Never ending Nova project

[paul james]

This will be a bit of an unsual project thread as the Nova in question has been rebuilt already. Unfortunately I didn't make a thread as I was going along as basically I never planned on doing quite so much in the first place! However since I intend to keep the car forever (or as long as I can at least) it will have more work done to maintain it and as funds allow new additions to improve it further, so it won't only be a thread about the past.

Heres the car in its current state:





So I will be going back in time with this thread to show how the car has progressed. Since I'm looking back I thought I might as well start from the very beginning...



The car that started my love of Novas and eventual fascination with modifying and fixing cars. Back in 1991 my Mum bought this car to replace a horribly unreliable Metro. It served well as a family car but I didn't really think too much of it, it was just a basic car. It wasn't until I started learning to drive that I began to really appreciate the car, as my mum kindly put up with teaching me to drive in it. Eventually I passed my test and my Mum gave it to me as my first car, at this point it was very rusty and looked shabby but I absolutley loved it. The Nova bug had bitten, I had the freedom a car gave and the basicness of a Nova really won me over. The lack of power steering, abs, the fact you felt the road through the car much more because of its simplicity was a good thing for an eager new driver and I think I might well have crashed a different car.

I had the car for about 6 months then if memory serves correctly the head gasket went and a rear spring went straight through the rusty platform. I was told it was uneconomical to repair, and at the time I didn't know anywhere near enough about cars to fix it myself. It was really sad to see that car go and I couldn't even face seeing it get scrapped!

I just had to get another Nova, and somehow on a £3 something an hour weekend job I bought my own as quickly as I could. I bought myself for the grand sum of £800 a 1.2i (not so) special edition Spin, which was the most reliable car I've ever had. It was a bit slower than the old carb 1.2 saloon but I loved it all the same. It would have been at this point I first started visiting this forum, or Novaload as I think it was called then. Typically it wasn't long before I wanted to modify it, but thankfully since the over the top bodykits and such popular at the time were out of my spending reach it was all tasteful. So the car got kitted out with GSi three spokes, an induction kit, stainless rear box and a carb exhaust section to de-cat it.





Those modifications did little to really improve the pace of the car, it did sound nice though. So after a few years of motoring the time came to upgrade, I did consider perhaps putting a 1.6 in it, but then this car came up for sale and I just had to have it:







Still have the text from the original for sale ad:

For sale
E-reg metallic steel grey Nova 1.3sr on twin weber 40 carbs
Rolling road tuned at 100 bhp
As quick as a GTE/GSI but cheaper to insure!
Spec;
Rare pair of original nova sport carbs with irmsher inlet manifold, ITG racing air filter
Full GSI spec inc interior, dash, electric windows etc
Koni adjustable suspension
Astra GSI front brakes with braided hoses
Head rebuilt and Kent cam fitted by S.B.D Motorsport
Full stainless steel Magnex exhaust
Cat 1 alarm and immobiliser
£1300
Selling on Astra sport wheels fitted with Goodyear Eagle F1 tyres or cheap set of 14" alloys for bit less if you wanna source your own set of alloys, i.e. bigger than the astra wheels as the arches have been rolled when they were replaced 18months ago.

Driving it back home put a big smile on my face, the noise of the twin 40's is addictive and the speed of the car was so much better than I was used to. Eleven years later and it still makes me smile everytime I drive it.

It was my daily driver and it made driving to and from work the best part of the working day. A bad day in work would be remedied by getting in and firing it up. Then one summer I did one of the best things I've ever done and took it to the Ring:









It was a fantastic experience, drove the car all the way there through France and Belgium. I had bought Gran Turismo 4 on the PS2 the day before leaving to practive the green hell and it paid off. I managed to remember the track pretty well and since its so full of corners I could get around quicker than a lot of faster expensive cars apart from Sabine in the BMW ring taxi who flew past me. The only problem was when a motorbike decided to cut me up on a corner and I went off the track to avoid hitting him. The Nova didn't appreciate coming to a sudden stop, cut out and wouldn't start. Thankfully it did come to life before the tow guy could reach the car (caught in the photo above) and I sped off quickly, scared of a hefty tow charge as I'd read scare stories of expensive fines before going there. The Nova did me proud, I'd recommend the Nurburgring to anyone.

Not much of a project thread so far, but thats all to come...

[House]

Decent work!! What's on the horizon as a first job in the new restoration??

[paul james]

Part of my reasoning for buying the SR was that it was a ready made car, I didn't have to do anything to it. This assumption proved to be very wrong! To be fair the car gave me no problems for several years, but eventually the first trial arrived. On a long journey collecting my sister from Uni, the top radiator hose blew, the AA taped it up but that didn't help much and I limped the car home constanty filling it up with water. Thus came the first major car fix I had to undertake, fixing a head gasket.



This seemed to go well and the car was back on the road for daily duties.

Since the car was kept on the street outside my house it was vunerable, and sadly somebody drove into the side of it scratching up and denting the rear arch. So it was time to clear out the garage and fix it. Unfortunately a combination of not taking enough photos, and losing what I did take from a hard drive crash means my progress at this point can't be shown.

So with the car in the garage I decided to give the the car a good look over, and the perfect car I had bought wasn't quite as perfect as I had thought. The rear arches that had been repaired by the previous owner looked fine from the outside (other than the slight crash damage on one side) but weren't done properly on the inside with rusty metal left in to spread. Adding to that the cars high mileage, the shell had covered nearly 200,000 miles at that point between me and its eleven! previous owners. So there was rust to be found everywhere I started looking, this was going to be a big project.

So I got myself another car as a daily driver and started investing in my own tools, most importantly an angle grinder and a mig welder, essential kit for a Nova owner it seems. It was pretty scary the first time I started chopping out rust with the grinder as theres no going back at that point. A sensible person would have scrapped the car as the rust was pretty bad, but I was determined to save it. I taught myself to weld by reading a book on it and practicing on some scrap metal. I had to weld up the front turrets, rear spring platforms, floor pan, boot floor, new metal into the rear arches, lots in the inner arches etc. Basically everything other than the roof and bonnet needed doing, and its a shame I don't have photos of all that.

Looking back now I wish I had a roll over spit to repair the car on as grinding and welding lying underneath a car on axle stands isn't the easiest or most comfortable way of doing it, but at the time I didn't know such things existed. So eventually after a lot of welding work the car was patched up and ready to paint. I'd always wanted a black car (all the cool cars from my childhood were black - KITT from Knight Rider, Mad Max interceptor, Batmobile), so I decided since I'd welded it all up myself why not paint it myself too. Since it was a total colour change I painted the inside too, under the carpets, under the bonnet etc. Doing this in my little garage wasn't ideal, and it could have gone better but as a first attempt at painting a car it worked out well I think.





I sprayed the inside first, then the outside and did the wings, tailgate, spoiler and bumpers seperately





The poor old scruffy GSi that had been my daily got trashed when some fool tried to steal it, so I ended up giving that away to another local Nova owner so it could live on in some way. So since the SR was finished it became my daily again.







It no longer looks much like an SR, as I removed the last of the vinyl on it and didn't fancy replacing it. With the MK2 rear end it wasn't exactly standard looking anyway, and I prefer the clean de-badged look. The side skirts were a rust trap so I didn't bother putting them back on, and I think the car looks better without them. During the respray I also smoothed and colour coded the handles, got rid of the rear wiper and properly delocked the doors.

I was happy with the car and at that point I guess I considered it done, but that was all to change again.
To be continued... (with more actual project photos this time)

[paul james]

Decent work!! What's on the horizon as a first job in the new restoration??

Thanks, I've still got to update the thread with all the stuff I've already done previously. I'll reply with future plans in more detail later, but essentially I want to make it lighter and use it for a few track days next year when the decent weather returns if I can.

[paul james]

I used the Nova for about a year from then I guess, but then it failed the dreaded mot test. Most of the problems were small, but it failed miserably on the emissions test. So back into the garage the car went to hide, and I got myself a Celica GT as a runaround car, which marks the last time the Nova was used for daily duties.



It turned out the head gasket had failed again, so off with the head.



The previous head gasket fix was just that, a straight swap of the failed gasket for a new one. I hadn't bothered getting the head skimmed as I'd read conflicing reports about the need for it, and at the time probably couldn't afford it anyway.



This time I had the head skimmed and replaced all the valve seals as one was damaged.

[paul james]

The Nova was running fine again, but I wasn't quite happy with it. Since I had another car to drive I made the decision to start tidying up the Nova a bit more. I had previously spread a whole large tin of waxoil underseal on the underneath of the car, the worst thing I've ever done to it. It really doesn't stop rust and since it doesn't dry out it makes working on the car a nightmare as you get covered in it. It took me countless hours to get all that gunk off the car, and I found more rust to deal with.



As I was properly looking over the car I got more unimpressed with how all the parts on it were rusty and tired looking. It seemed a shame that the car looked good from the outside, but once you looked under the bonnet or anywhere under the car it looked rough.



So I started stripping it down and began with the front suspension. It might not have been the standard equipment, but even these Konis had a hard life:



I was initially going to just sand down the rust and repaint them, but found one had poor movement and decided to just replace them both. This is when the project really started getting expensive, I haven't even dared try counting up what I've spent on it. Adding to the cost is when nearly every job requires a new tool, this occasion spring compressors. But I consider it money well spent, the cost of buying tools and doing it yourself is still cheaper than paying someone else to do it. I seperated all the parts from the struts which all needed a refurb or replacement too.



The Nova now looking very sorry for itself, I was slightly questioning should I really bother going further. The Nova pretty much stayed in this sad state for about 6 months as I was really busy in work over winter. But as soon as summer came I started spending all my spare time on it.

[paul james]

I then stripped down the back end, and started to realise just how much space a Nova takes up when its in bits!
The fuel tank wasn't in too bad shape, and surprisingly it was totally spotless inside, I'd asumed it would be full of dirt and rust as it was surely the original one from 1988.



The rear beam however was very rusty indeed. The slim layer of paint they get from the factory had for the most part long disappeared.



With the fuel filler neck off some hidden rust was discovered, which was a lot worse than this picture suggests once the area was cleaned up.



With the front suspension off the car I had a better view and access to more rust which needed fixing. A small rust spot showing through paint always ends up being a lot worse than it looks when you start attacking it and you end up with a pile of brown bits on the floor, quite disheartening! I removed the sound deadening from the firewall which weighed a lot more than I expected, wish I had weighed it now before binning it.



The back end was hiding more of the dreaded rusting metal, again it was a lot worse than the photo suggests:



The more rust I fixed the more I seemed to find, and it got to the point where I was so sick of seeing it that I chose to get rid of every last speck of it. I didn't want to see rust on any bit of the shell, the parts or the nuts and bolts holding them together.

[Southie]

Already liking this build just as I like old time nostalgia tbh, anything to do with some one who's always loved a Nova and has still got one after so long makes me smile somehow

[paul james]

My welding efforts might not always look very pretty, but they are strong, I could probably jack the car up from my repair sections




I don't always make things easy for myself, for example repraying an engine bay with the engine still in there! It worked out ok though, and I hand brush painted some areas which you can't see anyway.



Like a magpie I became obsessed with shiney things. So I tracked down various bling and replacements for rusty parts to make the engine look better. A stainless washer bottle, Bailey header tank, stainless bonnet stay, new backing plate for the wiper motor, new coil, new fuel pump, roose silicone hoses with stainless steel clamps and polished rocker cover and oil cap. I used stainless bolts, nuts and washers to attach everything that didn't need high tensile fixings.



I managed to break one of the ignition leads, so following my principle of replace with better I got some 'performace' leads. Probably not worth the cost, but by now I was getting carried away!

[paul james]

With the engine bay looking a whole lot better it was time to move onto everything else. The front hubs were far too rusty for my liking:




So Along with a lot of other parts to come I spent ages with wire wheel and brush attachements on a drill to get rid of all the rust. Bits of wire come off those attachments pretty easily and I ended up pulling quite a few of them out of myself. Thankfully not out of anywhere too delicate! I'd learned my lesson from past experience to be as careful as possible. I use goggles that fully fit the face rather than safety glasses with gaps that bits of metal can and will find their way through. When grinding the car previously I got a piece of metal stuck in my eye. It wasn't fun pulling that out with tweezers, even less fun was that the cut in my eyeball kept me awake for two nights!




The rear beam was a total mess of rust, this picture doesn't do it justice as I'd alreay spent ages getting it to this point:



The rubber bushes were a total pain to remove, only fire could coax them out of their homes.



Rusty in here too, I'm glad Vauxhall used thick metal for the drum backing plates as it meant I could rescue them instead of having to buy new ones.