FULL BUILD: Out With The Old Lady Car, In With A GM Crate Engine Upgrade For A 1970 Chevy Nova

[Music] hey guys welcome back to muscle car you are not going to believe what lou and i found this is a 1970 nova with only like 30 000 original miles on it that comes out to something around 17 miles a week on this fashionable inline 236 cylinder this is the ultimate old lady car and you're probably never going to find one like it but if you want to try we'll show you what to look for hey can we call this thing project blue hair whatever you want man whatever you want sandy now this is a find with a lot of potential it really did belong to a little old lady who drove it 17 miles a week this was about a 2200 car back in 1970 and we paid her great granddaughter 7 500 for it that's more than three times the original price but it's still some kind of deal the most obvious area in this car is this little spot of rust but this is in no way a deal killer we can fix that pretty easily and as i looked on i noticed bodywork in the quarter panel here because i could see the sand scratches under the paint the next thing that really gave it away was the fact that this edge is really inconsistent it's bulbous there's a lot of hips and dips and valleys and things in it and then when i ran my hand behind the quarter i could feel the dents that the body filler is hiding now these are things to search for when you're looking for that perfect project car and check out this interior it's like 36 years old and pretty much perfect since we're going to leave this thing a sleeper this is going to save us a lot of work we're just going to leave it alone so i'm going to turn it over to lou who's going to show you what to look for underneath and on the mechanical side of things blue hair you never want to look at a car at night because you can't see nothing the other thing during the day bring a flashlight with you you might have to look underneath the dashboard this way you can see what you're looking at your potential car let's get this thing in the air you look for structural damage all this up here looks really good this car obviously has not been punched in the nose at any time and if it was they did a really good repair but it wasn't look for leaks i mean there's oil on the oil pans there's more than likely gonna be oil on the ground but i mean it's probably from the valve cover gasket it's all minor stuff depending on what direction you want to go with the car it's a really sound car and only a teeny spot of rust on the toe board that's an easy fix obviously this is some professional exhaust repair work that's been done here they use the drive shaft to hold the exhaust pipe in place i kind of like that it's high tech this car overall is in great shape if the only thing you got is some rust in the toe boards you're doing good for a car that's 30 something years old notice how i said 30-something women don't like to divulge their age get out of there so don't crush us no this car may be in good shape but it is 30 some odd years old and we got a couple things that we need to take care of like this now there is no need to replace the whole quarter panel for something like that you can just go to your local hardware store and get some steel the same thickness and go to town all right the first step's just gonna be to cut the old area out with straight cuts and get rid of the rust [Music] one of the most important steps is to get rid of what caused the rust in the first place and in this case it was definitely this foam come out the foam's there for sound deadness but it can also collect moisture oh we'll see you later a present for you the main goal in grinding like this is to get rid of all the rust all right now we got the area free of paint and rust so we got a good clean starting and stopping point for our new metal this is regular old 18 gauge mild steel the first line of defense and keeping those new pieces from rusting is to spray all the bare metal areas with some weld through primer then you're ready to rock [Music] go go go go go go i'm gonna go ahead and make our patch piece out of three pieces total because there's a lot of complex shape here and that's going to help me to do it a little easier [Music] [Applause] okay see where i still have this tail sticking up that's where i need that shape to be put in i'm going to show you how i'm going to do that [Music] there you go good as new all it took was a couple hours some hand tools and a welder now if you have a weekend you can attack several areas like this on your car and really turn it around now old blue hair here i'm gonna turn it into a sleeper cause we all know that there's not enough sleepers left in the world so i'm gonna tear out this 236 cylinder and that power glide and i'm going to slam in a 364 ls motor with 440 horse with a 6 speed oh man it's going to be fun now for you guys who don't know what a sleeper is it's the kind of car that looks bone stock on the outside the interior even looks stock but it's in the driveline that matters that's what's going to jump out and bite you in the butt i'm even going to try and keep these fashionable stock up caps this thing is so original it came in here with just 33 000 miles on it that's barely a thousand miles a year [Music] you've never seen one of these babies before on tv is gm's ls364 crate motor right out of the c6 corvette but it's set up to run a carburetor this baby makes 440 horse right out of the box with a 750 on top aluminum block six volt mains nodular iron crank this one's made to go and it's going in our nova this is not a simple drop in deal we may have to cut the cross member we'll probably have to make our own mounts there's no telling what else we might have to do to this thing there you go [Music] [Music] me [Music] [Music] some of you guys are probably wondering why would he take the nose off this car for a simple engine swap actually it's a real good reason i want you guys to see exactly what it is i got to do i've got to make engine mounts i've got to worry about exhaust who knows i might even have to make headers but this way you guys can see exactly what's going on there's plenty of room for you to look at it that's why i did it i'm thinking about you while daniel and brett are getting that challenger ready for some primer i'm gonna get this fashionable six cylinder out until you get the new motor in usually i just put it on jack stands so i can get to the mount in the drive shaft but the lift is right here so why not now there's a few things i gotta do underneath it here pull out the drive shaft unbolt the crossmember and the mount just makes it easier to get it out and the exhaust then i can drop this baby down and start pulling it out high flow exhaust coming up we'll fire up the hot wrench to get our six-speed ls2 in the nova while brett's priming the challenger i'm gonna yank out the six in linux so we keep everything moving along now you wanna be careful around your wiring when you do this make sure you disconnect everything before you go ripping it out don't just cut wires you're gonna get in trouble i'm environmentally conscious [Music] and that's not all that's out of this place we're gonna be cutting this frame so this 30-something year old dirt's got to go [Music] all right we got our front end cleaned up it's grease free and i'm going to put that in there of course i'll have to do some modifications but that's okay that flex plate's gonna come off first because we're putting a rocklin six speed in this thing ah that's the way yeah now you're probably wondering hey why is that guy not putting a clutch and pressure plate on there because i'm test fitting everything and we know we can't use the old motor mounts because they're just not the right ones so they're out of there so we're gonna stab this one in for the first time to see how it fits and then we're gonna get an idea where we need to cut and what we don't need to cut these exhaust manifolds in a way so they're coming off and that's just the beginning now when i was test fitting the engine the first time there'll be many of them trust me i notice that the transmission hits the floor so i've got to take out the interior cut out the hump put it back in to see where i need to set up my crossmember where the shifter is going to fall [Music] now i got to be really careful with this rubber man because it's an integral part of the whole sleeper look before i start cutting up this floor we're going to pull the challenger out of the spray booth so the guys can start putting it back together now you guys are probably going there he goes cutting up a really nice nova but you know what that's okay because i don't feel bad at all about cutting up a really nice car oh oh plenty of room now what i'll do is i'll save this and maybe raise it up this might save me some work from having to do another one well now that i've got all this new found floor space it's time to put the engine in but you're going to see that after the break hey you guys welcome back hope you had a good break i know i did it's time to test fit this engine one more time at least one more time by the way and see what we got to do we can throw this engine in here a bunch of different ways but no matter how you do it carburetors got to be level and this thing's going to be a sleeper so we got to fit everything under the stock hood sometimes you might have to cut the oil pan or the cross member but this one it fits and i like it tell me i'm good just tell me go ahead shake the chick say yes shake the camera yeah there you go a couple of things popped up no big deal though i can always modify it to fit but i did get these really cool engine mount plates from s p is what they do is they push the engine forward a little bit so you can use your stop motor mount and chassis mount for this car if it had a v8 but this car came with a straight six so i'm going to modify my own chassis mount and then i'll be good to go but something that you need to be aware of is this oil pan down here s p makes when it's notched to clear the steering linkage from where the engine sits but i'm going to raise my engine up an inch and a half so i don't have to do that and therefore i won't even have to modify my chassis crossmember it just makes it easier for me i prefer to do that because i'm impatient and i want to get the car on the road something that's really important you always want to run some anti-seize on your steel bolts when you put them in aluminum because the heat from the engine when you run them out if you don't have anti-seize you can gall your threads so i'm going to measure up one of these top mounts and cut some tubing to fit inside of it then once the top mounts are ready i'll get the engine centered up and make some fashionable frame mounts these tabs here there's one on each corner so they're symmetrical so you can use those to measure from the engine block to the frame rail to center everything up i'm gonna put a spacer between the engine and the cross member to set the engine right down on it so we can get the hoist out of the way then we're going to level everything up oh another surprise the transmission is hitting all along here in the hump because this transmission is so big i've actually made a couple swipes with the tin snips but it wasn't enough so i got to break out the plasma and get ugly with it [Music] we said this engine was going to be in and out a lot well we weren't lying so here we go again easy next week we'll finish up those motor mounts give blue hair some disc brakes and show you how to overcome a problem we ran into with our headers that's it for this week we'll see you guys next time later [Applause] [Music] this is why we call it muscle car look at all the cool stuff i get to play with now i know most of you guys like myself have a really hard time finishing one project before you start another and that's okay but today we're going to finish stuffing this ls2 into this 70 nova that i'm affectionately calling old blue hair we found this car literally right around the corner and boy what a score this nova was a one-owner car that was driven 17 miles a week to the grocery store the beauty shop and i'm not really sure what she did on sundays yeah a little old lady hence the name old blue hair now you resto guys will be happy to know that i'm saving the parts on this thing just in case we want to put it back to stock project blue hair is going to start its new life as a sleeper it's going to look exactly like it was when we found it it's going to have the same paint it's going to have the same stance it's even going to have hubcaps but something different this ls2 we're slamming in it now we just got it level and we started the engine mounts and i had to cut a small piece of the floor out oh why because i've got to make room for this massive six piece so i can get this baby going down the road i don't think granny would have liked it too much next thing i'm going to do being that i've got the transmission and engine where i want it i'm going to put some bracing in so i can get it up in the air and build a cross member that tran is much longer than the original so i'm cutting up this junkyard piece into three sections that way i can take advantage of my original mounting points then all i have to do is connect the [Music] dots now i was tempted to show off and fab went out of some stock but this is much easier to do time to yank out the engine so as i can finish up the engine mounts [Music] and now i'm going to address this 36 year old suspension i'm going to use these 120 wall dom tubular upper and lower control arms from detroit speed and engineering the thing that's really cool about these is that stainless steel cross shaft because they actually use slugs so you can really dial in your suspension so if you want to change it around and get that maximum road race ability you can get it and the thing that's cool about these lower control arms is these delron bushings and inside they've got transfer slots so all the grease gets throughout the whole surface of the bushing really high-tech stuff that's some nice stuff the brakes is next now we've been accused of using only high dollar brake kits well that's all about the change check this out for 850 dollars you can go to master power brakes and get this complete disc brake conversion you get the spindles you get the calipers you get the brackets you get the rotors you get the dust shield you get all the related hardware you even get a brake booster and a master cylinder now that's a complete kit every part is stock either new or rebuilt only the spindles are modified slightly to accept the larger caliber bracket we're reusing our tie rod ends because they're still good remember no one ships their bearings packed that part's up to you keep in mind this is a budget disc brake conversion so these rotors they're not drilled and slotted they're not 14 inch but they're more than enough for our sleeper project [Music] so far everything's going together real nice nobody likes surprises [Music] just when you think it can't get any better it does they give you a proportioning valve the bracket to mount it they even give you the fitting for the back of the intake manifold and a hose but i'm going to hold off on installing all of that because i want to make sure when i put the engine back in i'm not reaching over everything to get the headers on and i got plenty of room but you're going to see that later on in the show next on muscle car big engine in a small car but lou's gonna make it all fit [Music] welcome back to the shop i've got my brakes in place my suspension on we've even got the ls2 motor stabbed into place where it belongs now there's a few header companies that make headers for this application but being that i got impatient and made my own engine mounts i have encountered a small problem my headers don't fit that's okay i've got a solution and here it is a lot of your header companies will sell you just the flanges so you can build your own headers we got ours from hooker and they like to use 3 8 mild steel and it gives you a nice sealing surface and prevents warpage but this is only to start now they sell weld up kits but i prefer to get all my own stuff but when you do that you got to make sure that you order everything you need like collectors reducers if you're going to run o2 sensors you got to have it i prefer these j bends because you've got the 180 degree bend so whatever angle you need all you got to do is cut it i'm going to start by putting a quarter inch washer between the flange and the block and the reason why you do that is you want the headed tube to fit flush against the block i'm starting in the rear hugging the engine as much as possible remember no matter what tool you use the squarer the cut the easier to work with now underneath i like to take a piece of tubing so i can get a visual on where everything's going to go and then i'll tack the collector in place so i know where each tube needs to fall it's a simple matter of visualizing where you want the tubes to go and then how to get them there i'm using these alignment rings the thing that's really neat about them is that they provide nice smooth flow on the inside this way if you have a gap you don't have a bunch of wire in there and they'll hold your tubing up i'm just tacking everything in place for now because we might have to make some changes i hope not but i might [Music] you're probably wondering why i've got these tubes going all over the place there's a few good reasons you want to be able to access your spark plugs you want to be able to clear your steering box and most of all you want to try and get it where you can get these headers out of the car without having to take the engine out and i'm going to run this one straight down here and it'll clear everything i like it [Music] now you gotta be careful not to break any of the tacks oh yeah there it is there it is another successful job you need to take everything off the flange so you're able to weld up your tubes i prefer to use a tig welder it's easier to control so there's less chance of burning a hole [Music] now at this point you might be tempted to take all your tubes and weld them to the flange but you don't want to do that i got something to show you after the break hey we're back on our custom headers for project blue hair you know we started out with a couple of flanges and a bunch of j-bins then we cut them up we tacked them up to fit then we disassembled them to weld up the tubing now you don't want to weld your headers up on the table over there because the heat could distort your tubing so what i did was i mounted my flanges back on the engine and now i'm test fitting everything if they fit your collector and they still mount flush with your heads you can take them out and weld them up check it out we're almost home now make sure your welds come up above the flange so you have enough to surface so far the tools needed for this header build you probably have in your garage but for this step you've got to use a belt sander it's worth a trip to the machine shop to get this done right well there you go a bunch of j bends and a whole lot of time you can build yourself a set of headers if i had more time i'd fill all this in and make them nice and purty now on the passenger side we had a header that almost fit we got lucky so we cut it right here and we fabricated the bottom half time to finish the brakes if you remember i had to wait until i got my headers in to install this and that was because i needed to make sure i had enough clearance which i do if you feel it's too close you can always make a heat shield this massive power brake kit came with a proportioning valve even though this nova didn't have one this hookup's pretty simple man i am loving this project old blue hair got a massive shot of geritol put some new suspension on it new brakes all that to try and slow down a six-speed that's being spun by an ls2 that's making 440 horse and it's carbureted now hooking this monster up is going to take some really neat stuff like the ignition for example it not only hooks into all the stock sensors but it's run by for lack of a better terms a processor now that is cool but you know what that's a whole nother show but i do have time to put this thing together because i'm dying to see what it looks like bingo [Music] well the old nova looks like a little old lady would still be driving it and that's the look we were going for but there's still some issues that need to be dealt with like the rear end i'm thinking maybe a 9 inch just because you got plenty of gear selections but the amount of fabrication it would take to put one of those in it'd be a lot i could go with a 12 bolt because that's what they came with from the factory not only that it'll take the abuse i'm getting ready to throw at it now these 14 sixes they're not going to give me the traction that i need so i decided to go with a 17-inch steel wheel and i get to keep the hubcaps i need you guys to do me a favor send me some emails i want to know what you think of it how you would do it and even what you would change on this project but there's one thing i'm not changing my mind on something no sleepy should be without old lady curb feelers and all is right with the world later [Music] [Applause] [Music] hey welcome to muscle car like the sign back there says we're all about a generation of bad ass cars like our sleeper project here it looks like a grandma's car and actually it was till we got a hold of it now we've hid all the power and muscle out of sight on this baby and that's why they call it a sleeper but i've got a lot of work to do today so i'm going to show you what we've already done blue hair came in here bone stock and i mean bone stock six cylinder two speed power glide and only 33 000 miles on her a perfect starting point for a sleeper granny carney outside street car underneath the first thing we did was pull off that front clip and stuffed an ls364 crate motor in there behind that we put a rocklin 6-speed a t-56 everything sitting nice and low to clear the stock hood i had to fab up some custom headers and all that started with some flanges from hooker and to make room for that transmission it required a little bit of internal fabrication which will continue in the next few weeks up front some detroit speed control arms and a disc brake conversion from massive power brakes then the sheet metal went back on think of it as a subtle yet effective disguise now we could have used just about any gm small block but we decided to go with this fourth generation ls2 stroker which is really cool because it's basically the same engine you'd find in a new c6 vet this thing's 364 cubic inches making 440 horse right out of the crate the ls2 is a direct descendant of the most popular hot rod engine ever the new turbo fire v8 engine the classic small block chevrolet more than 90 million made and still in production today second generation in 1992 the lt1 not the same engine that went into camaros and vets in 1970 but that is where they got the name higher compression better cooling a little stronger but still a cast iron block serious changes came along with the third generation ls one in 97 a six-volt aluminum block a longer stroke for more torque individual coils for each cylinder and a different firing order and the fourth generation the one we're using is so advanced gm set up a new engine plant just to build it higher compression and special shaped combustion chambers are just two of the reasons the ls2 small block pulls more than 400 horsepower dead stock here in the shop i'm going to respect the old school methods i'm going to run this 750 mighty demon from barry grant it's the perfect mix of 60s muscle and 21st century technology and that can get complicated the ls 364 has electronic ignition with no distributor the engine computer picks up pulses from a reluctant wheel on the crankshaft and uses that information to control the spark but the wheel is different in the new ls's more teeth for more pulses and better signal to the computer with that in mind you've got two options you can tear apart your brand new crate engine and put a 24 tooth reluctant ring on it or you can buy an aftermarket ignition setup like this one from fast and it'll talk to your 58 tooth reluctant ring now we got the very first one or close to it fast builders the special prototype just for this project to avoid the engine heat i'm mounting it on the toe board which i'll box in later there are only four connections to make including the all-important reluctor sensor [Music] well we're real close to firing this thing up and completely overpowering granny's old ride nothing some frame connectors can't fix and you'll see that after the break [Music] welcome back to the shop we're going to wake up our sleeper today we're going to fire up this crate engine now this thing makes over 400 foot pounds of torque that's way more twist than his whole body can stand so i'm going to put in some subframe connectors and i like to do mine on jack stands let me tell you why those second generation novas were unibody cars they had front and rear subframes our crate mode is strong enough to twist that way out of shape and on top of that this old body shags a little so we're gonna get it up on jack stands and let the weight of the engine reverse that bend then we'll connect the front and rear subframes together with some tubing then we're gonna tie the connectors to the rocker panels for some extra support it all starts with clearing out the floor this is not demolition because it's all going to go back in later underneath with a two inch wide template i can locate where the connector will go and then transfer those markings up through the floor and the reason why i did this is because i'll take my template and line up my holes and then i mark it and when i remove it i know exactly what to cut out because i'm going to weld the floor to the frame connector it's neater and it's stronger because it ties everything together i'm using 2x2 o65 wall tubing that's more than enough for this project the rear of the connector is going to get notched to clear the brake line and the gas line then box to give it strength the front gets an angle cut to butt up against the subframe i'll box it in leaving access to the body mount [Music] and use plates to secure the rear and with one inch square tubing tie them to the rocker panel [Music] i guarantee this new backbone straightened out old blue hair i can see the difference that these connectors made on the car they're subtle yet they're apparent before this gap used to be tighter because the car was sagging now it's further apart because the sag is gone and the car is straight and look at this even the door gap is tighter and the door closes better now something you got to realize any car this old is going to have sag in it and it's going to contribute to wind noise rattling and even poor handling so whether you're doing a full-blown resto or a hot rod you may want to consider some frame connectors i put a notch in my frame connect that'll hold this garden hose that's masquerading as a dash 8 fuel line because this engine is going to suck a lot of fuel and to move all that fuel i've got this barry grant mighty enduro pump the thing that's neat about it is totally rebuildable and it's got an 8 micron filter in it but i've encountered a slight problem it's too big to mount under the car too big to hide anyway so to keep with that original sleeper profile i'm putting it right here in the trunk right next to the original spare tire this thing pushes a lot of fuel at 18 psi but we only need seven and nine at wide open throttle now we're not just gonna choke this down with the regulators what we're going to do is go beyond that we're going to run a loop system which is found on most of your modern day efi setups and here's why this is the traditional way to run a fuel system a tank a pump a regulator fuel goes in the carb and gets burned it's pretty simple but pressure builds up in a fuel line so the system can back up and make the pump run hot with the three port bypass regulator excess fuel is returned back to the tank by a return line so fuel is constantly flowing through the electric pump at all times the gas is always circulating no built up pressure in the system everything stays cool and i'm also going to install this heatsink it acts like a small radiator and it cools the fuel as it goes through so i'm gonna put it up here for maximum airflow this system means we run two lines a feed and a return the original tank wasn't set up for a return line and it's trash anyway so i got this oem replacement from classic industries it's a direct reproduction of an original so it doesn't have a return line either but i can fix that the last thing i want to do is have metal shavings in my new gas tank by putting vaseline on my unibit it'll catch most of the shavings and then i'll do the same to my screwdriver and clean up any that fell in the tank boom oh that's a bigot i'm using a dash 8 bulkhead fitting for the return and i drilled out the original pickup fitting wide enough for more dash 8 line and to keep all this hidden it's mounted on the top of the tank which will take up a little bit of trunk room now when we get back from the break i'm gonna finish plumbing up the fuel system button up underneath the hood and then we're gonna see if we can get a heartbeat from old blue hair welcome back to the shop i'm running out of time and i'm determined to turn a key on project blue hair in case you just got here here's what you missed i added frame connectors to the unibody to pull the shag out and keep the engine torque from twisting the body i started a loop fuel system that will cool the fuel and keep the pressure steady just like an efi setup but it's also great for a carbureted engine and now it's time to finish up our fuel system under the hood starting with this bypass regulator fuel is going to come in from the tank when it leaves it's going to go to the carburetor at 7-9 psi and the excess fuel is going to come out this port going back to the tank that's why they call it a loop and it's really cool because it protects the system from over pressurizing and i protected the pump from any power surges by feeding it through this distribution block with a 50 amp fuse right here next to the battery a little weight in the rear end never hurt anybody i even installed an on off switch underneath the dash for our fuel pump just in case now i called the guys over at detroit speed and engineering and had them whip me up this custom serpentine setup it's a prototype but it will be available on their website real soon now this is a non-ac unit because our nova was non-ac and i'd rather keep it that way so i can have the extra ponies this kit starts with a steward high flow water pump which relocates the thermostat housing to the top for better clearance all the pulleys are cnc machined from lightweight 6160 aluminum it also came with a powermaster 140 amp alternator and the steering pump is a new gm design that's been re-valved for better driving response i gotta tell you for a prototype they nailed it newer engines of today like ours are designed to run about 20 degrees hotter than they did in the past it makes for better emissions and better fuel consumption so an aluminum radiator is better suited to dissipate that heat afco sent us their direct replacement radiator with an electric fan and shroud built in but to keep our sleeper disguise i painted the front black all that remains of the hoses the coolant and finish up the wiring i've already filled our gas tank up and because our ls2 has got 10 to 1 compression this baby's only going to drink 93 octane so let's check the fuel system and see if we get leaks i'm gonna roughly dial in my fuel pressure to 8 psi this way when it's running i can really dial it in fire it up how's that for a heart transplant now if you remember this fast unit is a non-adjustable prototype they are working on one that you can tune i still can dial in the carburetor though next week i'm playing with the rear end and i got a surprise on the exhaust later today on muscle car lou shows you how to make a set of old-fashioned super stock springs perfect for any sleeper project along with a beefed up rear end and some creative exhaust suitable for old blue hair's temper [Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome to the shop last week we woke up our sleeper project this week we're gonna get her on her feet we're running a gm ls 364 crate engine in this original 70 nova last week we put in a gas tank fuel pump ran the lines wired the ignition and stiffened up the frame to handle the extra horsepower then we started her up now our ls makes 440 horse and that's not gonna stand up to the abuse we're gonna put it to we do however have some options most guys would just put a nine inch ford in this thing and go about their business but that's gonna ruin our sleeper look i'm going to use this original gm10 bolt except i'm going to put better gears and better axles in it i also want to convert the nova from mono leaf to multi-leaf now this junkyard rear end is exactly like the one that came out of our nova except it has correct purchase for multi-leaf this rear end is commonly referred to as an 8.2 because of the size ring gear that it is now a lot of guys really like the 8.5 because it's a larger ring gear there's more gear selections and better axle selections the only downside is they're becoming harder to find which means they're getting to be more expensive here's a tip for you when you're shopping at the junkyard see how this cover has a ridge this is an 8.2 and 8.5 is smooth like this one here the 8.2 is perfect for what we want to do we're going to use this eaton limited slip differential the posi performance comes with carbon fiber disc you can get it for 17 or 28 spline axles we went with 28 because it's stronger our ring and pinion are street gears from richmond they make everything from a 308 to a 513 for this rear end we're using a 4-11 that'll give us great jump off the line now for you younger guys let me tell you what all those numbers mean there's probably more stress on the ring and pinion than anything else in the car because this is where all the engine's power takes a right-hand turn r411 means the pinion gear has to turn just over four times to make the ring gear go around once great for fast starts and spinning those tires but not good for cruising because the engine's running at a higher rpm with the higher gear like a 308 the engine's running at a lower rpm so it's better on gas but slower off the line like love life and muscle cars there's a downside to everything you've got this higher gear which has more teeth so it has more contact area with the ring gear unlike this lower gear which is smaller and it has less teeth so it's going to have less contact area and it's going to suffer more abuse that's why i'm going with this 411 it's a good compromise and if it breaks it was worth it rebuilding a rear end is not that difficult however there's a lot of specs for torques and clearances you need to pay attention to your ring set will include all that information if you screw this up the cloud behind your car won't be from your tires before i go any further i got to make some room for some new parts i like to spray my brakes down before i tear it apart it keeps the dust down a few weeks ago you saw me do a disc brake conversion on the front of this thing being at the front does the bulk of the stopping i decided to go with stock drums in the back i've seen this mistake before primary shoe secondary shoe you always want to have your primary shoe going towards the front of the vehicle now you know all right i needed some axles that weren't going to break so i called summit and they sent me a pair of these superior axles the evolution series and they're made of high quality steel check it out the splines are rolled and pressed during the forging process making them 35 stronger than stock so they're tough now cut axle splines are machined after the steel cools so they won't be as strong as what i've got right here we changed our 8.2 from a 308 to a 411 with a posi and put some seriously tough axles in it when we get back from the break we're going to give granny's sneakers some serious traction [Music] welcome back we updated our rear end with new gears posi unit axles and drum brakes now it's time to address the suspension this monolith is old and outdated and it's not gonna work for the abuse we're gonna put it through so it's added air we have a few different ways we can fix this we can mini tub it we can put a three link in it or a four link or even ladder bar it but those mods are really hard to hide and i don't want to cut up on blue hair that much back in the day the big yellow traction bars were the norm they were great for keeping the axle where it was supposed to be when you're nailing it the rear end wants to twist upwards and mopar racers back in the 60s had the most problems with that so they came up with a solution the super stock spring when power is transferred to the rear end the pinion tries to rotate upwards putting more stress on the front of the springs our stock monolith was not designed to handle this kind of abuse so the tire spins not what we want on the other hand super stock springs have more leaves up front which means more tension this forces the tires back to the ground so they can hook up this is a stock replacement spring for a second generation nova but it's gonna need a slight modification remember those super stock springs i told you about i'm gonna show you how to make a pair be careful when you're taking these packs apart they need to be clamped so they won't fly apart when you're pulling off the hardware i'm gonna cut this center pin here but i'm gonna leave these two c clamps in place just for safety remember we're not cutting on the front only on the rear of the leaves so i'll mark them to avoid any screw-ups i'm basically creating a short stagger this nova only needs a two inch cut that'll take out all the resistance from the rear of the leaves if you don't have a cold saw for this a chop saw or a cut off wheel will do the trick now i've got a slight problem i got a pretty big gap from end to end i can fix that what you can do is go wander around the junkyard or you can find a leaf spring around your shop and use it again a two inch stagger is all i want once they're cut i'll round them off with a grinder and create a bevel to help them slide better it's about time to slam these babies back together but i've encountered a slight problem my new center pin is larger than my old one but that's okay now you can bore these out if you take your time with a good drill but i ain't got time fire fire we're finally ready to put these together starting with the slider pads then compress the leaves with c-clamps and put in the center pins these factory-style clamps will allow the leaves to slide but it won't allow them to come apart it's not required but i'm tacking them anyway because we plan to push these babies to the limit and that's how you make your own super stock springs less tension in the rear more up front you mo park guys you can go out and buy some you farting chevy guys you gotta make your own but now you know how with new bushings in the rear and also on the springs they can be installed with the original hardware i've got one more thing to help these super stock springs do their job this little pinion snubber is adjustable and it helps limit the rotation of the rear end so it gets all the power it needs to go the ground once i have the rear end in position i can connect the back of my springs with new shackles then introduce our beefed up 8.2 to its new companion and we'll keep it all together with new u-bolts and brackets from classic industries this is what we started out with this is what we got who says size doesn't matter now the last piece of this puzzle are these competition engineering three-way adjustable drag shocks now i've encountered a slight problem being that i'm running a bigger tire my stock shock location was on the outside of the leaf spring i'm changing that moving it to the inside and that'll give me the clearance that i need using eighth inch steel i'll mount these brackets against the frame they'll help distribute all that force we're gonna put on it i'm tacking in steel tubing as a cross member to mount the shocks to then after figuring out where they need to be connected i weld in a bolt [Music] well it may seem like a lot of work to run bigger tires but it's all worth it i assure you later on in the show i'm going to show you how to convert your exhaust system to go in and out of stealth mode [Music] welcome back i've only got a few minutes left to finish up this exhaust now i really want to scare the hell out of my competition before i blow their doors off so i put in these y-pipes for some old-school cutouts but i'm going gonna teach an old dog new tricks now back in the day you would have to manually undo the pipe covers that would allow the exhaust to come straight out of the headers but i've got an even better way and here it is i got these electric cutouts from dmh performance the flip of a switch this butterfly opens up and you've got open exhaust now they're made out of aircraft grade aluminum and you can get them anywhere between two and four inch diameter what's cool about these is you can put them on your existing exhaust with little or no modifications now check this out this switch will get mounted underneath the dash be afraid be very afraid since we're hiding these underneath i'm making some short turndowns to avoid cooking the floor no i'm not huffing fumes i'm using this aluminum tubing to mimic my three-inch drive shaft that i've got on order because i'm using two and a half inch exhaust i've got to make sure that i've got enough clearance to put it all in and this is doable [Music] now i'm gonna finish these off with some cherry bombs now you older guys remember that classic round tubular glass bag well they're still available but times have changed they also came out with an entire line of performance mufflers for every application these are the new vortex series since the exhaust goes through the middle these vortex series mufflers are reversible that means they can be installed any way you want i'm taking extra care to keep these pipes close to the body because we don't want anybody to see the bigger exhaust i got one more thing to fool that unsuspecting victim a little bit of street camouflage [Music] we did a lot of stuff this week but this is by far the coolest next week we're going to button this baby up and then we're going to see what trouble we can get into later [Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome to muscle car we're about ready to go out and find a victim for old blue hair to abuse but before we do that i gotta tell you where we've been in the last few weeks we wired up that carbureted gm ls 364 to a computerized controller from fast created a loop fuel system to avoid unwanted pressure build up beefed up the rear end with an eaton posit unit 411 street gears from richmond and carbon steel axles from superior we threw out the mono leafs and made some mopar style super stock rear springs we started with stock replacement leaf springs shortened some of the leaves and added another one so this spring pack won't twist when we're trying to hook up we finished up the cooling system and put a serpentine setup from detroit speed and engineering then crossed our fingers and fired it up just for fun we installed some electric cutouts to hide old blue hare's temper which we planned to unleash this week we got a lot of work to do this week we got to finish the driveline put in a transmission tunnel then tighten up the interior but first we got to put in a clutch we're running the rocklin t56 6-speed you see a lot of these in some hot street cars we put it in without a clutch or a pressure plate just to mock everything up we pulled out the transmission for the last time so we can finish it and it all starts with a good flywheel now a lot of guys would use aluminum but i'm going with steel because i'm going to abuse the hell out of it the factory put in an 11 inch flywheel but i'm throwing in a 12 inch upgrade that'll give me more contact area and if you scar it up you can always have it resurfaced be sure to remove your power prints use brake parts cleaner it doesn't leave an oily film like carburetor cleaner does mcleod hook me up with this ls series 100 clutch unlike most clutches which are made out of semi-metallic material this one's made out of organic fibers that means it won't throw me around between shifts and it has all the performance of a racing clutch but with a softer edge this diaphragm style pressure plate is perfect for street and track applications this will give me more leverage making it easier when i push in the clutch without affecting the clamping load if your clutch and pressure plate come bolted together it's more than likely balanced so what i did was i marked it so i can put it back together the way it came apart [Music] well my driveshaft isn't in yet so i'm pretty much done underneath for right now but if you guys remember this thing was an automatic and i'm making it a stick so i got some other work to do we got this hydraulic clutch set up from keisler comes with everything you need including the reservoir but the toughest thing to put in is the pedals so they're going in first it's really not that complicated it's just hard to get to these new pedals simply use the factory brake pedal mount all i have to do is drill the holes and attach the slave cylinder to the firewall mount the fluid reservoir run hoses and connect the clutch pedal to the slave cylinder rod the last piece of business is the hydraulic line from the slave cylinder to the trans then fill the reservoir and bleed it i'll let gravity do the work for me the automatic to manual conversion can be a real pain in the butt everything from fab in your linkage to adjusting your clutch but with the hydraulics setup there's far less hardware there's almost no adjustment now some of you guys at the head of the class may have realized i put this wicked clutch in my stock belt housing a lot of you guys must be doing a similar setup because my scatter shield's on back order so i'm temporarily using this trans blanket from rci to keep from playing catch the flywheel and now it's finally time to get rid of the fast freddy hole in the floor it's time for some fabrication shoving this massive engine and trans in here was like putting a wetsuit on barney you know that purple dinosaur so i had to get rid of a few acres of flooring i even had to remove a section of floor bracing to make way for the elevated drive shaft [Music] so starting with some 1 8 thick steel i'm making a box hard this will give back the needed support and be a platform for the tin work who that steals hot get [Music] and now i can get started on the tunnel 18 gauge gives me the strength i need and it's flexible enough to bend it the way i want if you don't have a slip roller like this one use your imagination wow i've made plenty of beautiful rolls with an oxygen bottle and a piece of wood since this tunnel welds to the floor pan this one's gotta go i'm bead rolling the replacement with just a little extra strength you guys get the gist of what's going on here while you take a break i'm gonna keep working on the floor and when you get back we'll see how good the seat fits [Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome back to the last day of our sleeper project here's what we did earlier we put in a hefty clutch setup from a cloud and started a transmission tunnel for the floor and while you were gone he finished it off this tunnel looks really good if i do say so myself although i think it's a tad too tall for my bench seat as a matter of fact it's about 10 inches too tall now i could go to the junkyard and get some bucket seats but i really want to keep that sleeper look on the inside so i'm going to try a little experiment i'm using some shop trash to make a jig so i can bend the front center support [Music] voila [Music] [Applause] now i'll flip it over and cut out a section of the seat frame yeah then i cut the spring frame so i can bring them up a little higher now remember there's no guarantees this is an experiment who said you cannot make a bench seat fit with a 10 inch transmission tunnel with some hog rings i'll tie a few things together now if the vinyl will stretch over this we got it made i'm going to let brent wrestle with that i've got to get on that old steering column because it's got that old automatic shift lever this replacement for my did it doesn't it's a direct fit with factory plugs for the wiring you can get these in polished aluminum but black serves our purpose so does the stock steering wheel one last thing to wire up and disguise need i say anymore i'm about ready to finish off the interior but before i cover all this tin work i gotta seal it to keep the moisture out the guys at auto body coloring supply set us up with some 3m seam sealer this stuff dries fast and lasts forever if you remember i mounted our fast controller on the toe board so i made a box to keep it safe and out of sight a little rattle cam paint to seal the wrap i saved this old flooring hoping to reuse it but that's not going to cover that three-story transmission tunnel i could have ordered carpet but that'd be too easy i wanted to keep the stock looking floor in the car so i decided to call auto custom carpets they've been in the game for over 25 years and they're the largest supplier of automotive carpeting and i knew they would have what i needed to do my floor we'll start by gluing in the supplied padding to reduce the noise in the heat then it's just a simple matter of getting it into place and trimming it to fit [Music] no need to glue the door seals will keep it where you want it i'm thrilled we were able to keep this bench seat because short of the shifter you can't get any closer to a stock look than this one last thing pine of course and later on in the show old blue hair is going to leave the beauty shop [Music] thanks for staying with us we're almost done with old blue hair back here but there's something and i just gotta settle earlier in the show you watched me create my own floor pan every time i use the bead roller to strengthen a piece of sheet metal i get these emails saying that bead rolls are strictly cosmetic well let's find out i've got two pieces of 16 gauge sheet metal one of them is rolled one of them is not here we go 40 80 120 160. it's going 200 pounds let's see what the roll can do got it nice and square 40 80 buck 20 bucks 60. 200 240 250. oh 255. 260. i think we've proven a very important point here bead roll to this point is far superior than flat let's see how much more we can get 20 more to make it 280. here we go placement is everything oh thing of beauty bead rolled is superior modern science i love it now i'm no mr wizard but at least now we've got an answer to that question it's time to get back to work before we go any further this new tunnel needs some corrosion prevention i may apply some undercoating later but for now this'll do this is literally the last new part that's going on our sleeper project the drive shaft shop hooked us up with this three-inch aluminum one-piece unit and it's pre-balanced now all that's left are some last-minute details there's got to be at least 100 puns i can say about what i'm doing right now to old blue hair but i'm far more mature than that now the exhaust can go back on including our street camo even though these parts are mostly new it's better to be safe than sorry so i'm going to lube up the whole front end one of the most important decisions you'd make on any sleeper more important than the driveline is your wheel and tire combination because they're a telltale sign of what you're packing so i decided to go with this classic reproduction of the corvette rally wheel from coker tires my rubber selection was simple mickey thompson came through with these 26x6 sportsman sr radials for the front the rear got a pair of these new eg street radials coming in at 235 60 r15s now i chose this wheel and tire combination for one simple reason they accept junkyard hubcaps these come from an 80-85 malibu and they complete the package well it's done it's loaded with a new ls2 and a 6-speed could it be better sure it could could it have been done differently yes but this sleeper was built like a lot of you guys would have done it on a shoestring budget we met our main goal you'll never know what's under the hood until it's too late it's cold and sloppy outside and i didn't build it toboggan when it warms up we'll take off old granny's sweater and strap on her helmet but until then i want you guys to email powerblocktv.com and tell me how you would test out old blue hair [Music] but for now it's time to put granny to bed until springtime later [Music] sounds pretty nice not bad it'll be a lot better when we get done with it hey welcome back in case you think you got a case of deja vu suddenly don't worry this is indeed the 1970 nova that lou built up on the muscle car show you know the one they called project blue hair well i gotta excuse me a minute i never liked that cartoon anyway two words joe anger management now you gotta love what lou did to granny's grocery getter to make it a true sleeper that could definitely give a wake-up call to any hot rod who tried to pass it the heart of the project is a gm performance parts ls2 crate engine after dropping in the motor lou wired it up to a fast computerized controller created a loop fuel system beefed up the rear end with an eaton posi unit and 411 richmond gears added 28 spline carbon steel axles from superior then he threw out the monolith spring and fabbed up some mopar style super stock springs he bolted up a mcleod hydraulic clutch setup to complete the switch from automatic to a 6-speed and helped it hook up with some mickey thompson rubber around stock look and coke or wheels so what's it doing in here you might ask well the answer lies back under the hood the ls2 is a proven powerhouse with a horsepower rating of 440 at the flywheel but is there ever enough since the introduction o5 components have come along to give the ls2 a lot more power plus the adjustability a lot of you like when it comes to things like controlling timing and fuel curve now all these parts came right from the gm performance parts catalog like cnc machined higher flowing heads larger runner intake and much beefier cam now we're going to try them out on the nova today and see what we get on the dyno jet a little bit later now you may recall the ls2 comes from the factory with the reluctor wheel that's controlled by a special electronic ignition that lou installed on muscle car we'll put that wheel to rest by using get this a small block ford distributor from msd one of their 6al ignition boxes and a blaster 3 coil but first we've got to tear the engine down starting with the cooling system that includes the shroud the radiator followed by the alternator next the water pump and the crank pulley then we can remove the ati balancer take off the front cover pull the intake and carburetor off as one piece and remove this valley cover to remove the valve covers disconnect the coil packs pull the plug wires and remove the bolts with the packs out of the way we can take off the valve covers next the rockers are removed then the push rods we can loosen the headers and then remove the cylinder heads now we pull the lifters remove the oil pump and timing chain and finally the cam comes out ah just made it we're going to try out a hot cam kit from gm performance parts in that ls2 and it consists of this hydraulic roller cam shaft and 16 new springs that we've already installed in these heads now the camshaft specs out at 525 intake 525 exhaust with 112 degrees of lobe separation as a matter of comparison this one i just took out specs out at 500 and 500 now remember with a hydraulic roller you lube it with motor oil only and be really careful not to nick the journals you know we've heard reports that some of you guys mentioned and you've gained up to 100 horsepower with this new hot cam setup well we should be way ahead of that with the bigger heads and intake we're fixing the bolts on not to mention a few of the extra parts [Music] welcome back to the horsepower shop today we're giving this 1970 nova sleeper a wake-up call with some serious bolt-ons from gm performance parts now in case you just joined us it's got an ls2 crate engine that lou installed over on the muscle car show it makes 440 horsepower at the flywheel but that'll change when we get done with it we just installed a new camshaft from the hot cam kit which also includes new valve springs now these are necessary because the original springs are only good to 500 lift these aluminum heads are designed after the c6r race heads and they flow within 10 of them now they come with solid stem valves that measure 216 on the intake 159 on the exhaust side while joe installs those heads let me show you the intake upgrade for our ls2 it's a gm racing design that takes no additional porting for maximum performance it weighs in at only 10 pounds and it's specifically designed to fit the l76 l92 cylinder head it's also been machined to accept any 4150 style carburetor with the valley cover bolted back up and a felpro gasket in place the intake installs with supplied mounting bolts hey before reinstalling the car we're going to add this two inch billet spacer that will improve the air fuel mix into the manifold and throttle response plus with the car being off the intake a little bit like this it'll also cool down the charge give us a little bit more horsepower for our mods we spec out the 770 cfm holley carburetor now it has center hung fuel bowls vacuum secondaries and an automatic electric choke if you guys plan on doing this swap keep in mind you will need some extra parts like this rocker stand shaft and the actual rockers now there's one for the intake a different one for the exhaust oh and by the way you'll also need different length push rods but don't let all that scare you away because you can get all these pieces for right at 380 bucks with the valve train finished we can bolt up a new set of gm valve covers with the oil pump bolted back up it's time for another little interesting piece this is a distributor drive fuel pump eccentric this part drives the distributor which we mount up front this lobe is for the fuel pump but we don't need it since we've got one that's electric anyway here's how it installs this part installs onto the cam sprocket and of course make sure you use some loctite on the bolts then the distributor drive part attaches to it with a long hex bolt the next thing to go on is this new front distributor drive cover that comes with a built-in timing marker for a damper we got a hold of the guys at ati and they sent us one of their steel super dampers now this thing is accepted in nhra and ihra and has an sfi spec rating of 18.1 first we had to use one of the drill fixture kits to install a locator pin that will keep the balancer from spinning on the front of the crankshaft now we can bolt up this gm ls series water pump assembly especially made for our setup with the front drive distributor it's made by wagner automotive and it's the same one used by a lot of circle track racers our new water pump obviously moves everything forward so we needed some new bracketry to move up all the accessories now wagner automotive helped us out with all this stuff too with some trick looking brackets chrome alternator tensioner power steering pump pulleys belts and all the correct length hardware to install it all first we'll bolt up the crank pulleys followed by the power steering pump now the alternator then the water pump pulley and we'll wrap it all up with the belts moving on to electronics we're installing the msd ignition box on the passenger side floorboard then using a bracket we're bolting up the coil under the hood and finally dropping in the distributor are you ready to hear this thing what do you think oh yeah here we go [Music] yeah sounds pretty bad but bad enough no way we're gonna break it in real good then bring it back in a few weeks and you'll get to see what happens when we add a power adder to this ls2 well i think we're getting ready to hear it with the cutouts open better hold your ears [Music] all right we're up to 180 i think we're good to make a run all right hey we're back in the horsepower shop and uh soazo project blue hair now you know this car it's a 1970 nova that we've played with recently after our buddy lou and muscle car gave it an ls2 crate motor of course in here more power is never enough so we treated it to a hot cam kit some cnc machined heads with larger intake runners a racing design intake topped by a holley 770 car now to give it fire we used an msd small block 4 distributor 6al ignition box and a blaster coil from the factory the ls2 is rated at 440 horsepower at the flywheel that equals about 400 at the rear wheels of this nova let's see how much we gain after that little horsepower hop up [Music] all right not too bad 435 horsepower at the rear tires well that's definitely not enough so today we're going to give all blue hair a little shot of viagra now it's a cheater nitrous oxide system from nos it includes this bottle nitrous and fuel solenoids this injector plate and the jets that'll give it up to a 250 horsepower shot now we also stepped up for some added options that we'll show you as we go that nos cheater is a wet nitrous system as opposed to a dry and basically here's the difference a dry system is primarily used in a fuel-injected engine where the fuel and nitrous are delivered separately here the vehicle's ecm regulates the amount of fuel going through the injectors in a wet system whether with a carburetor or efi the nitrous and fuel are injected through the spray bar at the same time of course they make wet systems for both efi and carbureted engines like the nova here hey thanks pal look here mike already installed the bottlenet adapter and these brackets let's give this thing a home this ought to be a good spot here since we have a grommet hole already in place to run our hose now remember the valve knob needs to be pointed toward the front of the car now i can mark some holes for drilling then after bolting down the bottle i can tighten up the bracket the injector plate goes on next that is after we disconnect the throttle linkage the fuel line remove the carburetor and remember this two inch spacer we installed earlier well due to a lack of hood clearance it has to go next we remove the long carb studs and replace them with shorter ones from the kit then lay down a gasket the injector plate with the nos label facing up another gasket and finally the carb well the solenoids are dexed notice how i just bolted this bracket up to our nitrous solenoid so now i can install this filter fitting in the inlet port now make sure you use teflon paste on these pipe fittings only and don't over tighten then we'll take this npt compression fitting adapter and install it here on the outlet side now loosely mount the nitrous solenoid near the nitrous or blue end of the injector plate install the jet you want to start with and we'll go with a 150 shot followed by this extension tube now the fuel solenoid goes together the same way it mounts near the rear of the injector plate so with the nitrous bottle mounted up and our solenoids installed we're just a few steps away from spraying our way to more horsepower how much you'll have to hang with us to find out [Music] hey welcome back to horsepower world blue harris getting a little shot of spray and it ain't the kind for grooming see we're trying to get a little more power out of this ls2 that loose shoved in this old nova and now that the nitrous and fuel solenoids are already on the motor it's time to run our nitrous supply line starting at the bottle then we route it under the car keeping it away from heat and of course moving parts now it's always a good idea to purge the line just to make sure there isn't any trash in it either from shipping or from when the line was assembled go ahead and open it up joe now the next step would be to attach it to the solenoid but we've got a little option to add first you bet it's a purge valve kit and here's why it's a pretty good idea to have one liquid nitrous can turn into a gas in the supply line when it's exposed to heat so you activate the system and for a brief time there's only gas going into the engine and not as much power well with the purge valve kit you know there's plenty of liquid nitrous at the solenoid every time you press that button we first install the purge adapter to the solenoid inlet connect the nitrous feed line to the purge adapter nut install the npt adapter filter then the purge solenoid goes onto the adapter fitting next use the 90 degree mpt fitting to install the blow down tubes to the outlet port the leds attach to the ends of the tubes and if you're like us you'll need longer tubes than those supplied in the kit since we've already got a high volume fuel system installed on the car we don't need to run a separate pump for the nitrous so what i did is i tapped into the main fuel line using a dash 6 union with an eighth inch to dash 6 fitting this will supply our fuel solenoid with enough fuel now the next step is to go ahead and install the activation switch on the car base using the supplied bracket from the kit wiring for the system basically goes like this we've got ground wires from each solenoid bolted to the intake two hot leads from each solenoid to the micro switch and from the micro switch this wire goes to a switched 12 volt source for the purge solenoid wiring we've got this wire we're using for a lead that's also bolted to the intake this one goes to a switch inside the car and we're also using it to activate the leds that light up the nitrous when you purge the system here inside the car we found a great place to mount the arming switch for the nitrous system and the button for the purge we started with the 150 horsepower jets and the timing two degrees for each 50 horsepower entry finally we worked our way up to the maximum 250 horse shot and the result 666 horsepower to rear wheels now of course you can't expect the same results with every engine the results will vary according to your displacement and other modifications now what's the price of this extra horsepower i thought you'd never ask about 500 bucks for the nos cheater system another 160 for that led purge kit there's only one thing wrong with the nova after the engine swap and all the work we actually did the stock hood no longer clears so we turned to good mark and they sent us this two inch cowl all steel piece for a replacement old blue hair is not quite the sleeper she was before and even with this little extra bit attitude nobody's ever gonna guess she's making this much power next up we're headed to the ultimate cool car celebration at road atlanta this thing fits great even out of the box [Applause] [Music] today we're looking back at old blue hair now she's still sporting her original paint which is really great for that sleeper look but after horsepower got a hold of her she's looking a little well confused so rick and brent are gonna give her a facelift now i've had my fair share of facelifts staying out of this one hey our project sleeper nova here is still wearing the same original green paint that the general put on her back in 1970. for her age she's holding that pretty good this black hood on the other hand looks out of place we got to do something with it but matching this original green paint is going to be pretty much impossible so we're going to give the old girl a quickie and go over the whole thing now i know the date on muscle car every project we've shown you has been from bare metal up but you know sometimes it's just not in the budget so as long as the original paint's not peeling or cracking it looks pretty good you can paint it right over it with the proper prep we're going to show you how to do just that it all starts with removing the essentials like the bumpers trim and door handles you could mask these off and still get pretty good results but a little extra time here will really pay off in the end just make sure to label everything and don't lose any parts now we're going to leave the side trim on here until we actually took it off and came to the realization this step looks lame so what we're going to do shave off the side trim here and fill in these holes i'll cut these studs off first then come back and smooth them off with a grinder make sure to remove the paint from in and around the holes so your welds don't get contaminated and weld slowly so you don't overheat the panel there's a couple of small areas of rust around the wheels that need to be taken care of most guys would fill it in with fiberglass filler but i'm going to cut it out and weld some metal in [Music] brent's making a patch out of sheet metal this 18 gauge steel will closely match the nova's existing panels it's easy with a shear and a break but you could make it with tin snips and a vise too well once the outer panel was cut away we realized rust went a little deeper than expected so another patch had to be made [Music] some weld through primer will seal the exposed metal on our inner patch now don't run a continuous beat this is one time when it's good to be tacky space out the weld so you won't warp the snot out of it now the old girl here she's got a few dents and dings and bruises just like any car is going to pick up over the years now i'm not pointing any fingers but somewhere between horsepower and muscle car she managed to pick up an extra dent back here this one's a little bit bigger than the other ones that we've been dealing with so it's going to require a stud gun to pull it out but before we can do that we got to get started with the mallet small dings like this one on the fender can be pulled out once the area is stripped to metal a stud is welded to the surface using a specially designed gun use it to pull out the dent then grind the stud off the hammer and dolly will correct the high and low spots left behind next feather the edges of the repair lay on a thin coat of body filler and sand it until the contours are just right they call it bodywork for a reason it's work but that's what it takes to smooth out the wrinkles she's gotten over the years we're lucky that our nova is a low mileage survivor so the repair work is minimal all right guys i'm going to fill you in on one of my little secrets here now every body guy i've ever met has never heard of this but once he tries it he'll use it for the rest of his life i call it stink rock the correct name for it is actually grill brick and it was invented for the restaurant industry it's used for cleaning grills and stovetops and that type of thing why do i call it stinkrock because when you use this stuff it smells like the porta potty at your local construction site [Music] as you sand with it the face conforms to the shape of the panel so you can get those compound curves perfect although rick's getting his stink on i'm going to be stripping this rear panel this cleaning disc will take off all the old paint and sealer without hurting the metal once the paint and sealer are stripped off you may need to come back with a portable sandblaster to get the remaining rust off [Music] now we are just about done with the prep work on our project sleeper nova next week we're gonna roll her into the booth and get some primer and paint put on her now we've gotten a lot of emails from you guys about project overkill so we're gonna show you everything we've done to our 70 challenger all next time on muscle car [Applause] [Music] we've been taking a look back at a project that i've got a ton of time in now it's rick's turn hey what do you got over there well lou we all know that you are definitely no body guy but that's all right brent and i've got this one covered my sleeper nova here was looking pretty tired so we're giving the old girl a facelift now i know not every guy out there has ten thousand dollars in his budget for a top-end paint job it's not that big of a deal what we're doing here is showing the average guy how we can get it done for a whole lot less last week we pulled all the trim knocked out some dents took care of some rust spots and spent a lot of time smoothing out all of our imperfections there's still more sanding to be done now i could spend weeks blocking insane in a car but dude this is no show car so we got to keep it simple but you also have to keep in mind the more time you spend with this in your hand the better your paint job is going to look once our blocking was done we used a d a sander with 180 grit the lacquer would jam up a finer grit paper and of course a grit would leave deep scratches that would have to be smoothed out just be careful here not to dig into the surface with the edge of the disc okay now this is the point where most of you guys are probably going to have to turn it over to a paint shop if you've done your prep work correctly even an inexpensive place will give you great results just make sure that they use good materials and you get a warranty if you're lucky enough to have access to a spray booth now is the time to roll it in whatever you do don't try to paint this at your house the chemicals and materials used are not only bad for the environment they'll use your lungs as punching bags one of the problems with painting over original lacquer is that the solvents in your new paint can attack it and it could soften it which will cause wrinkling and peeling and that type of thing that's why we're using the rusty fender this is a zero voc primer so there's no solvents in it that's gonna attack our original finish plus it'll give us a nice even hue to apply our solvent-based urethanes on top of this is my first time using this primer and i've noticed something it's pretty transparent for a high build primer so don't be surprised if you can still see through the first coat three are actually required for full coverage we're using a guide coat to show high and low spots there's a lot of different types out there but we're using powder a rub down with a long block and 180 grit comes next if we weren't on a budget a urethane primer would smooth out the texture left from the blocking but to save money we're skipping it this panel lasts for 10 or 15 years no sweat but it's no high-end paint job either now rather than drop another 300 bucks into priming and re-blocking we're gonna paint right over our first layer of primer but before we can do that we need to wet sand it with 400 grit to smooth out the scratches left from the 180 block wet sanding can make a big mess but there's really just no way around it we'll worry about the floor later but the car needs a wash now make sure to use a soap that doesn't have any sealers or wax in it just pure soap oh old blue hair is getting a sponge bath that's good [Laughter] now the good thing about washing the car down like this other than the fact that i got to get brent wet is that you can look down the side of it and see how straight your body work is on a job like this a painter can spend more time masking than actually painting i'm using a foam tape to mask this door jamb it's faster but it is a lot more expensive brent on the other hand is using masking tape it takes longer but it's a whole lot cheaper either way it'll get the job done think of your sealer as an insurance policy since we're painting over mismatched materials lacquer bondo bare metal and high build primer the sealer will create a barrier that locks everything down and it gives a uniform surface for the paint all blue hair is keeping her original color an age-appropriate shade of aqua green metallic with a paint to reduce a ratio of one to one build the color up slowly with fifty percent overlap this will prevent the tiger striping you can get when you spray it on too heavy if you spray it on too light you'll get modeling lay down your base until you have good coverage now this could be anywhere from one to eight coats depending on the color let it flash dry until it's dull to allow your solvents to evaporate between coats a final dust coat will make sure that the metallic is even three coats of high solid clear will protect that fresh color and give it plenty of shine final step reassembly now this is where the organization you did taking it apart will really pay off the paint is still soft and it won't be fully cured for about 60 or 90 days so you got to be careful during that time you can wash it but again don't use anything with sealers or wax and don't throw a car cover on it this thing needs to breathe well our operation was a success it's amazing what a facelift can do now the key to making a low budget paint job like this work great is taking your time on the prep at a shop time is money so even if you send it out for paint the more prep you do yourself the more green you're going to keep in your pocket hey lou what do you think she's looking 30 years younger that nova is so hot i think i'm gonna take her out take her for a night on the town buy her a bottle of octane booster and see what happens later

Channel: Gunpowder & Gasoline

Views: 357,306

Keywords: powernation, powerblock, powernation tv, powerblock tv, how to, cars, trucks, do it yourself, full build, muscle car, 1970 Chevy Nova, nova, low-mileage 1970 Chevy Nova, GM crate engine, horsepower

Id: KC6nStZo8D4

Length: 93min 4sec (5584 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 24 2021