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Greetings everyone, I have a 72 Nova undergoing an LS swap, I thought I'd share some progress and get a build thread started. The roller shell was found on Craigslist and was in pretty good shape other than some roof damage, no rust. I pulled a 4.8l and 4L60E from a Yukon with around 150k on it, and have performed a top end rebuild and added a BTR STG2 truck cam, springs, trunion package. The engine/trans, driveshaft, and gas tank has been test fit at this point, I'll continue to update as the project progresses.
Lots of action since my last update here! The ECU was mounted under the dash, wiring harness pulled through. The electrical box is roughed in and all fuses and relays tested. The Nova should go to a nearby frame and body shop to have it's roof skin replaced and a few other spots smoothed out.
More progress on the Nova, the car came back from the shop with it's roof skin replaced. We welded in some bucket seat mounts and tabs for mounting a floor shifter. Craigslist ProCar buckets and B&M shifter installed and adjusted. Installed Morris Classic 3 point seat belts, modified and mounted the stock truck DBW pedal. More parts ordered and arriving.. interior insulation, headliner, carpet. Primer and single stage paint should arrive soon, I'll be diving into a full repray for the first time!!
Alright bro, lots of questions coming your way as you are installing the same block/tranny as i am into the same nova i am!
1. What engine mounts did you use?
2. What headers?
3. What trans cross member?
4. Any mods to amy of the above questions necessary?
It's been a long time since I've updated, so here we go.. We sanded, bondo'd, hammered, and primed the Nova this summer. The primer went on well from our cheap equipment, and I proceeded to sand it smooth. I painted the door jambs, inner trunk and dash with Restoration Shop Viper Blue Pearl with the small gun from the Harbor Freight 2 gun set. After fixing some runs on the dash, it was looking pretty good.
I then proceeded to a lay down a less than mediocre paint job on the car. We used a single stage paint thinking I could just buff it down to a nice gloss. Only to find that it isn't really possible with a metallic paint. So I sanded the car down again and prepared to do a 2 stage base/clear paint job.
We finished sanding the car down again, taped it all up and shot a few coats of base. The base went down nice and easy, so we kept going and applied a few layers of clearcoat. Things were looking good, so we backed it out of our makeshift booth to take a good look(mistake)! I nitpicked a few spots, but was pretty pleased with the outcome.
I started putting the car back together, anticipating some wetsanding of the clearcoat so I installed the headliner and front/rear glass to make the car water tight. I started wetsanding on the driver side fender and within 15 minutes instead of having a nice smooth surface to polish, I saw hundreds (thousands?) of tiny flecks stuck in the surface of the clearcoat. We determined that our paintjob was compromised by tiny bubbles trapped in the clear and was not going to be saved by sanding and polishing..
I cruised Craigslist and found a pro doing paint complete sidejobs for under $1k so we decided to close our amateur paint shop and have it painted.
Back from paint! I was pleased with the paintjob and pushed to get the car complete before winter arrived. Front coilovers, tubular control arms, power front disc brake kit, new wheels and tires were slapped on soon after returning from paint. I got most of the interior installed a week or so after paint and started driving it to work!
I added a bluetooth stereo, some speakers, a 10" sub in the trunk, and a set of sequential LED taillights. The car is basically complete, I have parked my Jetta and have been daily driving the Nova for a few months now. The engine computer hasn't been tuned for the cam yet, that should be coming soon. In anticipation, I decided to splurge on the cheap $65 SuperAuto Dorman knock off intake manifold, and replace the unknown mileage junkyard sparkplugs and maybe a few other tuneup parts. I've started a shavejob on the unneeded mounting points on top of the intake and started smoothing the inside runners out, but it isn't quite ready to install yet. Overall, I'm very pleased with this setup. We took a 100 mile cruise to check the highway fuel mileage and I'm right at 26mpg at 80mph. Not too bad. The cammed 4.8 has a sweet lopey sound and plenty of power. I'll decide what I'm doing for posi and possibly change the 3.08 gear for something no bigger than a 3.42 and get the intake manifold on before heading to a tuning shop.
That turned out really nice, I like it! You found out the hard way, that paint requires a lot of practice, but in the end you at least know what goes into a paint job, so you know why they can cost so much. Drive it and enjoy it, you earned it.
This was my first LS swap. I sent my complete harness and computer to enginewiring on ebay. He did a quick cleanup of the stock harness eliminating unused systems, deleted VATS, and did a mild performance tune setting. The car runs good, but I know there are odd spots in the tune, and lost power and efficiency running it the way I am. I have reached out to a few local tuners, but haven't decided if I want to pay them over and over when/if I make changes or bite the bullet now and purchase an HP tuners setup and start playing around.
The computer is mounted behind the glovebox, on a piece of aluminum as a mount. The cardboard insert is removed right now, I hope to make a small wallet depth box to replace it soon, but the Neon center console makes that not as urgent.
10-06-2018, 01:24 PM
JC72NOVA 4.8LS swap 
