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Complete restoration/modernization of a 69 Nova

138K views 448 replies 78 participants last post by  Frssh/1969 
#1 ·
I picked up this beauty from a friend who had parted out about 95% of it on E-Bay. Still, I felt it was worth saving, but missing so many original parts I decided to modernize it a bit. My goal is to build a Pro Touring(ish) car with a minimal amount of money. I plan to use an LT1/4L60E combo I have laying around to power the beast. I also want to build this with my 11 yr old son and when he is ready I will give it to him. So here is what I started with.





 
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#30 · (Edited)
As promised here are the rotisserie specs for those of you who want them. Just keep in mind I built this to suite my needs and you can alter it in any way you like. One error I caught to late is that on the second photo I entered the bottom ram support plate as 1/4" it is actually 3/8". You only need 3 ton rams, mine are 8 ton but only because I got a great deal on them and I can remove them for use in my home made frame straightener.





Any questions feel free to ask and I will do my best to answer them. Make sure EVERYTHING is welded very solid, you dont need a weld failing. I burned them in so hard that I managed to bow the lower main beam while welding the 45 degree braces. It dosent effect the rotisserie but does say something about the weld.

Tom
 
#32 ·
Now that the car is in the rotisserie I turned my attention back to the gas tank area. First, when I removed the forward tank support perches it did some damage to the trunk floor from the spot weld as you can see in the first picture. I could have tried to fill them in but instead opted to just patch in new metal because I will be reattaching the perches in their new location later.





 
#34 ·
Now I set the tank in place to check the overall fit and to determine where the front perches will need to be place. the width of the straps is just perfect, only the length will be changed. These pictures give you an idea of the size issues I have to deal with, a bit epic.



 
#37 ·
Now I had to figure out how to remake the forward perches and with a little (lot) of help from my neighbor the tinner we came up with this. First picture is the lay out and I will get it bent up tonight on my press brake. Second picture is just a body mans idea of a bag clip.





:)
 
#39 ·
Craig

I priced out everything to build a rotisserie and came up with about 550 dollars. This would be if you had to buy everything, if you are like me and either have some items or buddy's who do that will save you a bunch. I got my casters from a friend for free and my rams (8 ton) were 40 bucks a pair from a swap meet. The inner and outer pipes were from another friend who just had them in a pile of scrap steel. As for turning the car over, well if you did a good job welding you will have no worries. Remember, with mine a friend bought all the tube steel enough for 2 and I did the work so mine was mostly free.

Tom
 
#41 ·
I spent a lot of time scratchin my head, thinkering and staring blankly at the problem of how to make all this work out. This is what I did next, I bent up the new perch for the old perch (stay with me here) and set in some relief cuts which will make sense later.



Then a test fit of the old perch on the new perch and aligned it with the channel heading to the rear perch (lot of perches here).



Now I will toss the old perches into my sandblast cabinet (home made of course) and clean them up before a coat of POR on the underside. Then I will weld everything together and make the "bridge" to tie it all together. Strength is the key here as this tank hold more fuel then the old one did so it will weigh more.
 
#42 ·
I welded in the first one and it looks pretty good, you can see how the "fingers" I cut into it were tapped into place to match the original floor. I sprayed some primer on it to cut the glare from the camara flash. Now I will weld on the original perch and build a piece to bridge it all back into one support.

 
#46 · (Edited)
Here is what I came up with for this repair. First I cut away all of the remaining metal from the hitch, this was pretty easy as they were bad welders and are rather lucky it never broke off. Then I cleaned and primed the inside of the rail.



Then I made a piece to fit inside the rail and welded it in.





The other side was pretty much the same.
 
#48 ·
OK, now on to a bigger mess, as you can see by the pictures there is a good bit of rust in the usual locations. I will have to buy the outer wheel houses and the quarter panels but I intend to fix the rest myself. Now I know many of you would say why bother, but remember I want to restore this car on a budget and still do it properly. I will start with the trunk drop offs, they are rusted badly on the lower edge but I can still do a "forensic rustoration" and rebuild the lower section and I will patch in the lower part of the inner wheelhouse while I am at it.





I could have bought the trunk drop offs but it would take me just as long to remove and fit in the new ones as it will to fix these and I will save the money.
 
#50 ·
Sorry for the long delay, life has a way of sucking up all of my time. I have moved forward on a few things and I will get caught up on posting today.
First I decided since I was not going to replace the trunk drop offs until I started replacing the outers and quarters there was not much point in going any further on that for now. So I needed to replace one last section of floor and thanks to my good friend Tim S. who provided me one from a car he was scrapping out, I got that finished up.



With some clean up, here is the finished floor.

 
#51 ·
Next I cleaned the entire floor up and prepared it for a good coat of POR.



It took just under a quart to get all of the floor covered, but while the car is in the rotisserie it was easy to get at hard to reach places like the under side of the dash. So I hit everything I could possibly reach with the spray gun and a brush.

 
#52 ·
With the floor now finished i moved on back to mounting the fuel tank and making the straps to hold it in place. I had to fabricate a blend of the Caprice straps with one diagonal and the old Nova straps in the way the attach to the car. Here is what I came up with.



And how the tank looks mounted.

 
#53 ·
read through it all, gotta say, thats a lot of work for that 69.. i have a 69'R too. but i guess its easier for you to say.. you have the tools, space, and patience to do it...

will be following this!! :yes:


nice to see the rotisserie specs... hopefully when i learn how to weld i can build one!:eek:
 
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