Had been looking for a new project for awhile, thanks to a local guy in the Nova community he told me about this gem hiding away.





A few parts put back on and trailered home!



Overall not in bad shape at all



Original trunk is immaculate!

 

Pretty nasty mess this was, mouse poop all over



Car torn down and ready to be blasted





Car was taken down to metal and then powdercoated the entire car and frame

 

Found this taking apart the front clip, probably why it got parked originally.



Used Eastwood underhood black on the firewall





Front clip was powdercoated as well



Using stock clip with Church Boys racing front suspension.

 

Picked up an 04 5.3 that only had 40K miles



Took it apart, added a few upgrades. ARP head studs, ported oil pump, LS9 head gaskets, double roller, LS7 lifters, TSP 224R cam and LS6 valley tray.

 

Running stock bottom end, stock 317 heads with BTR .660 kit



Had to modify the LS1 steam lines to fit around the bumps in the LS6 tray



Going wrinkle black on the valve covers

 

That's it for pics for now, funny how a few pics can take years to make

Plan is a single turbo, waiting on some material to make some frame mounts to see if this is going to work without having to cut the shock towers.

 

wow what a find! looks like you are doing it up nice.

what are you gonna do for a rear suspension?

 

Nothing too fancy, just some lowering leaf springs. Working my way front to back so haven't gotten that far yet

 

A few pics to see the difference between the truck and Hooker manifolds. I have seen guys angle mill the manifold to give even more clearance, might be an option as well.

Truck



Hooker

 

Truck



Hooker

 

So I had bought a few different engine mount setups, one of them was the BRP setup. I test fit and those worked the best, I was able to get the manifolds to clear on both sides and clear the CBR rack.

Still have a few things to figure out, I want to see if I can redrill the motor mounts and move the engine forward a few inches and still need to decide which manifold to run on the driver side and if I want to run it forward or back and under. I think another truck manifold might work best instead of the hooker ones.

 

Great find. I'm glad to see guys building and fixing these first gen novas. Keep up the good work