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Nova Sprint C Rebuild
So for those who don?t know the History of my nova, I?ve owned it for 22 years, it?s been multiple rebuilds over the years. The last rebuild was around 13 years ago, these pictures are from a Total Vauxhall shoot shortly after the rebuild. The car started life as a Merit+.
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After it was rebuilt I suffered a number of paint issues, then 2 years ago I discovered a crack in the front crossmember, I planned to replace it and get it straight back on the road. One thing led to another and 2 years later I?m getting ready to put the car back together.
I?m going to try and update this thread with the work completed over the last 2 years and then document the rebuild.
Updates to follow.
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I’m looking forward to this.
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Nova Sprint C Rebuild
15th March 2023 i dig the Nova out for the summer, whilst driving it back from storage I noticed a knocking noise from the front end.
Got the car jacked up to find a cracked front spring, whilst having a look underneath I also found the front crossmember was cracked. Strange because where it was cracked, there was no rust. My thoughts are that it was caused by having rose jointed tie bars, over time they have caused metal fatigue.
So I set about replacing the front panel. Plan was to replace it, paint it myself and get it back on the road for the summer.
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Turns out there was a lot more rust than I expected.
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I don?t have a garage at my house, so this was all being done on my drive, not ideal as having to drag all the tools out each time I want to do an hour here and there on it.
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The new front panel was not great, it came a one whole panel but all the sections where spot welded out of alignment, so decided to assemble it in pieces.
Got the crossmember in position and check all the measurements until I was happy it was correct.
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Because of the Irmscher body kit, the front panel needs to be cut back quite a bit, so that was next up.
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I?d noticed that there was some cracking in the paint where the seems in the engine bay had been smoother. So though I?d better investigate whilst the engine was out.
Things were starting to grow arms and legs!
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So I had some work to do to repair these areas.
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July 16th 2023, by this point I realised this was not going to be a quick repair and working out in the open on my drive was not working. So I decided to invest in a temporary Clarke garage.
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Managed to pick up a site box to store my tools.
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Decided I wanted to remove the Intercooler cut out from the front bumper, so bought a new rad and intercooler set up, this sits nicely behind the bumper. Fit is pretty good but needed a lot of fettling. I don?t think the kit is designed to fit with a F28 Mount.
Managed to get it to work and happy with the fitment.
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Knocked up a work bench, the temporary garage becoming more permanent??
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Nova Sprint C Rebuild
At this point I?d decided the whole shell was was going to be painted, so I decided to investigate what was causing the blistered in the paint. The layers of paint peeled away with a Stanley blade.
The blistered were full of a solvent. I knew at this point it would need blasting back to bare metal and the fibre glass taken back to the gel coat.
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