Restarting My '70 Nova Project

[BravoXray]

I finished out the year by getting the right side fender installed and aligned, and inner fender installed. The fender wasn't too bad to get adjusted and aligned, but the inner fender was a pain in the ass. The radiator support, fender and inner fenders are all new parts from Auto Metal Direct, and for the most part, they were well made parts, but like any repop auto parts, they don't always fit together perfectly. Just getting the inner fender in and in place was like solving a puzzle, but once I did get it into place, I was able to get seven of the nine bolts in and started fairly easily. One of he last two, the one farthest to the front below the marker light, bolts the radiator support, inner fender and the fender together, so getting the holes in all three pieces lined up was a real treat, and even then the bolt wouldn't start straight, but I finally got it in and tight, The other one that is on the inside of the fender at the front of the wheel opening was a bear. Initially, there was an inch gap between the mount on the fender with a welded nut, and the hole in the inner fender. I finally had to use a couple of 1/4" bolts and washers to pull them together enough to get the proper bolt in and tight. The final piece was a brace that hold the bottom lip of the fender to the radiator support, and that went in pretty easily. But, I got all the bolts in and tight and it looks good.
I'm considering assembling the left fender and inner fender before I mount them to the car as a couple of guys on Steve's Nova site have recommended. If I do that though, I'll have to have someone help me get it on the car. I have a couple of other things I can do while I decide on that though.

It's New Year's Eve, so I hope everyone has a good time and stays safe and well, and have a great 2024!

 

[BleedingOrange]

Always look forward to your updates. Looking great !

 

[BleedingOrange]

I cann,t remember if you mentioned it before, what method do you use to properly break-in your new motor ?

 

[BravoXray]

I cann,t remember if you mentioned it before, what method do you use to properly break-in your new motor ?

The big thing is to properly break in the new cam. They recommend starting it, check for oil pressure and leaks, get the timing checked and set, then run it at about 2,000 RPM for 20 minutes. By then, the rings should have begun to seat also.
As soon as I get the front end assembled, the radiator and hoses hooked up and filled with coolant, I'm going to run it for another 20 minutes or so just for good measure. I pulled the oil filter a few weeks ago and checked it for metal, and it was clean as a whistle. I also pulled the valve covers and checked the valve adjustments and they were all pretty much spot on.
This cold weather has slowed down my progress as I don't heat the shop when I'm working down there and it's been around 35-45° in there. Most of what I'm doing now has to be done without gloves, my fingers get really cold and I have to used the heat gun to thaw them out. It takes 5 or 6 hours to get it warmed up over 50° in there, so it's not worth burning all that gas just to work for a couple of hours.
I've been doing a lot of fiddly stuff, getting window trim sorted and ready, figuring out where to mount the cruise control actuator, and installing a new connector on the cable that attaches it to the car. The cable was about 8 feet long, and I only needed it to be about 2 feet long, so I cut off the original connectors, shortened it up and am putting new Deutsch connectors on it. I'm also making new inserts for the headlight adjuster screws. The new radiator support's holes for the plastic inserts are larger than stock, and they easily pull out, so I designed and 3D printed some new ones, but it took a couple of changes to get them to fit properly. I have one side done, but have to redo the other side.
This next week, it's going to be down in the single digits, so I won't be doing anything then, but hopefully it'll warm up again after that, but we'll see what happens.
I don't think I'm going to quite make my original estimate of getting it finished in a year, as I started working on it a little bit in late February after I had back surgery in late January.

Everybody stay safe and warm.

 

[BleedingOrange]

Awesome, thanks for the info. You are certainly doing it right, and making progress.

 

[JPRambo]

I have a 1964 Chevelle Malibu SS convertible with the original 265 and 4 spd. But it will be a while before I get to work on it. So I put the outer parts in storage.

 

[BravoXray]

Great way to store them!
I hung a lot of my parts from nails and wire in the back of my shop, kept them out of the way, and easy to retrieve. I added quite a few more after this picture was taken.

 

[Skeletor]

I’ve had a 69 charger r/t se 4 speed dana 60 for for almost 24 years. I had a 76 Camaro beater for maybe 15 years. I’ve had three modern challengers. I’m in my forever challenger now though, 2016 plum crazy purple, hellcat 6 speed manual.

 

[BravoXray]

Well, the temperatures have finally moderated, so I can work in the shop without freezing my fingers and feet.
I got back to work on finishing up the front wiring, headlights, turn signals and side markers. The American Auto Wire front harness has a LOT more wire than needed, I think I cut at least six feet off most of the wires. I ran the harness in the same type of loom I've been using and routed it over the inner fender, behind the left headlight, across the radiator support and back around the right headlight.
There are two wire in the harness that my car doesn't use, a 12 ga. orange wire for an electric fan, and an 18 ga. brown exciter wire for the alternator. I rolled them up and will secure them behind the headlight just in case a need for them should arise.
I use a little trick to pull wires out of the loom that I have used before, using a little pointed loom spoon. It has a pointed, tapered and curved point that I push through the braid in the loom to spread the weave apart and I can feed the wires out through it, instead of out through the split. This method keeps the wires right where you want them. Cutting all the wires to the right length, stripping, selecting the correct terminals and crimping all them is a slow fiddly process, and I check the colors and terminals repeatedly to make sure I have it right. On the left headlight, the low and high beam connectors are special ones to allow two wires on each terminal, one from the headlight switch, and one that runs over to power the right headlight. Those are a real pain to get both wires in the proper amount and crimp it without one popping out, but I managed. The side marker and parking light wires do the same thing to feed both lights from one wire and then feed it over to the right side. I think I only have one more wire to run up front, the wire to the water temp sender. It was in the harness to be run along the fender and then across to the sender on the front of the intake manifold, but I'm going to run it across the firewall to the rear of the engine and then along the valve cover to the sender. Things are pretty crowded back there, so it's going to be fun!
I was going to set the battery into the tray and hook it up so I could test all the lights, but the cable I installed that runs to the starter is about 18" too short, so I'm going to have to make up a longer one. I have the cable, terminals and crimper to do that, the big thing is getting it off the starter and removing the loom clamp that holds it to one of the engine frame mount bolts. At least the car is up in the air plenty high enough to work under it.
I pulled the turn signals out of the bumper to check them out and make sure I had the wires correct. They have a grommet on the wires where they go through the inner fender, and both of them are a hard as rocks and won't stay pressed into their holes. So, I carefully cut them off and removed the connector shell and ran the wires through some new grommets that will work much better.

Leftover wire.

Loom Spoon, handy little tool.

 

[BleedingOrange]

Awesome. Looking forward to seeing more progress now that spring is just around the corner.

 

[dodge man]

I hate to say it but your wiring is all wrong. It’s to neat and organized. It should look like a rats nest. I joke, it looks really

 

[murphy1244]

That is a really nice wire kit,much better than the ez wiring kit.

 

[BravoXray]

That is a really nice wire kit,much better than the ez wiring kit.

The American Auto Wire kit was very good, very complete. All the wires were plenty long and every wire was marked with it's purpose, so that made it very easy to assemble. It even came with a new headlight switch, dimmer switch, horn relay and a wide array of terminals used for each specific circuit. I only had a couple of questions and their customer service was very helpful in answering them.

 

[Skeletor]

Rewiring my car was probly the best thing I ever did for it.

 

[BravoXray]

Rewiring my car was probly the best thing I ever did for it.

I learned a long time ago when I had semi trucks and trailers, that one you have to hunt down problems in a wiring harness, it's time to replace the wiring harness. I did that on three of my flatbeds/stepdecks and it was worth every penny and saved a lot of time repairing bad harnesses. I used modular harnesses like are used on new trailers, and they were reasonably priced, under $300 for the whole works.

 

[BravoXray]

The last few days I've been working on getting all the wiring finished up. First thing was to get and install a new positive battery cable, as the one I had lacked about 6 inched of being long to get to the battery terminal. I thought I had some 0 gauge cable, but I didn't, so I picked one up at the local battery shop. The terminal on the starter isn't easy to get to with the headers on, cold fingers didn't help, but I finally got it on. I cleaned off a boss on the front of the block so it would make a good connection, and installed the ground cable. It's a little long, so I might shorten it later.
I got all the lights working after a couple of glitches, i.e. no backup lights, and wrong color wires on the front park.turn lights.
The backup lights sort of stumped me for a while, I had power to the backup switch, power back up to the transmission harness plug that connects to the bulkhead connector, but no power to the wire coming out of that connector. That connector is a female, and using a paper clip, there was power there, but when it was connected no power came out the other side. Pulled the connector apart and found I hadn't gotten the pin pushed in all the way and wasn't contacting the male pin. I got it seated correctly, plugged back together and I had backup lights.
The turn signals have a blue and a black wire coming out to connect to the harness, blue for turn, black for parking lights. The harness was wired opposite to that, black for turn and blue for park light. Hmmmm. So, I swapped the wires in the connectors on the lights and connected them to give them a test. Well, it appears they are wired incorrectly, so black goes to blue, and blue goes to black. They are even swapped according to the factory wiring diagram.
Next, I ran the wire for the water temp sender, tying it to the main harness on the firewall and then forward past the distributor, up to the sender, installed an eye terminal and attached it to the sender. I checked it by shorting it to ground, and that made the gauge read full scale hot, so it works. Did the same with the oil pressure sender, and it works too.
I cut to length, installed braid on and put the connector on the horn wire. I had tested the horn and it works, but someone had bent the mounting bracket, I have no idea why, but I heated it up and got it bent back close to how it should be shaped. Popped it in the blasting cabinet and got rid of the burned paint, then gave the whole unit a fresh coat of black paint. Looks like new now.
So, I think the only wiring to be addressed is to secure the harness that runs across the radiator support with some loom clamps and screws.
I need to blast and repaint the top radiator mount as it looks pretty bad, then I can get the radiator installed, heater and radiator hoses installed and fill it with coolant. I also need to get 5 or 10 gallons of gas and put it in the tank, and it should be ready to start up.
Getting closer!

 

[BleedingOrange]

Awesome. Looking forward to the long awaited start-up video. You are certainly getting there. Should be a very exciting spring for you when you can finally get your beautiful car on the road.

 

[BravoXray]

I haven't had a lot of time lately to work on the Nova, as my friend has finally found a house in the area, and have been spending a few hours a day loading, moving and unloading her stuff. And she has a lot of stuff. A lot. I've also been doing a bunch of repair on some of her furniture, mainly a couple of antique dressers and drawers. Fortunately her new place is only about eight miles away, so the trips are short.

While checking out the electrical system on the Nova, I discovered a couple of problems, the EFI pump in the tank wasn't getting power and the EFI hand controller wasn't powering up. After a bit of investigation, I figured out that the extension cable I installed between the EFI power hub and the hand controller was wired incorrectly. If I unplugged it from the hub, the pump would run. I had depinned the connector on the end of the cable that goes through the firewall to be able to get it through the grommet, but according to my diagram and pictures, I had put it back together correctly. The wires on the connector on the hand controller were arranged differently though, swapped left to right and swapped to to bottom. Apparently, the extension was only meant to extend the cable to the throttle body unit not to the hand unit. So I depinned it again and arranged the connectors to match those on the hand unit. Plugged everything back in and it all works now. The fun part was that to get to the connector at fault, I had to remove the dash, as it was directly behind the instrument cluster, and tear the harness apart. What a pain in the ass, but I got it apart without breaking anything except for breaking a wire on the cruise control indicator light connector, and screwing up the paint on the top of the steering column. I'm going to have to remove it to be able to fix the paint. Bah!
The other issue I found was the heater speed control didn't work correctly. The motor would run on low speed even in the off position, and was very touchy to get high speed to work correctly. In addition the wires to the switch were really too short, so I added about four inches to them so there is a little slack in them now. I fiddled with the switch for a couple of hours and never was able to get it to work like it should, so I ordered a new one and it'll be here tomorrow. Once it have that, I'll put the dash back in and pull the steering column and get the paint fixed on it.
Sunday Brian picked up the hood hinges and a few other parts that need to ba painted in Hot Rod black to match the rest of the engine bay parts. Once I get those back, I can get the radiator in and the left fender put on for more progress.

Working in the dash area is hard on my hands, got a case of dash rash.

 

[BravoXray]

So, did you ever feel like you were going backwards on a project? That's how it's been feeling lately.
As I said, I had to pull the instrument cluster out to get to the cable from the EFI to the hand controller, which meant I had to remove the radio, drop the steering column down, which meant I had to take the flange that seals the column to the firewall loose. Looking at the steering column, I decided to just pull it out and fix the paint. I sanded it down, taped off the areas above and below that area and gave it a couple of coats of satin black. Let it dry overnight pulled the tape, which pulled paint off the area around the ignition key. Grrrrr!
So, today I took the wheel off the column, removed the turn signal lever that has the switches on it for the cruise control, whose connector got stuck in the column requiring more disassembly, pulled the turn signal switch and cable out, and removed the ignition switch. So now I can sand the upper part of the column down to bare metal and Brian will paint it with the Hot Rod black paint.
The cable on the cruise control switch was about six feet long, and it only needs to be two feet long, so I brought it up to the house and shortened it up so I don't have a big wad of extra cable to deal with.
I also did some cable management on the radio, which had a lot of extra cable that goes to the media header the takes SD cards, USB drives or a 3.5mm plug from an external audio source, and tucked the pigtails with RCA plugs for external amplifiers out of the way, so that wil eliminate a big glob of cables to deal with behind the radio.
That done, I went ahead and put the instrument cluster back in, which was a patience testing job, especially getting the speedo cable snapped back in place. After a lot of struggling and cursing got the heater controls back in place and secured. Next I got the headlight switch back in, also with considerable difficulty and swearing, as it's pretty crowded in that area. I put the radio back in, which went very easily, thankfully.
I also discovered that when I was working on sanding the damaged paint area and moving the column around on the bench, somehow I broke the turn signal switch when the lever screws fast to it, and it is pretty loose now. I can get just that piece, the cancel cam, so I have one ordered and on the way.
So, once I get the column painted, I can get it assembled, back in and be back to the point I was a couple of weeks ago.

No one said restoring a car was easy.

 

[BleedingOrange]

Nice to see you are back working on your beautiful project. I can understand your frustration. It probably would feel even worse if you were doing this type of work for someone else, and not for yourself. From following along in this thread from the very beginning, I got the sense that you are the type of person that will do it only one way, and that is, to get it as good as you possibly can, whatever that takes. I really admire that trait in a person. You,re on the home stretch, and know that spring is around the corner, and as the days get warmer, you will start feeling more energized and hopefully you will get the strength to get your beautiful project finished up and start enjoying it. I,m positive every time you take it out and park it you will be receiving all kinds of compliments on it and it will help put the frustrations you had along the way into the rear view mirror. I wished I lived closer. I would love to see and hear your finished car up close, and watch it coming and going down the nice paved roads in your area.