This 1972 Nova has seen better days, and better days are on the way again! The quarters were trashed, the wheel tubs were gone, and the trunk floor looked like swiss cheese. Here we have the car opened up and ready to go to be sandblasted...
Notice the light spots showing through the shadow in the trunk region...
Taking it apart to go to the blaster...
Not the best picture of the trunk floor, but you get the idea... Unfortunatly the floor was so bad that the frame rails were trashed as well...
Drivers front floor board had the typical rust, and moving up the toeboard as well...
Not much left after removing damaged panels and rear frame rails. This will make for a good time to install the Detroit Speed & Engineering mini-tub kit. This will give us 2.5 additional inches of tire to play with.
Just a side profile of the damage...
The start of putting this Nova back together... Once we established where the tailpan is going to be, we can start prepping to put the donor frame rails and trunk floor in...
Starting to fit the Detroit Speed and Engineering Mini tubs into the Nova. The frame rails and floor require some modification to allow the additional 2.5" of tire that will fill these new tubs...
You can see here that we have installed the donor floor and frame rails, and have made the clearance for the mini tubs...
This is what the new tubs look like with a quarter panel installed...
With the donor rear frame rails installed, you can see here that one of the new wheel tubs is in and a bit of patching on the trunk floor...
Full quarter installed...
Inner wheel well istalled, prepping for the quarter panel...
Here the quarters and wheel wells are all installed, and having the car on our Autotwirler makes grinding welds on the underside a breeze!
A few weak spots on the rocker being replaced with some solid metal...
After the underside is painted and the car is primed, its starting to look like a 1972 Nova again... Subframe installed...
Wilwood 4 piston calipers, 12" slotted and drilled rotors, QA1 coilovers, Heidts tubular A-arms, and Detroit Speed and Engineering swaybar should make this Nova handle like its on rails and stop on a dime...
If you look really close you will see a set of Detroit Speed and Engineering's subframe connectors installed... They fit through the floor so they are not easily noticed, but we know that they are gonna work great!
Out back we have installed a Moser 12 bolt, with 3.55 gears and a true-trac posi and the c-clip eliminator kit... All sitting on the 3" Detroit Speed and Engineering lowered leaf springs...
Notice the light spots showing through the shadow in the trunk region...
Taking it apart to go to the blaster...
Not the best picture of the trunk floor, but you get the idea... Unfortunatly the floor was so bad that the frame rails were trashed as well...
Drivers front floor board had the typical rust, and moving up the toeboard as well...
Just a side profile of the damage...
The start of putting this Nova back together... Once we established where the tailpan is going to be, we can start prepping to put the donor frame rails and trunk floor in...
Starting to fit the Detroit Speed and Engineering Mini tubs into the Nova. The frame rails and floor require some modification to allow the additional 2.5" of tire that will fill these new tubs...
You can see here that we have installed the donor floor and frame rails, and have made the clearance for the mini tubs...
This is what the new tubs look like with a quarter panel installed...
