Joff's Nova Turbo Project

Right all,

I have used the bit of spare time over the this festive period to sort out, collate and put a bit of a story together of how
I am getting on with my Nova. I have been off the show scene for a while, really down to having no show car as
in February 2003 I decided that it was time to pull the trusty Nova off the road as it really needed some TLC after
13 years of use abuse and 4 different engines (1.3, 1.6, 2.0 16v and a C20LET). It hasn't helped that my wife
gave birth to our son in September 2003 and this summer I have had to refurbish my second house I rent out when my
previous tenants trashed the place prior to their eviction.

Anyway, to jog your memory, my nova looked something like this just prior to the rebuild - pic was taken
in September 2002 at Well Lane Turbo where it made 213bhp on the day - I was quite happy with that as
it was basically standard bar a K&N filter:
http://www.elsamak.karoo.net/WIPStart.jpg

Well then, the story begins with the engine being pulled out:
http://www.elsamak.karoo.net/WIP1.jpg
and I started stripping all the years of crud and underseal off the front end :
http://www.elsamak.karoo.net/WIP2.jpg

On closer inspection of the front cross member it was clear that the tin worm had taken a chunk out of the offside
and a large strengthening plate was require - I have also taken the opportunity to put on a proper strengthening
kit. The plate around the tie bar holes is basically a U shape that goes around both top and bottom :-
http://www.elsamak.karoo.net/WIP3.jpg

Once I had got the cross member sorted out it was time to concentrate on the underside and floor pan, Having now stripped
the shell of all the doors, glass, wiring and suspension it was quite light, so with the aide of a few tyres and a large post,
1 person (me!) could lift the shell on one side without any problems :

http://www.elsamak.karoo.net/WIP4.jpg

Moving along the floor pan from front to rear I have welded up all the drainage holes as these seem to be attracting rust
? I had also noticed some strange bulges in the seams in the rear arches and was greeted by quite large rust areas which
were plated accordingly. I also seam welded the area around where the shock absorber and rear strut brace will be
mounted for extra strength. As I progressed the work was sealed with 3 coats of black hammerite just to make sure!
The rear outer skins of the arches are rotten from the inside out so when the shell gets to the bodyshop these will be cut
out and repair panels professionally welded in. The rear suspension pickup points also got a strengthening plate welded
on as per the group A/N spec

http://www.elsamak.karoo.net/WIP5.jpg

After lifting the carpet under the rear seats some of the floor came with it! It turned out that one of the holes for the vent
pipe from the petrol tank had been letting years of crud & salt splash up onto the underside of the floor and rotted from
the underside up ? again plated and sealed and sprayed over with primer. The general crud on the floor would be removed
at a later date.

http://www.elsamak.karoo.net/WIP6.jpg

Thats it for tonight, more to follow tomorrow! Thoughts and comments appreciated

Joff

looking good mate i remeber you telling us you had a lot of work to do when i bought my interior of you last year .

so how far have you got then ?

carl

looks like you've put the effort in mate well done nice car

Jesus, I remember that First pik... i was there with Fenix afink in his Beaslty 1.2 Black Saloon :D

Look's like thats gona be some Project for ya fella. . . Keep up the good work man

Once it's Finished you will be :lol:

Hello Joff - not spoken for ages!!

I was wondering if you were still plodding on with the rebuild and it seems you haven't lost interest in it!!

Get some more of those pics up!!

Next job was to sort out the inner wings in the engine bay. This required stripping a couple of layers of hammerite to get
to the original bodywork ? Nitromors to the rescue! I then started smoothing the inner wings where the joint
between the upper and lower sections had been seam welded. The whole lot was then sprayed in primer to see if there
were any blemishes. Whilst I was there I started smoothing off the bulkhead panel infront of the battery tray &
interior blower fan. I had to weld up the hole that was cut for the 2.0 16v wiring loom as the C20LET loom goes round
the suspension turret. My clutch cable is slightly modified and hence a new strengthening plate in this area on the
bulkhead was required.

http://www.elsamak.karoo.net/WIP7.jpg

The other inner wing was also smoothed and on both sides new suspension turret strengthening plates were
welded in. Also you can see where the front chassis legs have been seam welded to the bulkhead. This was done both
on the inner wing side and under the wheel arches for double strength.


http://www.elsamak.karoo.net/WIP8.jpg

And heres a pic of the full bare shell sitting in my garage ? the front valance you will note has a slight kink
in it (argument with a small tree a couple of winters ago!), however this area was where my attention was
soon to be focused :

http://www.elsamak.karoo.net/WIP9.jpg

On wondering around the car I noticed where the wiring loom enters the tailgate a blemish which turned out to be
a large rust hole!!! Anyway with a quick grind, plate and skim it was sorted :

http://www.elsamak.karoo.net/WIP10.jpg

Next job, back to the front end, I trial fitted the panels as I needed to see how they fitted and also where I would
need to cut the front end because ?.

http://www.elsamak.karoo.net/WIP11.jpg

?.. I needed to fit in my new intercooler that I had Radtech make up for me to the right dimensions to fit in
the front bumper aperture :

http://www.elsamak.karoo.net/WIP12.jpg

This job looked quite easy to begin with but after looking and measuring and due to the fact that Nova front ends are
pointed to a V shape the front panel had to be ?trimmed? back slightly!!! In fact quite a lot! ? It was good to see
on the inside of the cross member very little rust so this area got hammerited before it was welded up .

http://www.elsamak.karoo.net/WIP13.jpg

Trial fitting of the intercooler ? didn?t realise it would be quite so big but it will keep the charge temps down!!!

http://www.elsamak.karoo.net/WIP14.jpg

With everything now fitting it was time to weld in some new plates and a 40mm box section right across the
front for extra strength .Again eveything was primered.

http://www.elsamak.karoo.net/WIP15.jpg

Next job to trial fit everything again ? on the whole the front bumper fits round the intercooler quite well ? still needs
a coupe of tweaks but will do for now!

http://www.elsamak.karoo.net/WIP16.jpg

More to follow soon!

Joff

Looks well, some nice pics there. Big respect for undertaking all the work yourself, mine would be in a smilar state if our garage was full of tables, chairs and other household cast-off's :roll:

love it mate, got a bit worried when i saw the pic of the front pannel that you had cut away, but then you said about putting box section in there,

seing pics like these make me want to get the engine out of mine and really spend some time on the bay, (and fit an let lol)

Wow!!! I've just waited 40mins for this page to download, but its safe to say it was defo worth the wait! Thats going to be well sweet when finished mate! Love the Intercooler filling the whole of that Kingdom bumper :D What are the plans with the rest of the car? is it being stripped out? or are you keeping the interior? I notice a nice cool lurved bonnet in one of the pics.... is this replacing your other one with the big vent?

Loving the pics, keep um coming.

Well done.

Neil

8) thats lookin mint. nice to see it all coming together mate.

another winter minter

good work fella keep it up, nice to see someone doing all there own work aswell

Just to answer a few questions ?.. I was a bit concerned about the strength of the cross member so I
decided to add the box section which is seam welded from one chassis leg to the other and stitched to the
cross member across its whole length.

The bonnet in the background is a Cool Louvres one ?.. in fact it?s the second one I have had made up,
the first arrived bent so collected the replacement in person from the Cool Louvres workshop near Winchester
earlier this year. I have had some reverse vents pressed into the bonnet which will pull air in above the air filter.
I am still keeping the GTI-R scoop as this is the only one I have seen which is an exact replica of the Nissan one.

Anyway on with the mission ??. Next job was to sort out the floor pan of all the crud ?. Nitromors was great
in peeling all the muck away. All the drain holes that had been welded up were also sealed with seam sealer
on the inside. Also took the opportunity to relocate the filler to the door shut where the vent normally lives.
Although this looked an easy job ? it actually took hours to look right :

http://www.elsamak.karoo.net/WIP17.jpg

As you can see I give the filler areas a top coat or red to check smoothness and I think it has come out very well !!

http://www.elsamak.karoo.net/WIP18.jpg

Next on the list was the back panel which was more like a seive !!!! Rust had really got hold in the lower seam
and the only way to get rid of the rust was to completely replace the whole panel. Cutting it away was the easy part :

http://www.elsamak.karoo.net/WIP19.jpg

As the pictures show the panel was in serious need of attention.

http://www.elsamak.karoo.net/WIP20.jpg

The new back panel was a big jigsaw in how to attach it as it was longer than both side panels as one end would
slide in but not the other . This pic also shows my nice dolly I made up from a cash trolly from work (I work in a Bank)
so my shell was back on 4 wheels but not really going anywhere ? at least I could push it in and out of the garage!

http://www.elsamak.karoo.net/WIP21.jpg


I finally figured out that the rear panel needed to be slipped in from the inside of the shell. It was then spot welded
into place and seam welded onto the floorpan and seam sealed on both the inside and outside as I didn?t want it
rusting again!

http://www.elsamak.karoo.net/WIP23.jpg

Well that?s it for this update.

Joff

Superb Joff. I remember reading the older full story of your car, and how it was reshelled quite early on. Always been a fan of the car! Glad your putting so much effort into it!

Eta?

Keith

Yep, I did a reshell in 1989 when I originally bought my nova as a written off car with 392 miles on the clock -
it had been bought new on 18.11.1988 and written off on the 23.12.1988. I bought it June 1989 and have
owned it ever since! See pic of original condition below :

http://www.elsamak.karoo.net/novabang.jpg


The only useable panel was the tailgate - the rest of the shell was scrap - I bought a brand new shell off GM for
?1200 - those were the days!!

eta = ????? I really don't want to rush this project - hoping for the back end of next show season to be realisic -
it would be nice to get it ready for April 2005, but I think this will be a bit unrealistic!

Joff

Ok, we are now nearly up to date ?.. you will recall that I have already smoothed the inner wings in the engine bay,
but after a couple of months the sealer started cracking so I had to strip it all off and onto plan B ? inspired by
Keith Robinsons green/blue nova with the ultra smooth inner wings I thought I would have a go plating the
wings with some quite thick guage metal. The idea was to weld as much as possible and use as little filler a possible .
With a weld/grind weld/gring regime I think I have cracked it! The photo shows where the second plate is
welded in ? the first is already in situ and partially smoothed.

http://www.elsamak.karoo.net/WIP24.jpg

I was now getting a tad bit bored of all this grinding and sanding lark so I turned my attention to a few more jobs
that needed doing. The rear mount needed strengthening up and the mount bolt holes had turned into an L
shape so I started welding on some strengthening plates I acquired about 6 years ago!

http://www.elsamak.karoo.net/WIP25.jpg

I also beefed up the lower part of the mount and then gave the whole kit a couple of coats of hammerite

http://www.elsamak.karoo.net/WIP26.jpg

I spent most of a day stripping all the crud and cr@p off my GSI petrol tank ? I then gave it a couple of
coats of hammerite to make it nice, clean & tidy.

http://www.elsamak.karoo.net/WIP29.jpg

I also have bought a brand new rear GSI bumper from GM ? my local bodyshop have done a sterling
job of filling in both the number plate light and also the towing eye recess ? nice and smooth!

http://www.elsamak.karoo.net/WIP27.jpg

For the interior I am only going to hint at my plans ? the fronts are Sparco Torino?s which I have had recovered
in Grey and Blue alcantara ? they guy who did these is more of a perfectionist than me !!! He had these
over 12 months but boy was it worth the wait!!! Spot on fit with no creases at all!!! It?s a lot better than some
of the so called professional retrims I have seen over the years ? this was done as a guvvy job as well!!!!


http://www.elsamak.karoo.net/WIP30.jpg

And finally these arrived just before christmas .....

http://www.elsamak.karoo.net/WIP31.jpg

These are a couple of alloy pulleys from SBD which cost about ?75 which run a multi groove BMW belt ? gets rid of
the central rubber insert as seen on the GM one as mine was knackered and Vauxhall wanted silly money for a new one!

For the next few weeks the main jobs are to smooth off the inner wings and get the front bumper fitting right and
fill any small marks or scratches that are present.

Hope you have enjoyed this trip and I will keep you up to date with the developments when they happen!

Joff

That is fantastic work

joff, your an absolute Beast !

i wish i lived next door to you

I always enjoy reading peoples work in progress. Did you ever think of buying a new shell, as it seems the current shell had one or two rusty areas. I understand if you are sentimentally attached to the shell as I am with mine.

Good luck with it all, keep the pics coming. Could I suggest possibly resizing the next set of images so that you dont need ADSL or a 22" monitor to view the pics ;)

Jim

What a rebuild. Can't wait to see the Nova ready on the road, although i know that it'll take plenty of time...

Keep up with the work and post here the updates.

Do I sence a colour change coming your way (Blue and grey seat retrim !)

Not seen much of you at shows this year - now I see why !

If your ever bored of your project - you can come and make a start on mine.

Keep up the good work

Dave

Quote:

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If your ever bored of your project - you can come and make a start on mine.

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:lol: :lol: :lol: How many years have I heard that!! START! :lol:


Colin

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Franny

Quote:

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If your ever bored of your project - you can come and make a start on mine.

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:lol: :lol: :lol: How many years have I heard that!! START! :lol:


Colin

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Lol..

Will it ever happen?

Keith

eek... i cleared out my garage yesterday and today..... now i can start work on my car again :lol:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Franny

Quote:

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If your ever bored of your project - you can come and make a start on mine.

---

:lol: :lol: :lol: How many years have I heard that!! START! :lol:


Colin

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how long did it take you to do yours he he he he

Nice one Joff.

Took me nearly an hour to read it, i think the wholes companies network slowed down.

Great work.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by krobinson

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Franny

Quote:

---

If your ever bored of your project - you can come and make a start on mine.

---

:lol: :lol: :lol: How many years have I heard that!! START! :lol:


Colin

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Lol..

Will it ever happen?

Keith

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Goin to make it a new years resolution to start on the project - but you all know how long you keep to those !!!!

looking good Joff, i wondered if all was going well with your rebuild as i hadnt seen anything up for awhile. Its damn pain how life gets in the way!

I spy a relocated fuel filler cap! :wink: What cap have you used?

Dave, if it means you get started on your own car i am on my way up! :lol:

Karl

Looks mint mate.

What front bumper is that? A standard gsi one or one of them kingdom ones?

The front bumper is a Kingdom Big mouth bumper - its made out of fibreglass but is quite rough and needs a lot of work to get it anything like.

Thats the next job after sorting the inner wings in the engine bay!

Joff

Hi,

Another quick update, been smoothing off the front wings, but had a problem with the rear dolly the shell sits on -
basically becuase of my crap design it collapsed!!!

Anyway after a bit of searching I found a nice shopping trolley in a skip near where I work - thanks Tescos!!!!

After a bit of chopping and welding I now have 2 nice & strong dollys that allow 360 degree movement!!!!

http://www.elsamak.karoo.net/dolly1a.jpg

Enjoy!

Joff

The re build is looking realy good. Theres alot of work been done allready but still so much to do. It will be great when its complete im sure.

LOL at the trolly wheels, now you can call a nova a shopping trolley!! hehe
good idea though using them for moving the shell about.

TOP work there matey.

Bruce

lmao.. thats a better use for a trolley!! :d

Keith

lol @ the trolly

but keep up on the car cant wait to see it :lol:

Right !

A bit more of an update, I've been spending a bit more time smoothing off the inner wings.
These are now almost complete!

Heres the passenger side :-

http://www.elsamak.karoo.net/innerds1a.jpg

And heres the plating for the drivers side - as mentioned before I tried to weld & grind a few times to keep
any filler to a minimum - i.e less filler = less chance of it cracking - I'm looking at trying to get less that
0.5mm filler which should be OK!

http://www.elsamak.karoo.net/innerns2a.jpg

And this is how it now looks after a bit of smoothing .... still needs a bit of attention here and there but its getting there!

http://www.elsamak.karoo.net/innerns1a.jpg

I've also invested in a Corsa dash to go in - it looks at though I will need to trim the windscreen edge by a
considerable amount and from talking on the boards I think I will have to move the steering column over
an inch or so in order that it comes through the dash in the correct place.

http://www.elsamak.karoo.net/corsadash1a.jpg

Thats it for now ... I'll post some more pics of how I get on with the dash shortly.

Cheers

Joff

Looks good Joff, I remember when my bay was like that! I got mine smoothed after seeing Karls (showed bodyman PNG mag pic), his was the first i'd seen with it done. Now there's a fair few doing it. Looks ace :D

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...ginebaynew.jpg

I've had mine out a few short journeys, and to be honest i cant see it cracking easy! Mine was welded same as your's before hand, then fiberglass for shape, and filler for smoothness.

Keith

Engine Looks Amazing there Keith

and joff, that's coming along well, Should be amazing as well once it's done. I like the corsa dash idea, What clocks are you going to use ?

Thats looking fannytastic mate, but with the weight of all that welding wire and extra plating will there be a turbo upgrade on the cards?

You honestly think that little bit of extra weight will make it slow? lol

No chance!

Keith

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mikeygte

will there be a turbo upgrade on the cards?

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joff-turbo-nova

Quote:

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Originally Posted by -Nick

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mikeygte

will there be a turbo upgrade on the cards?

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joff-turbo-nova

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yeah worked that out at donny the month it was featured in TV, wasn't turbo in the feature cause it took'em so long to print it after taking the pics if I remember correctly.

:D looking really good joff

looks like its getting there