1956 Chevrolet Nomad Restomod - Jay Leno's Garage

welcome to the episode of jail on with garage this week we're featuring this 1956 Chevy nomad this is a resto mod if you saw the TV show Overhaulin a few years ago you might have seen this car this is a car we stole from my friend Dave kolecki you know Dave he's been on this website before he owns performance Allison transmissions Dave come on in here how're you doing I'm doing good we have the same tailor yeah that's what it is that's right obviously not the same chef now what what happened was Dave had this car sitting in his yard you had how long have you had it 10 years or 10 years and he was always gonna get around restoring it but having three kids and running a business and doing all the things like a lot of us never got around to it so what they do on the TV show Overhaulin is they steal the car from the guy and they got all upset and then quickly redo it and then we unveiled it as a finished car here at the shop but it was kind of funny because we had the car stolen from your yard your son was in on it yes that was in honor and dave was all upset and we sent a guy dressed as a police of a drunken guy down to talk to you and he had a hip flask and remember he came in and I feel bad for the guy yeah and the guy was just loaded and he got all the facts wrong and Dave calls you up this cop came down and he didn't even what kind of card was he he thought I was a little peeling it was a it was a Chevy David I'm sure you were good no like I was thinking police officer showed up never fighting my car with this guy yeah so it was hilarious and anyway we rebuilt the car with the 572 and we unveiled it to Dave here at my garage well here here's that little thing so what's the car like what is it six years later at these six years now is easy six years later and you've been using it quite a bit tell us about it what's it like to have a show car that you use every day yeah I guess it gets a really good response at the car shows yeah and not just because of the Overhaulin because some people don't know it's really amazing what they did in seven days yeah and they think well how many years did this take you to restore I said it took me seven days yeah I explained how it happened right but you know it runs real good the suspension they put on it is good for a big round car it actually handles like a more modern car right right I remember you had some trouble with the tires were scraping a little bit there were a few things because you really can't do a car this in seven days you kind of you can make it look good but then you kind of go back and you go through everything again we did we straighten out a little wiring we got the tires to not rub I put a gear vendor over drive in afterwards they keep it to keep the engine RPMs down it was real loud and I'm up at 3500 rpm so now it's dead on 2500 rpms on the freeway doing 70 it really were it really works good it runs good it doesn't overheat they did all the cooling really good for this yeah let's show P what we have here you know show cars have fun but they're not as much fun as a car you can actually use and drive every day and there you go that looks like yeah just like the engine of mine that's a great motor this 572 crate motor makes all kinds of horsepower 650 right out of the box yeah and you've got air conditioning and you've got well just all the modern stuff that the modern car would have dual master breaking brakes power steering yeah yeah but I like about this engine is and I've had a lot of cars with big blocks they don't really put around real go they overheat or they load up right this one really can ask it to do anything and it does it just fine you know you can you can race it you can put it around and it always seems to run real well yeah that's a nice thing about getting a crate motor because a lot of times somebody else one guy does your suspension somebody else said your transmission somebody else does your engine and it doesn't always match up you know when you get like one of these Chevy crate motors they're guaranteed everything's been you know built to specific specifications it isn't one guy doing the Pistons another guy doing the cam and then the thing doesn't run right who do you blame the nice thing is you buy it it comes in a box it's all done you drop it in and you go and it's classic carbureted you know just like it would have been back in the day so it's not like it's fuel injection or anything like that pretty easy to work on actually can see the car looks great after five or six years and I have to admit we just decided to shoot this today so it's not like we went through and detailed it or anything yeah no no it says of course I keep it here at your garage and there's a no better place to keep your car than at Leno's Garage so I think you can tell Dave's been driving it because oh my gosh this Kentucky Fried Chicken as McDonald's this ketchup packet stains every every kind of fast food has been eaten in this car so that's that's a amazing amount of wear and tear right there but as you can see it's a good-looking vehicle is that the stock wheel no no that's not a stock wheel course since it's got power steering they were able to go to a smaller wheel face around my stomach much better I could never get into it with the full-size steering wheel yeah yeah you can't have that you can't have that very nice very nicely done see it says 572 air up here some nice touches you know I like resto mods like my Buick like this car that keep the initial styling and the initial look of the original automobile I'm not a big fan of chop tops and all that kind of stuff I think people going back to the original styling this is just nice and subtle 572 back here a little overhaul and sticker on there you know what I liked about the Nomad is first is the regular wagon is the roof line is two and a half inches lower yeah it kind of looks like a factory job there's so much cleaner they they have the pillars tilted forward had a little more style than the regular wagon so and it is a two-door and you got those custom wheels I must save for me I would like original style wheel to original style hubcaps yeah that just just to have that kind of hey is that hot rotted you know so people don't know we're gonna talk to chip through sip well talked to chip about that but those wheels are certainly nice those are nice food wheels the interesting thing is the whole six years this cars been here I have never driven it so let's take this let's go what'd she do my great crews and cars I love this 572 motor you know this cars a lot like Dave it's got bad gas you always want to put something like stable in your fuel to make sure that the gas doesn't go bad it's not too bad but you know modern gasoline especially here in California it'll go off in as little as two to three months well it's our job to blow that bad fuel out of there dave says we've got to change the torque converter in this thing and old it'll light off a little bit better it's not right yeah yeah it's a resto mod it can also be kind of a family car because you can actually carry stuff in the back dogs or lumber or whatever you want to put back there yeah yeah it's got a Home Depot get some lumber this is a classic arm out the window car I know it's got air conditioning but it doesn't feel right he got the window down arm out the window get nice and tan here you know just a few modifications like better brakes and stuff all the cars can really be fun to drive and safe to you know this is the classic American post-war hotrod any of the tri-five Chevy's 55 56 57 there you know it's interesting when these came out they weren't that biggest sellers the 56 57 Ford's outsold them 3 2 1 4 2 1 something like they only made 6556 s yeah only made 60 a nomad you mean 56 nomad it's only 6500 only 6500 - the 56 Nomad so they weren't very popular then but 10 years later when they became a secondhand and this of course the classic small-block Chevy motor the iconic small-block Chevy made them what they are today pretty good transformation from the rust-bucket it started out to be let's take it back to the shop and see if it'll do a Burnout Davis never done a burnout in this car now he needs a new torque converter is that correct yes got the wrong torque converter I think it's got one instead of a stock Chevy pickup truck really really low stall it really needs a higher stall converter something hooked up a little quicker I don't like this sounds like a bunch of excuses to me but we'll see let's see how it does not bad see you next week you

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 628,088

Rating: 4.887207 out of 5

Keywords: Jay Leno, Automotive, Cars, Garage, horsepower, Jay, Leno, mods, custom car, Speed, Fast, modded cars, mechanic, fastest car, Jay Leno's Garage, cars, exotic cars, interview, custom, Leno car, funny, Leno funny, car show, Rare, Motorcycles, racing, jay leno interview, auto, drive, power, fast, amazing, cool, the cars, vehicle, Chevy Nomad, Overhaulin, Dave Killackey, restoration, restored, Chevrolet Nomad

Id: I71qOhVRzuo

Length: 10min 51sec (651 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 23 2012