66 Nova SS Project

[69c4x11]

Cut the cowl, heck, fill the thing and wiper delete it

[byndbad914]

Originally Posted by Royalworks

Are you going to rework the cowl vent to fit the hood. That is what I would do if they don't wanna work with you. That way you can still keep the carbon fiber and not have to do fiberglass work. Any other ideas on this?

Talked to Tracy at Anvil today and he gave me some tips on how to reform it without cutting it, and then they approved a discount I asked to have put to credit my card to cover me having my body guy do the work locally so the customer service has been great. Manal was really helpful with the purchasing and approved the credit within minutes of my conversation with Tracy so I have to say I am happy with the company's willingness to work out the issue. They were also willing to bring it back and ship me another but I didn't feel the need to go through all of that for something that sounds resolvable with simple rework.

Tracy suspected that it may have been pulled from the mold a bit too early and sagged and that while it isn't common, he knew of some ways I can reform it and pull the hood back up to match the cowl. I am going to be painting it so any minor rework causing some finish issues won't matter to me. I didn't want to rework the cowl because if I had an issue with the hood down the road and replaced it with another, I would then be reworking the cowl to put it back.

This weekend I am hoping to get a start on placing the front suspension pieces. I have some tabs I ordered that have 1/2" thru holes and I need 5/8" and had just planned to drill them. Holy chit they are HARD so it killed my bit immediately - I need to find a bitchin' drill bit to get through 'em I have done all the math in my engineering software to know my pickup points and so forth, just need to get the darn tabs drilled

[byndbad914]

As for that Spiegel car, thanks for the info on that. I went to a TA website I know of and saw that exact photo. On the same website there is info on the car that started me road racing back in the mid 90s.

http://www.historictransam.com/Drive...Mustang78.html


I had a 70 Mustang, met a guy named Mark Behne at a huge Ford show in SoCal that had restored this car (looked different back then, now it is completely a spec restoration, I liked his paint scheme a bit better back then and still have a photo of the car in my office) and owned it back then. I was drag racing my car at the time but loved the TA stuff; he invited me to his house, so forth and after becoming friends he invited me out to Willow Springs to watch the car run. He told me I would only have to road race once to never drag race again. I went out to watch and he offered the wheel to me! Literally having never been in the car or road raced, I hit the track in it and put down a few laps. He was right, I stopped drag racing that day

[byndbad914]

Tacked in the front lower control arms today and then was able to truly test fit the wheel in the fenderwell and visually verify the placement of the wheel center looks correct. I am going to have to get a bunch of custom tabs either plasma or waterjet cut to finish up and do the rear - I had a bunch of tabs I custom designed for the 914 and a few were left over that worked absolutely perfect for placing the susp components on the Nova too. I designed the tabs so there is either flat surfaces that align to square tube so there is no thinking, just attach it square, or they have a surface I can set level to ground and then adjust the height along the tube. In this case, the tabs are perfect as they align with either the top surface or the bottom surface of the tub and get the hole center exactly where I want it for correct ride height.

I took a break and went back to the old susp design files I had on the Porsche and updated them for this car. I set a lot of the lengths to things I can either measure with a tape or angle finder for ease of install. There are a bunch of (reference) dims that auto update as I mess with bump and so forth to verify toe doesn't change thru bump or verify camber gain. Certain dims are set such as the upright height as it is a welded piece that won't change (at least not without a trip into a wall). Those pieces were all designed in the same software for the Porsche.

Front sups has the 2.821" roll center height, rear is 3.470". All of that is what it ends up, I didn't force it to those weird dims Well, I guess I sort of did by using defining all of the other dims but nonetheless, that is a driven dimension by the design so I work all the other stuff to get those numbers roughly where I want them.

Interesting enough, the modern Vette has similar front suspension setup dims as the Porsches dating clear back to my 1972 car, so it is a pretty proven design. The front susp has a 10deg KPI and 6 to 7 deg caster and that is what Vettes and Porsches basically have. So on the front, I work the design to get the upright angle at 11.5deg - that is 10deg KPI with 1.5 deg of negative camber for the tires. The rear uprights have an 8.5deg angle built in so I went with 9deg to have 0.5 deg neg camber on the rear as a base setting. This is what the 914 had and showed perfect tire wear on the track with Hoosiers. Good thing is that won't chew the street tires up too bad at those settings. The fronts I will have to rotate on the wheel periodically to even out the wear.

Static RCs are inline with modern Vettes and Porsches as well.

Edit, pics attached. Note on the close up of the front tabs I have a flat spot on them I can use magnetic angle finders to hold flush with he top of the chassis. That is what I meant by having custom tabs with placement features. I want to try to come up with a rocker mechanism so I can run the Penskes internally.

[byndbad914]

weather was nice and I picked up a plasma cutter so I was able to have the garage door open to help alleviate some of the fumes as I cut away at the car. Got the rear frame in as well and mounted up some of the rear suspension. As for the front, I welded together the core support and other items to make it a rigid piece, then on the lower part I have some 1x2 that I bolted to the frame. That way the nose can still come off from the frame and firewall. The square holes in the front are where the 3/8" screws pass thru that I used with the 1x2.

[byndbad914]

we had some snow - heaven forbid that would happen in the Denver area - so the steel place I source from was closed Saturday so I couldn't pick up the pieces I need to really roll this weekend. Here is how far I got before I ran out of 1x2 and still need some round bar to do the front upper A mods.

At the front I added the tabs for the upper A rear mount and cut the existing rear upper, which was longer than the existing front caster link, to start the front (I have to redo that for the rear as well). I also test fit the radiator; this is probably a bit premature but I want to make sure my front bracing didn't affect my plan to lay it down as shown. Keeping the weight low and I can exhaust out of the hood if I choose to later. I will close off the cowl above the radiator after final fitting - it will be nearly the last thing to actually go in.

At the rear, I placed the toe link tabs and set that link in place. After adding the tie, jacking it up to get the lower A parallel, all of the other links came in within a degree of what my CAD modeling states so they are essentially spot on. It is nice to see a rough check be so close.

I also placed the 1x2 from the main frame to the rear bumper- I will be cutting this up near the main frame and adding in a brace or bolted interface so the body can be removed. This will be the diffuser mount. I also tied in the rear body right at the rear bumper mounting so I can carry the stock bumper, and that is obviously a bolted joint in the photos - again, the body is meant to lift up and off from the frame and drivetrain assy. It probably looks a little flimsy (it did to me) but once that is all bolted up you cannot shake the rear, it shakes the whole body.

I will be out of commission for the next couple weeks with travel next weekend and friends in town the following, so I am bummed I couldn't get the tubing I needed to roll hard today... I would have had the front done for sure.

[Payton King]

up to be one of my favorite builds. Appears that you are really moving when you do have a chance to work on it.

Look forward to more progress.

[byndbad914]

got the upper As built for the front - I have seen them done this way before, not totally sure if I am a fan yet. Having a caster adjustment with the clevis, then treating the two rod ends for just camber seems like a slick idea, but I am not totally sold on it. Having two adjustable ends on the upper A (clevis and rod end) means that arm can float up and down until it the jam nuts are tight - it is hard to describe but it seems to me like if one gets loose it could loosen the other and then the arm would just collapse. I can more or less decouple camber and caster with the two rod ends and no clevis, so I may just weld the clevis solid. I can also utilize the lower A to decouple the camber as well.

Not a lot of thought probably gets put to this stuff but when I am at the track, making a caster adjustment without affecting camber is nice - I always have to adjust toe but at least removing one adjustment would be nice. Any time you start rotating the A arms to get caster, then go back and adjust camber, it will pull the pivot at the upright along that angle, so caster is coupled into camber adjustments. Probably no real way around it.

Anyway, pics of the front susp tacked into place. The upper A can be shimmed up (or down with removal) at the upright, just below the large rod cup on the upper, to adjust roll center. Also got the lower As level all around and the final ride height is set. These are 16" wheels and the front tires are 23.5" diam so while they may not seem tucked up in the fender, if I go with 18s for the street they will be up in there another inch. At the front rocker just behind the front tire I measure 6". With some tire squish once it is on the ground probably 5-3/4". The Porsche was around 4.5" or 4.75", so not a whole lot higher than that car was, an inch or so.

[waynieZ]

Its looking good.

[no go nova]

Crazy build I think you should have tried a wide body for front tire clearance. I'm gonna subscribe wanna see how this project turns out.