Proven Guilty

Hello everyone, I have been lurking the last year or so collecting data, reading X-Body build threads and just overall research about LS engine swaps of various types into different vehicles. My name is Chris and I am originally from Detroit, a former California transplant and now living in Phoenix Arizona.

Working through a gentle (mechanical/functional) muscle car restoration and turning into a daily driver is something I've been wanting to do since I could drive. This project car in particular I picked up a roller project and the Gen 3 X-Body platform has been a favorite of mine since Kindergarten. My dad used to turn low end cars out of our family garage for income when I was a wee lad. The appreciation for the Novas came from when he and my babysitter at the time (hippy guy named Bub) painted a junk yard special in the garage and gave me a ride in it before it was sold. From that day forward, the body lines, the mean looking grill and basic function of the light weight unibody cars like the Novas and Camaros have always had that look I've really enjoyed. We were a very blue collar family with both of my parents working at General Motors when we were growing up, so the "poor man's Camaro" appealed even more to me than the F-Body older brothers of this year range.

Fast forward to December 2015, I got the line on a very rust free, almost driver-worthy "straightness" 72 Nova a guy was finally ready to let go. This tip came from some out of state family we have up north in Nevada. It was a friend of my wife's Uncle who was a body and paint shop guy. I gave him a call after getting his telephone number (from my "Uncle in-law?"). The owner gave me the short history on it as it sat in his garage for 7 years without much love or changes to it. He originally picked it up as a project in 2008 for his wife and made a comment in passing about how he picked it up from "some guy at a car magazine". He told me how he began the basics of working some minor surface rust and fender damage (who knew the patina craze would hit so hard?) and worked the doors, cowl, deck lid and somehow lost the original hood. He lost interest in it when his wife confessed that she "really didn't like it" after turning down multiple (and honestly much better than mine) offers.

This car had no engine, no trans, but it seemed like the "hard stuff" was already done to me since there wasn't any real rust repair needing to be done other than the behind the rear tires. I grew up experiencing some pretty legit harsh winters in Michigan. Cars like this didn't seem to exist anymore back there, due to the salt and other road treatments. This thing felt like a unicorn after checking out the photos he sent me. In short, we agreed on a price, struck a deal (I gave him a cash deposit) and I happily purchased it from him not knowing its history. He was cool enough about it to work out a payment plan with me since I called him on my birthday (good timing I suppose). I wasn't expecting to find a car this good so quickly and was only just starting to stash some coin aside for it.

Later I came to learn that moving a car to Arizona from Nevada, especially one that had California plates, no engine and transmission and essential was dismantled and off the road for 25 years certainly had its challenges. During this time I was fighting with the MVD about level 1 inspections and the possibility of a salvage title since it was mid restoration, I kept in touch with the seller as he accidentally signed the lien-holder box of the title rather than the seller's box. He was really cool about working with me to get a replacement mailed out so I could register the car. I didn't want to sink any money into it without knowing 100% that it was in my name and MINE. In the end, it all worked out with no harm, no foul, clean and clear title in my name.

During the past year, I stumbled onto a YouTube show called "Roadkill" when conducting previously stated research about how to get this ugly pig back together. Seeing the backyard / shade tree methods of slapping things together really appealed to me from memories of helping out in the garage and tinkering with my own BMX bike projects as a kid. I was hooked and ended up watching every single episode last year while I was home sick with the flu for 4 days and couldn't get out of bed. It wasn't until this time I had discovered the previous owner of the car was David Freiburger, whom I became a fan of from watching the Roadkill shows. Watching Finnegan and the other YouTube channels the guys were a part of on the MotorTrend network became a big hobby as I was learning an incredible amount after so many years of not wrenching; that I caught an episode talking about the LM7 crate engines that Freiburger was presenting and in the video, they flashed a picture of my Nova as it was possibly going to be in a future episode.

Well, that is the backstory if anyone is interested and I will be using this thread as a build thread. Here is a quick picture of how the car was back when DF sold it in 2007/2008:




This is a before picture from the CarJunkiesTV era when it was sold. Check out that original paint patina! Too bad it was molested before I could buy it.





This is what the car looked like the day I brought it home from Las Vegas.