some drag racing and wanted to do more, so the automatic was the logical choice. Boring to some, but it made the car really consistent and predictable, and a blast from a stop.

Time passed, the car made some passes down the dragstrip, some weekend roadtrips to the track, I was having a blast and the car was working well. I went to the last event of the summer in September, ran the car, drank beer, and had a blast. Car ran fine all weekend, but on the 3 and a half hour drive home it started to over heat and get pissy. It had always had intermittent cooling issues, but this was more defined than before. Pulled off the road, let it cool a bit, added some water, and continued the trek home. The car soldiered on despite what would later turn out to be a blown headgasket.

at the track with my pit bike


I make it home, start looking into whats wrong with the car, pull the heads off and find a bad head gasket. No real surprise. Since I had it apart I took the heads to a machine shop (not the one that assembled them after the valve spring broke) and had them look over them before I put them back on. I was suspicious of warping or some other mechanical issue because of the cooling problems I encountered.

Long story short the heads were beat. The valve springs the last shop put in were far too heavy, and they were actually hammering the valves closed against the older, softer valve seats, and they'd done some significant damage. Most of the valves were recessed into the heads, and they'd need major machine work to be revived. I had a decision to make- Revive the heads and continue with the unknown 50 year old smaller engine, or upgrade to a newer small block Chevy, the ever popular 350 ci version.

I considered the fact that over the years I'd upgraded the drivetrain from the back bumper forward, upgraded rear end, aftermarket axles, gears, and hardware, the transmission was all set up with a good torque converter and a big fluid cooler, and the car had some fantastic traction bars. It was ready for more power. I decided to mothball the little 283 that had faithfully introduced me to drag racing for a more modern and powerful 350ci engine.

I apologize for the next set of pictures as they're all cell phone pictures of 35mm pictures, but it's all I have and you've been reading a lot... so you deserve at least some images.

Under the knife in the garage, new to me engine on the stand mocked up with headers, rear end in front of the car getting new brake lines, new oil pan for my goofy front end on the work bench.