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I continue to be impressed with your fabrication skills. Great job with the car.
Could you tell me the specifics of your radiator/fans setup? I'm running into the same clearance issues with my hotside piping. Just don't have much room. Thanks!
I've found real inconsistencies with "thickness" measurements on Summit, with prettymuch every fan being 2.1"+ thick. Some of the more expensive "slim" fans are even thicker than this one! The fans are reasonably loud, but once the hood is closed and I'm out on the road, even in traffic, I can hardly hear them. I idled in a bunch of traffic with ambient temperature being pretty hot and ECT never creeped above 200*F. Any movement whatsoever and it dropped quickly.
There is about 1/2" clearance between my [heat-protective taped] fan motor and the heat shield. I haven't experienced any fan issues or any plastic melting, so will see how long it lasts.
I ended up going back to the previous radiator I had, the 1.25"-thick-core S10 radiator, as with the 2.5" thick Griffin I bought to potentially replace that I simply didn't have the fore-aft room to have dual fans with that extra 1.25" thickness. **** is crazy tight!
Wow, that seems really thin for the radiator. I guess the fans make up for it. I'll definitely look into something similar. Ive got about 5.5" between my intercooler and the vertical run on my hotside piping. Looks like you have about the same amount of space. Thanks again for the great pics and info.
It is pretty thin.. just a single-row's thickness, so we'll see how it handles. I really don't have any room for a thicker rad unless I completely change the intercooler configuration and/or move it somewhere else in the engine bay.. these stupid Nova's have so little forward room!
In other news.. it finally happened! It was so fun to FINALLY line up next to Mark window-to-window after all these damn years haha..
It's been a long while since I checked in. So glad to see you have her on the road! Congrats. The car looks awesome. Sorry you had to go through hell and back a few times on this build. You seem to catch a lot of bad luck; hopefully none left for me when I finally get to back to it.
Do you plan to do any autocross, road course, or strip with it? Or just street cruising for now?
Haha yeah it's working well now. Just been driving it around, to work, groceries, late night fun etc. I may auto-x it but no road course yet since it doesn't have a sway bar anymore. I'll be waiting until winter to fabricate a new narrower 3-piece sway bar at the same time that I widen the front wheels and [likely] notch the subframe. And also remake my exhaust from turbo-back in 3.5" stainless to replace the restrictive 2.5" temporary setup I'm running now. I can now hit 16psi of boost whenever I want, but the car starts pulling less and less after 4500.. I've really started to notice how much the exhaust is choking it up. Oh well at least I can drive it!
So the girlfriend was asking whatever happened to "that internet post about your car" and I realized, I haven't posted on here in a while. I guess no news is good news.. just been driving it tons the summer/fall. The Nova's name is Roxie and she likes adventures.
She likes hanging out with her friends..
She has a crush on this blue stunner. I won't tell Mark though..
She likes to show off her big booty...
She's okay with being used to go get tools and other cool errands...
..but she prefers to run beer errands instead...
Sometimes she gets caught in the rain, but she doesn't seem to mind getting wet...
Other times she gets abused on long hill climbs for the reward of nice views...
But mainly she just likes being used after so many years of being garaged!
The stance on your Nova is right on, in my opinion. I love the way it looks with the tires tucked up in the front and rear fenders. Do you have any ground clearance issues? Can you do a measurement from the front and rear fender lips to the ground?
Thanks! It took me a long *** time to get the static stance where I had always envisioned it with no rubbing during bump/articulation or cheating with airbags.
The only time I ever scrape is cresting up and over the hill at the top end of the alley behind my parents' house, but going over speedbumps or raised manholes it's never an issue. Ill measure it but I believe I have 4-4.5" ground clearance across the floor.
I don't recall the fender lip height measurements off the top of my head so can measure those for you too, but I don't have full turning lock.. maybe only 3/4 of the factory turning radius. To help with this I could:
- more negative camber (don't want to since it's a street car)
- higher front rim offset (don't want to since the track width looks spot on IMO)
- raise the front of the car (haha.. NOPE)
- trim the inner lip of the fenders (have been meaning to do this all year but just too lazy)
I would say it'd be tight.. I mean these cars aren't particularly good at quickly reaching max turning radius from the steering box. Just numbers-wise, I would say that the amount of steering angle I currently have would be enough for a bigger domestic-car-oriented auto-x.. however I feel like it wouldn't be enough to properly navigate an import course meant for Miata's and S2000's. I'm curious to see how much more angle I can get out of it just by trimming the inner fender lips.
I don't think you're going to hit full lock on too many autocross courses and if you are, you're on such a slow turn you may as well throw the back end out with some throttle and carry on with the course.
However if you plan on doing drift competitions, you might want a little more turning angle.
Holy hell that's a shitload of steering angle! I'm not really planning on driving it like that tho...
I'm excited to finally be able to just "get in and turn the key" after so long.. every morning when I go into my building's underground parking I have the choice of Nova or truck to drive into work.. it's a hard life! Over this winter I'll be widening the front wheels and making my own design of 3-piece front swaybar, but comparatively that's all easy stuff. I still have to remake the exhaust in dual 3.5" stainless oval from the downpipe to the rear quarters.. but I'll save that for the months when the concrete garage floor isn't so cold.
06-20-2015, 01:25 PM
