[seventynovaSS]

After 3 years in metal shop jail, I finally picked up the body shell of my Nova today. It was a beautiful day, temps in the high 50's, so I made the 80 mile drive an picked it up. The cart I made to transport it worked great: roll it on, tie it down, put the tailgate up, and off we go. Got home just as sunset, and rolled it off the trailer into the shop. Now the real work begins, prep for the paint job. Fortunately, I have two friends that are body and paint experts to help and guide me.

Tomorrow, I'll get it on the rotisserie so we can get started on it.

 

[batman09]

Reassembly is the best part!!!

 

[Dan01Foster]

I will follow this thread with interest!! Another one begins life anew!!! Its so exciting!!:yes::yes::yes:

 

[seventynovaSS]

Thanks for the interest guys, we are going to have a few days of 50°-60° temps here so I will see what I can do to get started.

Got it off the cart and onto the rotisserie this afternoon. The cart I made did its job perfectly. Even after replacing the firewall, entire floor, most of the trunk pan, tail light panel and both rear quarters, when I unbolted it from the cart, there was no warpage at all, completely straight. Great.

Once I got it on the rotisserie, I rolled it over to dislodge any crud and blasting media. Oh my God! Even after 2 hours of sweeping and blowing with compressed air, there is still a bunch of crap coming out of it. When I swept the material up on the floor, it filled a 5 gallon plastic pail about 4 inches deep, and that doesn't include what is in the sweeper. Yikes!

So, tomorrow I'll work on it some more. The one place I don't know how to get cleaned out is inside the rockers. here are a couple of drain holes at the rear, but no place to get in from the front to either blow stuff to the rear, or stick a tube in and suck it out. I going to have to study that for a while.

Some more pictures.

 

[DennisThompson]

great pictures shared. . . .

 

[GrtDanes]

Looks good. Glad they don't charge storage also.:beer:

 

[seventynovaSS]

Finally got a little time to do a little work on the Nova this evening. I have been working to get all the blasting media and mouse nests out of the rockers. Finally got them pretty well cleaned out and ready to spray Eastwood rust preventative in them, except for welding up the holes that had been drilled to mount the rocker trim panels.
So, I used a flappy disk on my 4 1/2" angle grinder to remove the the primer around the holes, so I could weld them closed. Used my MIG machine to weld them up, then ground them smooth and put some more primer on the bare metal.
I borrowed a friend's undercoat prayer to spray inside the rockers, but it didn't have a nozzle that would spray a 360° pattern, so I made one on the lathe out of a piece of aluminum bar stock. It took a couple of different designs to get it right, and I have tested it with water, and it seems to put out a pretty good 360° pattern. I'm going to test it with the real material in a cardboard tube first, but I think it will do fine.
Then, next on the agenda is painting the floor, firewall, under dash and inside of the roof with Por15. Then do the same to the underbody.

I still have some blasting media still inside the rear frame rails, but as of yet, I haven't figured how to get it out, since it is in the area near where the rear shackle bushing sleeve goes through the rail.

For work like this, I do love my rotisserie.

 

[bptactical]

Don't use the POR-15 on blasted metal, it is intended to be applied over surface rust. It will flake off of bare metal.
Use a quality epoxy primer instead such as DP90LF or SPI.

 

[bigdaddykane]

why did you close up the holes for the lower molding and remove the studs for the molding right above it? was it not factory on your car? also would you have any better close up pics showing the contour around the rear wheel opening? and the body line behind it going toward rear bumper? thanks

 

[seventynovaSS]

why did you close up the holes for the lower molding and remove the studs for the molding right above it? was it not factory on your car? also would you have any better close up pics showing the contour around the rear wheel opening? and the body line behind it going toward rear bumper? thanks

The trim wasn't original from the factory, so there weren't any studs.

Here are some more pictures, hope they show what you want.

Edit: Due to a limit on 6 attachments per post the remaining 3 pictures are added in another post.
Link to that post: http://www.stevesnovasite.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5469050&postcount=18

 

[J Mark]

Nice pics. Getting it there is hell, putting it back together is awesome.

 

[Custom Jim]

Man how I would have loved to had a rotisserie doing work on my 74. That HAS to make it so much easier to do things. I know I got REAL tired sanding up inside the rear wheel openings on mine and with them upside down this would be the ticket for a lot easier access.

Please, please, please, take this as constructive comments as I did notice a few things that you may want to address. On your rear opening, you can see how there is some overlap sticking out of the outer wheel housing past the lip of the quarter. Maybe take a grinder and make it so this lip on the quarter is nice and even on width.

How it looks now:

The spots I might address:

An on the front inside edge on that side how it is now:

And what metal work might want to be done on it:

And on the bottom lip between the rear tire opening and the bumper you can see some of the spot welds that if a hammer and dolly is used, this section could be straighter and the welds not visible UNLESS you want them to be visible like on an original car.

I wish I had more photo's of the work on my 74 but here is a shot of the one side on my car and the inner quarter lip is even in width and then gets a little thinner up higher for tire sidewall clearance. I do not have any of the outer wheel housing lip extending past the lip of the quarter. On mine the groove between the inner and outer wheel housings I did not fill up to where it was flat across the bent up lips.

Jim

 

[seventynovaSS]

Man how I would have loved to had a rotisserie doing work on my 74. That HAS to make it so much easier to do things. I know I got REAL tired sanding up inside the rear wheel openings on mine and with them upside down this would be the ticket for a lot easier access.

Please, please, please, take this as constructive comments as I did notice a few things that you may want to address. On your rear opening, you can see how there is some overlap sticking out of the outer wheel housing past the lip of the quarter. Maybe take a grinder and make it so this lip on the quarter is nice and even on width.

How it looks now:

The spots I might address:

An on the front inside edge on that side how it is now:

And what metal work might want to be done on it:

And on the bottom lip between the rear tire opening and the bumper you can see some of the spot welds that if a hammer and dolly is used, this section could be straighter and the welds not visible UNLESS you want them to be visible like on an original car.

I wish I had more photo's of the work on my 74 but here is a shot of the one side on my car and the inner quarter lip is even in width and then gets a little thinner up higher for tire sidewall clearance. I do not have any of the outer wheel housing lip extending past the lip of the quarter. On mine the groove between the inner and outer wheel housings I did not fill up to where it was flat across the bent up lips.

Jim

Jim, Thanks for the suggestions. I'm just getting started on the body work after getting it back from having a lot of metal replaced, and have a lot of little things to address, including those you pointed out.

I was going to put some metal in the two little V shaped gaps between the quarters and the rockers, and at the rear of the wheel opening, in addition to trimming the inside lips on the quarter panels and outer wheel houses for a more consistent width. The welds in the area behind the wheel wells are going to be smoothed out too.Those items are next on the list.

Today I finished blowing/sucking the last debris out of the rockers, and sprayed some Eastwood rust preventative into them. I had to drill holes at both ends to get into the cavities, and will either weld plugs back into them or use some plastic plugs like the undercoating shops use. I'm sure I got enough in them, because a fair amount ran out of seams, so they should be good. I used about a 3/4 of a pint for both sides.

I also welded up the holes that were in the passenger door for a piece of trim that had been added at some point. I got the welds ground down and am working on priming them and sanding them out. It took almost as much time
to change the MIG wire over to .024 from .035 as it did to weld them up.
Getting a grinder into the door to grind down the back side of the welds is going to be fun.

My plate to bolt the door to an engine stand works quite well for working on them. It would help if it had casters with brakes on them though.

 

[seventynovaSS]

After doing the usual household chores a bachelor need to do, like laundry and mowing the yard (3 acres with 70+ trees), I spent a little time this afternoon on the bottom edge of the right rear quarter between the wheel well and bumper area. A little hammer and dolly work and a little grinding helped it out.

Look better Jim?

I still need to fill and sand the areas where the spot welds join the quarter and trunk drops, so that's next.

 

[Custom Jim]

After doing the usual household chores a bachelor need to do, like laundry and mowing the yard (3 acres with 70+ trees), I spent a little time this afternoon on the bottom edge of the right rear quarter between the wheel well and bumper area. A little hammer and dolly work and a little grinding helped it out.

Look better Jim?



I still need to fill and sand the areas where the spot welds join the quarter and trunk drops, so that's next.

It looks a lot better, so plan on some time to come over and work on mine

I know how it is with other things to do and this is why my 74 has been sitting still unfinished.

I know I have looked at mine, thinking, OK, I'm done with this or that only to look closer and decide go back sometimes to make things even better or slicker. This stuff will drive anyone crazy.

Another thing I thought of, is if there are full new quarters on your car make sure the little metal filler section is in place on the back bottom corner edge of the side window opening. I've seen this missing on cars before and the quarter glass molding does not really cover this spot and this is why they put this little section of steel in there. When I put on NOS quarters on my 74, I had to get this piece off of the original quarters before I threw them out.

Jim

 

[seventynovaSS]

It looks a lot better, so plan on some time to come over and work on mine

I know how it is with other things to do and this is why my 74 has been sitting still unfinished.

I know I have looked at mine, thinking, OK, I'm done with this or that only to look closer and decide go back sometimes to make things even better or slicker. This stuff will drive anyone crazy.

Another thing I thought of, is if there are full new quarters on your car make sure the little metal filler section is in place on the back bottom corner edge of the side window opening. I've seen this missing on cars before and the quarter glass molding does not really cover this spot and this is why they put this little section of steel in there. When I put on NOS quarters on my 74, I had to get this piece off of the original quarters before I threw them out.

Jim

I'll have to look at that area on mine.

Yep, sometimes you work and work on one issue and finally decide that that is good enough, but later look at it again, and decide to put a little more effort into to it to get a better result.

I have a habit of putting some repair or job off for a while, but continue to mull the job over in my mind to come up with the best way to do the job. Sometime I come up with an easy and fast solution, and sometimes I totally overthink it and have to reassess it from the beginning. There will probably a lot of that on this project.

But actually, I'm just getting started on this project, I only tore it apart to fix a hole in the driver side floorboard 4 years ago. Talk about project creep....

 

[seventynovaSS]

Another thing I thought of, is if there are full new quarters on your car make sure the little metal filler section is in place on the back bottom corner edge of the side window opening. I've seen this missing on cars before and the quarter glass molding does not really cover this spot and this is why they put this little section of steel in there. When I put on NOS quarters on my 74, I had to get this piece off of the original quarters before I threw them out.

Jim

Mine look different than yours do. I know the metal guy wanted the trim that goes in the area to make sure they fit correctly.

 

[seventynovaSS]

I went through the thread and downloaded pictures instead of linking them. When I get another hosting site I will post links again so the pictures are shown inline and in order.

Here are the additional pictures for post #10

 

[seventynovaSS]

Yes, it's been a while, but the project is finally making some progress. I was able to get things rearranged in the shop so I could get the Nova dug out and positioned so I can work on it.
First task is to get the front clip installed and fitted. I bought the Dynacorn fenders a few years ago and once I got them unboxed and hung, both have major issues. The right side where it meets the door is no where near the correct profile. After a week of cutting, grinding and welding, I finally got it pretty close, but I'm still not happy with it.
The left fender initially looked pretty good, but after I got the hood mounted, I discovered the entire skin is shifted up on the internal bracing about 3/8". This makes it too high in the front next to the hood, and too high where it meets the door. After looking at it, I would have to cut all the bracing loose to get it moved down where it should be, but the way the metal is wrapped around the rear at the door opening, that's not possible, at least not for my metalworking abilities.
So, I ordered two new fenders that may be here by Christmas.
I did get the bucket seat mounts fitted and welded in, but that was another advneture. I ended up using the inner mounts that straddle the driveshaft tunnel that were removed from another Nova. But I had use the outer mounts out of an aftermarket set and modify them to get them in the correct position.
I had bought two sets of bucket seats, both were out of '69 or '70 Chevelles, and I was assured they were the same as those used in Novas. Well, almost the same. The tracks are different. Chevelle tracks are an inch longer where they bolt to the seat and where they bolt to the floor. So I had to buy a set of Nova tracks, and they do bolt up to the seats, but use a different hole at the rear.
I had disassembled one set of seats, sandblasted and painted the frames, had installed new springs on one of the bases and started installing the foam and cover. But that's as far as I got. So I pulled out that base and the two seat backs, but couldn't find the other base. Tore the shop apart looking for it. Never found it. Thinking back, it may have been rusted too badly to use and I scrapped it.
I took one of the other seats apart and stripped the base down. Didn't look too bad, so I spent a couple hours blasting all the rust and crud off it. Primed it and got black satin Rustoleum on the top. I'l do the bottom tomorrow.
I also installed the springs on the second seat back, What a freaking job. Fought it for an hour and a half, but finally got it all snapped in place. Only lost a cup or so of blood working with those springs that all have sharp ends on them. Good thing I'm a good healer.

 

[exotec]

Quite a journey! Following