When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
His is just so minty. Years and YEARS ago I thought a 69 Camaro had the best lines ever, and then they blew up in popularity and all have 19-20" wheels on them and billet inetriors. And now I look at that split bumper 2nd gen style and think: "wow.. there isn't a single angle or proportion or muscle line that is bad about that design".
I won't lie, a Nova isn't a terribly pretty car.. but I've put so much work into this damn thing, I just can't help but like it when I look back at it and its uniquely low ride height.
I won't lie, a Nova isn't a terribly pretty car.. but I've put so much work into this damn thing, I just can't help but like it when I look back at it and its uniquely low ride height.
A buddy had a Nova like yours in high school, while it was his dream car, I only liked the front end . The back half of the car (from the back of the seats rearwards) always looked weird to me. They have grown on me though. I actually really like them with vinyl tops though. Bandits swap looks badass. Prolly the only muscle car that I prefer with a vinyl top.
Whats next on your ride> I haven't seen to much here as of late.
I actually like the rear half of a Nova waaaay more than the front. The muscle line from the top of the door extending back and humping over the rear quarter looks cool, I think.
Andrew is being a huge help and highlighting "areas for improvement" in my tune. The part throttle N/A are of my target AFR was off, and although my car idled quite well, he's suggesting I revamp my IAC parameters to make the Holley ECU control the idle better (or period.. haha).
After having probably 4hrs of seat time in the car between Sunday and Tuesday, the softer rear springs definitely evened out the ride quality. I still need to stiffen the front up to raise it 1/4" to 3/8" to get rid of rubbing, but overall the driving situation is quite good. The shift **** is EXACTLY where I want it, and the modified springs in the shifter and reverse lockout solenoid feel great.
So far I need to (in order of importance):
- dial in the tune
- measure and dial in front alignment, specifically toe
- stiffen/raise front end
- rebuild steering column to take out slop in the tilt mechanism
- FABRICATE FRONT SWAYBAR (now that my focus isn't on extreme stiffness of rear springs, front can be paid more attention)
- new/tuned steering box to eliminate some slop and bring some more road feel back into the equation
- new coilovers with more adjustability all round (very long term project, but I want to hack up my subframe to accept a more conventional-length coilover)
Loved reading the update and hearing how things are going. Great you have folks like Andrew advising on the tune as you build the capability/experience/skillset. Some day I need to get into that side of things but my priorities are a little different. Top of my list these days is to drive and keep the car drivable, even if it means living with a lot of things as-is.
Interesting to see different opinions/preference on how these cars look. I have grown to love and appreciate all kinds of different cars and body styles across decades. All the common Chevy muscle 60s-70s models have been built so many times so many different ways that I find myself attracted to the oddball models that nobody has played with yet, just for the uniqueness factor. The Nova though was my first love. For me it's the whole package, front side and rear that I love, but the emotions run highest when I get inside and look out over that long wide hood. I remember the first time I got into my car, before it was my car, before I could even drive, and thinking how awesome it is to frame the driving view with the Nova's fenders and hood lines rolling out in front of me. It left an impression that I've never quite shaken twenty years on. I don't know if any other car would elicit the nostalgia.
Anyway I think your upcoming priorities look good except you have got to put driving on that list - driving any time you can. I challenge you to out-mileage me this year. Snap a current photo of your odometer and I'll do the same. Maybe we can get a few folks in on the challenge?
Originally Posted by Jimbo1367
A buddy had a Nova like yours in high school, while it was his dream car, I only liked the front end . The back half of the car (from the back of the seats rearwards) always looked weird to me. They have grown on me though. I actually really like them with vinyl tops though. Bandits swap looks badass. Prolly the only muscle car that I prefer with a vinyl top..
Thanks, I think?
Last edited by -TheBandit-; 05-01-2019 at 04:15 PM.
Reason: typos
Everything in my list will be concurrent with driving it.. I won't be doing any tweaks to the car during the summer that I can't do in a weekend afternoon and have the car driveable afterwards. Don't worry, I'll be driving it lots! Next winter, however.......
That said, I should get the speedo working so the odometer can start being useful....
I challenge you to out-mileage me this year. Snap a current photo of your odometer and I'll do the same. Maybe we can get a few folks in on the challenge?
I'm in. But I think you need a handicap - this guy's got snow, and I've got 120°F heat to deal with.
I only kid about the car my dude - yours is an incredible machine, and sits perfectly. I also used to think the first-gen was the bee's knees, but the 2nd gen have really grown on me. That said, I don't know what I'd take if I had an asphalt island and only one car to choose; probably the Nova, for sentimentality.
Any one who thinks the '68 to '72 Nova is any bit of ugly needs his head overhauled! To me it is the quintessential late 60's-early70's styled automobile, and I mean that in the best way. Great lines, especially for what was seen as strictly an economy car. I would love me one with an LS3/4L80E under it!
....Great you have folks like Andrew advising on the tune as you build the capability/experience/skillset. ....
..... I challenge you to out-mileage me this year. Snap a current photo of your odometer and I'll do the same. Maybe we can get a few folks in on the challenge?
....
Clint,
First, thank you for the compliment!
Second, I wouldn't mind getting in on that Pepsi challenge!
Fair enough, but weather should be getting nice in Vancouver in the next couple months.
Weather is getting real nice real quick! This weekend I went boating in the ocean just off of one of the many small islands nearby. Went for a dip in the ocean and then cruised around at 45-50 km/hr with wet hair and the air was waaaaarm! Finished it off with a bonfire until 4am.. total t-shirt weather already.. and that's only low 20's Celsius. We usually get up to high-20's or low-30's Celsius for June - September
Originally Posted by -TheBandit-
Good luck! Just another item to chip away at when you aren't busy driving the wheels off.
I had some incorrect injector latency data for my FIC1000 injectors, and it was causing the ECU to load the fuel table up with quite a bit more fuel than normal since it thought the injectors were supposed to stay open for longer than they actually could, and thus was compensating with a higher lb/hr to achieve the target AFR across the MAP/RPM range. Big thanks to Andrew for seeing these couple fuel things when he was browsing my tune for my no-VSS issue.
I drove the car around with corrected injector data, and some corrected IAC settings, and have been building a good part throttle tune (1500-3000rpm, ~30kPa to ~100kPa). This car feels like it has such a momentum of boost building like the hand of a giant, strongly ushering you down the road.. and that's with only having dipped into 2-3psi of boost during "driveability tuning" test runs. Can't wait to see how it goes.
I also found out the hard way that the Holley Hydramats will in fact suck a tank dry without loss of fuel pressure or starvation or any other warning signs... luckily the car dies just as I was parking to go for lunch, right after a "driveability-tuning cruise".. and could walk to a store across the parking lot to buy a Jerry can, then walk a block away to get 20L of gas... whoops!
A completely unrelated update relative to tuning, but since I was driving the car around a bunch working on part throttle and beginning of boost fuel map, I thought: why not get some scientific footage as well?
I also tried taking some whoooshy videos but the wind noise was too much to record properly.
See my answers below to your very detailed and specific points:
Originally Posted by hookemdevils22
I assume you cut each piece of string to an exact length, and embedded each an exact amount and angle into the tape? --> +/- 0.5" difference in length
They are also uniformly placed on the hood at precise intervals, yes? --> yessss
I see some tape not fully adhered to the hood. Doubtless this affected the data --> every little bit counts
How did you account for atmospheric changes such as temperature, relative humidity, and barometric pressure? --> relatively same elevation and humidity on the test road I briefly drove
Do you have a way to calculate variations based on hood and fender surface temperature? --> NO
I see you also have a fender kiss on the driver's door; I hate it when you miscalculate the alignment when putting them back on --> the panel alignment on this car is NOT good
What is the surface roughness of the hood stripes vs. paint? --> maybe equivalent of 1500 grit sand paper? Not terribly good
Are you using a high-speed camera and computer to measure the amplitude and frequency of the string ends? --> nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
What is your current odometer reading, as well as miles (km) driven since May 1? --> odometer is currently reading "broken"
A little update here. I've had the car stored in a garage for a month and a bit but took it back out for about a week of driving.
A while ago I noticed that there was more oil misting around the catch can breather than there was with the previous single turbo setup, so decided I had to investigate the valve cover baffle situation.
Well looks like I did a pretty hackish job when I first drilled and welded these valve covers for AN bungs back in.. 2011? I guess the offset rocker of the LS9 rectangular port head moved the oil spray over just enough to be shooting it directly up the breather port, and before the 317 cathedral port head didn't spray it in that direction so it wasn't a problem.
Bad Joe! Hack job! Tsk tsk.
I didn't want to get too complicated with this fix, or weld it.. so I made a 1.5mm thick splash plate and riveted it on in a handful of places. It isn't going anywhere....
I then attended my first Cars & Coffee meet ever.. was kinda fun. Was neat ripping up a local mountain at 8am when really no one else was around but fun cars.
This is my good buddy's 911 that he fully restored... he has a problem just like me. He restored it to full period-correct trans-am specs, including sourcing matching 5 rims that are date-coded for the right production cycle that would have fed the supply for the production date of the chassis. NOS period-correct bored & stroked official Porsche race engine that he built up from parts (I think he said it was like $50k CDN just in parts), and every bolt on the car isn't just period correct but date-code-stamped for the right production cycle for his car.. absolutely bonkers crazy Porsche dudes!
And this is still a daily driver.. had to stop to get a card and some beer for Father's Day!
My completely excessive but totally necessary girls....
I'm on a work trip in Taiwan right now, which has given me plenty of time to look over Holley data logs and look at various parameters to get a grasp of what my new setup has been doing.
A curious thing I noticed was that my gigantic custom Garrett intercooler seems to only have 2.2psi (15kPa) pressure drop across it, and look how it cools that charge air!
The crosshairs are highlighting the moment of peak boost for this log, which is 9.4psi or 165MPa. It's overrun the target boost of 8psi, but it's also a quick spike so I don't think the boost control is nearly fine-tuned yet.
Dark green = pre-intercooler IAT
Purple = MAT, aka IAT measured right before the throttlebody
It's neat to see how the pre-IC IAT lags behind RPM a bit but spikes accordingly, and then the pre-TB IAT stays steadily low, and drops with speed (aka RPM). This log was from May so ambient was probably low to mid 60's Farenheit... neat to see that IAT going into the throttlebody is damn near ambient, and is not affected at all by the big spike in post-compressor IAT measured (dark green). There's almost a 40 degree delta on the IAT before & after the intercooler.. and the air exiting the turbo (103*F) wasn't even that hot to being with.
This tells me the intercooler is prettymuch doing as good a job as it possibly can... this is making me want to try blocking off part of the intercooler and seeing the affect. What I'd be curious is to block off the area of the oil cooler I originally wanted to run in front of the intercooler. I wonder if blocking that sectional area off would be a near approximation to having the airflow resistance of the oil cooler compounded by the slower air exiting the oil cooler also being warm.
How much more do you plan to crank up the boost? At some point you'll crank up the IATs enough that you might, maybe, start seeing the limits of your intercooler. It's really hard to say what the effect will be of adding an oil cooler, though. I would think you'd want it behind the intercooler rather than in front of it, but I am no expert on these matters. I say add what you think you need and live with the results because controlling oil temp is probably more important than controlling IAT from a reliability perspective.
It's so hard to read log traces like that without a grid of some kind and it doesn't help that there are 6 completely different scales. I can't tell what the throttle input was on this log - I assume it isn't one big WOT pull since it appears to have a few steps in it. I do love data though - keep it coming.
Cool to see your driving adventures now. Cars & coffee and car shows are always a mixed bag for me. It's fun to meet people and see other cars, but I get anxious just standing around my car instead of driving or wrenching. It's a good excuse to get out in the car early though and get some time in behind the wheel. I wish you would hit the track or autox - I really want to get your perspective on it and see how your priorities land after a few trips out. Even if you just take the BMW!
Clint I agree about the temp differential vs sustained boost, so far I've driven it decently hard and hit 8-9psi a bunch, enough to get the engine oil consistently climbing to 250-260*F, and it cruises around town at 230-240*F once everything is up to temp... both are temperatures I'd like to see lower. So far with the new setup I haven't seen the coolant temp go above ~210*F, and with almost any vehicle movement it quickly drops back down to 190-200*F depending on speed and load.
When digging around my pictures I finally got around to curating the ~14years of pictures I've accumulated... about 19.5Gb and 9,500 pics.
Specifically with the twin turbo build I took about 8Gb & 3,500 pics.... and I spent the time to organize them in an intuitive folder structure. So a question to you guys is: For a couple bucks, does anyone want me to load all the raw pics onto a flash drive and mail them to you?Figure it might be helpful for someone to see the raw pics of all the work I did, what I mocked up, and what did and didn't work.
Love it! Keep up the logs and sharing. I would like to see the IC recovery time when heat soaked and how the timing changes.
In my experience, 10 deg of IAT is about 1 deg of timing retard. The boost being the same timing is what makes power and gives it street manners. Also, how many temp sensor do you have on this thing ?
Love it! Keep up the logs and sharing. I would like to see the IC recovery time when heat soaked and how the timing changes.
In my experience, 10 deg of IAT is about 1 deg of timing retard. The boost being the same timing is what makes power and gives it street manners. Also, how many temp sensor do you have on this thing ?
I'll definitely keep the updates coming. It's been slow recently.. been out of town so haven't driven it since June 15... hopefully going to swap to stiffer front coil springs this weekend and get it out in the wild again.
For temp I have 2 X coolant sensors (both electric, one for Holley and one for dash gauge), a pre-intercooler IAT sensor (at compressor outlet of passenger side turbo) and a pre-throttlebody IAT sensor right at the intercooler top outlet.
04-30-2019, 01:43 PM
