1967 Nova SS Build Thread

[Blown73]

Hi All, long time lurker here. I thought I would share my project with everyone. It may take me a bit to get everyone up to speed, but it should be a cool build. Here goes:

Well, at long last, I have decided to start the build thread for my 67. I have always wanted a 1967 nova, so when the time came when I could actually afford to spend some money on a car, I started my search. I really didn't have a whole lot of requirements for the car, for the main reason that I enjoy the challenge of learning new things with cars.

First off, this isn't a professional build. I will show you the good bad and ugly of whatever I do. I am doing this thread for 2 reasons. 1. Track the build for myself and friends to follow. 2. For the fine folks of pro-touring.com where I have enjoyed learning from other builds on this website and I am hoping maybe I can help someone else with theirs. Knowing that, lets move on....

So, I am looking for cars. I find cars in all shapes. I figured I can spend 4k for the car. The search ensues on craigslist locally, and eBay. After about 6 months of being out bid, too late, or someone over-valuing their car, I found the car I was looking for. It was a 67 SS, no motor, trans, rust bucket. I knew it was the one for what I was going to do. No motor? Who cares? I want to go LS anyways. No trans? Same thing, 5 speed is where this is heading. Bodywork? Well, I did the body work on my 73, and that seemed to work out pretty well for me. I have never replaced full panels, and for some ungodly reason, I wanted to learn. So, heck, why not. I make a deal with the guy for the car to buy it for 3k. Not bad for an SS I suppose. It cost me 750 to ship the car from Ohio to California, putting me right there to my budget. This is what I picked up:

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I'm sure you are thinking, WTF is wrong with Jeff? Well, a lot, but still.

Heres some more:

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So, there is a start. The car came home on 9/17/2010.

More to come, but I am out of time for the moment!

[Blown73]

Here we go for round 2. This will be a fast forward to get us up to body panels. I have been busy at work and in life in general, so I have not been able to put the time in that I would like to, which is why I have delayed putting up the build thread.


First, we had to see what I got myself into. I started pulling everything that was rotted from the car. I enlisted the help of my neighbors son, AJ. He was very interested in cars (his Dad and Grandfather are also car nuts)




On a side note, I was also working on a rotisserie for the car. At this moment, I can't find one, so we will just fast forward to the disassembled car, built rotisserie, and car on rotisserie. Lets start cooking a car!



Up on the rotisserie, I started by taking some measurements that would be helpful in relating what I am putting back on to what I took off. From there, the first order of business was removing anything that wasn't needed.





As you can see, it is still pretty rough, but progress is progress.

After the measurements, I braced the inside of the car, with the hope that it would be square when all is said and done.



Then, start cutting!



That's it for the moment. I have 3 years to catch up on here, so it may take a few days to get us all caught up

[Blown73]

I will agree 100% that this car should be in a junkyard. But, I have a soft heart for lost causes.

Lets keep going for a little afternoon update.

Once I got all of the 1/4 panel parts off, I started looking into paint/rust removal. (there was a post long ago about it) I was leaning towards acid dipping, but was worried that there would be some residual acid would come through the paint (in the very distant future). So, I found a guy locally who would come out and soda blast the car. Much easier than transporting the car to the bay area (3+ hrs) to be dipped, and he was very reasonable.



One heck of a machine!



Lucy was pretty curious as to what was going on here.



Blasting away. Word of advice: the soda doesnt clean up as well as you would think.



Original writing from the factory...



he is inspecting his work!



lots of dust is created by this, but we contained it pretty well with a hose and sprinkler on the outside to keep complaints down from the neighbors.

From there, it is back to figuring out what I got myself into with this car....


Originally, I figured quarters, fenders, doors, etc. As this has evolved, I will have replaced every body panel on the car by the time it is complete. I hadn't anticipated replacing the rocker panels, but once the quarters were removed, I found more and more reasons to replace them. For example:






So hey, why not? I am this far into it and I am only doing this once on the car. I ordered up 2 rocker panels and started cutting out the spot welds. Let me tell you something though, there are 168 spot welds on one side. These hold the inner support to the rocker, as well as the rocker to the car. I should have bought stock in blair spot weld tools.

I will be coating all concealed spaces with POR 15, so, that is what you will be seeing on the car.

I also had to replace the lower portion of the outer wheel house. I had high hopes of making these pieces, but they were 50 bucks each, I figured that my time into it would have been far more than that, so I bought new outer wheel houses and cut them to fit.

From there, everything was coated in POR 15, and ready to be covered up.

I am uploading photos, so that may have to be the next post.

More to come...

[Blown73]

No interest in this thing yet, but I'll keep going anyways! Pictures of the wheel house fix as promised:

Before:


After


Rockers:





Once everything is cut out and ready for new panels, I started to do mock ups. I cannot count the amount of times that I have put the panels on and taken them off.

But, I am at a point where I am happy with what I have:



There was a long time where I did not work on the car "physically" but I was working on dialing in what goes under the car. I found that the further I got into the body work, the more I needed to figure out the suspension of the car so it can all be incorporated. I looked at probably every available front and rear suspension options for a 67 Nova, asking questions along the way to any vendor that would give me the time of day. I toured 2 shops, and ended up in Sacramento one day and stopped in at Chris Alston's Chassisworks.

If you are unfamiliar with Chris Alston's Chassisworks, you should look them up. I was talking with Mike in the sales department trying to figure out what combination was best for the front and rear of a 67 Nova. He looks at me with a puzzled look on his face, and says "if you are going that far, why not just put a full frame under it?" Mind=blown. I had thought of that, but didn't think that it all penciled out to make that work. I asked him to tell me more and ended up spending about 2 hours talking with him.

The parts that they produce are beautiful.

Fast forward through about 3 months to July of 2012. I stopped back in and this time caught up with Carl, who is just as knowledgeable as anyone when it comes to setting up a chassis. We sat down and put a budget together, (mostly him) and I left about 3 hours later this time. About 20 emails & phone calls later, I ordered the chassis in December. I picked it up in February. Talk about putting new life into my drive to get this car done!











That's it for now. More to come shortly!

[CruizinKev]

looks great so far! good work man! can't wait for more!

[rusty63ss]

Wow! I thought my car was a rust bucket!
That's a lot of good work going into saving that car!
X2 what CrusinKev said.

[77thor]

You are a brave soul.

I wish you the best of luck.

[Ron.in.SoCal]

I'm interested! Keep going

[Blown73]

Happy Friday all, thanks for the encouragement.

I have a small update, work keeps me pretty busy these days so my time in the shop is limited. I did have a chance to spray the rear end about 2 weeks ago, only to have the paint come out gritty. It is always one step forward, two back with this car, but I didn't expect something like this. The rear end looked like it had a textured coating on it, which is NOT what I wanted/expected.

Filters shouldn't look like this:



Pictures don't show the grain in the paint, but it was about as smooth as 80 grit sand paper.



ANYWAYS, how about some other goodies:

Waiting for the rear end to be ready to put under it




I think it will stop juuust fine!



Front end is complete, for now.



I started fitting up the passenger side quarter last weekend. I am getting closer to being happy with it, but there are a few minor tweaks that need to be done before it will be ready to welded.

[Motown 454]

It looks great. This is going to be one sweet ride! Nice work.

[Blown73]

Happy Monday!

I spent most of the weekend working on the body. I think I made some pretty good and positive progress.

I welded up the Passenger side quarter panel:



Then I got a little sidetracked on repairing a spot that has been bugging me for a while. There are things that I look at with the car that are more demotivating than anything, such as rusted out spots. I figured this was a good weekend to tackle it.

I need to get better about taking pictures on the before/after. But, bear with me..

The piece I cut out. Swiss cheese anyone?



The new piece:



Grinding away:



I need to get a die grinder with a carbide tip to finish that.

I had another one of those spots at the door on the passenger side. So, I fixed that too:



I put the closer on the front of the rocker panel. It took me a while to get that in there. I used a magnet, a cleco clamp, and a screw driver to push it close enough to weld.

Other shots from around the car:



The tail panel is tacked in until I can fit the trunk lid on. I think I can just weld it on and be done, in theory. In practice, the panels aren't perfect.

No more clamps on the passenger side quarter!



The deck filler panel fits in. I'm not particularly wild about the fitment, but I think i can make it pretty:



Anyways, that's it for now. I have a few more spots that I need to fix before I am ready to drop it on the chassis. I did come up with a new problem: I need rims. I think I am going to cut out some pieces of plywood for rims until I figure out what I want to do for rims/tires. More to come on that...

[Blown73]

Working away on the car still. I managed to get some more spots on the body welded up, which puts us slightly closer to being able to make some introductions between body and frame. The body doesn't have much of an update other than that.

The frame on the other hand, does!

I gave up on trying to paint the rear end myself. I took it to a powdercoating shop here in town. Now I am happy with the finish:



Finally installed it under the frame:



I also finally got the center section ordered up and built:



What I ended up with is a Detroit true-trac with 3.50 gears bolted to an aluminum strange case. It should hold up to just about anything I can throw at it.

I installed the center section last night:



I am pretty happy with it.

In all of this, I need to be able to put the frame on the ground and roll it around. I had a set of 14" rims that I had that came off my 73 when I bought it. Unfortunately, they did not fit over the brakes. Terrible problem to have, I know. So, my uncle does wood working in his spare time, so I asked if he would build me four 26" diameter wood rims. The 26" should be very close to the overall diameter of the future tires, so it would work out perfect. Well, my uncle is awesome, and this is what he sent up to me:




Well, I guess I really have no room to complain, they are pretty sweet.

Other news:

I bought a shrinker/stretcher with the hope that I can expand some fabrication skills. I have the dream of replacing around the windshield and back glass myself. We will find out soon enough if that will be a reality or not!

That's it for now!

[Blown73]

I put the brakes on the rear end, called a few friends over, and we set the chassis on the ground. It is really exciting for me because the next step with the frame is to put it under the car! I have some work left to do on the body before that happens, but in the next few months (let's be real about my time frame) I should be able to dial in the body and have it ready for the frame.




That's it for now! Have a great week!

[19,69camaro]

Nice job so far. That frame looks like a good foundation

[Blown73]

Some good progress over the long holiday weekend. I had been trying to get into the shop all week, but other issues came up and I had to focus my attention elsewhere! I made it into the shop on Sunday, and started bracing out the car as best I could. From there, I started lowering the body off of the rotisserie, and took it off. What a chore. Note to self, use bolts instead of welds next time!

Once it was removed from the rotisserie, which is a big step for me as it has been on there for 2 years, it was time to cut the floor out. My brother helped me with the task, and we started cutting it out with grinders.

Last night I cut the back half of the frame out. You wouldn't believe how much dirt came out of the frame rails. I bet there was 30 pounds of crud in the rails themselves.

Here are some pics for your use. I am ordering a digital camera for pictures from here on out. My phone is producing fuzzy photos, so, I apologize, but you get the gist, right?













From here, I am going to cut out the rest of the floorboard, which is the front frame rail mounts, then trim everything back using a grinder. Then I will start preparing the body structurally for the frame to attach. Defining center lines, hold lines, etc. so we can make sure the frame goes in straight!

Once it is ready, I will load the frame which is at my house, and take it to meet the body, and start fitting the two pieces together. I don't know about anyone else, but I am pretty excited for that!

On another note, I am done with the rotisserie, so I posted it on craigslist on Sunday night, just for S & G's to see if it would go. Sure enough, Monday morning I had a guy who wanted it! So, away went the rotisserie, which gets me more money for the car!

Any who, have a great week!

[novaboy009]

Wow. I thought my Nova was a rust bucket!!!!!!!!!!!

Did you think it was going to be this rusty when you ordered it off the internet? I know in PA we typically don't buy Ohio cars - they aren't inspected and seems like anything older is full of holes and not well maintained....... a little different for 50 year old classics, but man that one was eaten up. I'm surprised you didn't find anything in the southwest that was worth saving before this one at that price point.

[Blown73]

I didn't think it was going to be as bad as it was. I figured quarters would be all I had to do. But, I have never ventured this far into a car before, so I thought it would be fun to try it. I don't know if I would pull one from the mid west again without seeing it first. Although, with the amount of road grime and dirt and crud that I found in the hidden parts of the car, I am glad to take it this far apart. At least I will know that I am running a clean slate.

I am the first to say that this car belongs in a junk yard instead of my garage, but I just have a soft spot for projects like that.

[Carl @ Chassisworks]

Wow, Jeff, I had forgotten what a pile this thing was when you started. Haha! Maybe get Sierra Nevada to kick down some sponsor cash to get their name on it somewhere so you can afford all the welding rod?

Thanks for the kind words by the way. I love showing off the factory.

[BossaNova]

I like what you're doing. Carry on lad.

[CruizinKev]

oh wow good progress!!!