Here is a little project my Dad and I started. For years, I would have hear people at car shows talk about my Dad's 1967 Nova. It has had a colorful past, and though he has owned it since 1971- there were stories we have yet to figure out. People had told us that the car had a 302 in it early on- some swearing it came that way from the factory. The full story on this car will be saved for another thread, but we did finally get together with the original owner and confirmed that the car did run a 1968 over-the-counter 302 . This will be a departure- as I have always known this Nova as a Sleeper and it was bit of a hero on the streets as recently as the 1990's when I was in high school and certainly before.
Today, there really isn't much of a chance for the big surprise. People get excited just to see cars form the 1960's is a way that hadn't been realized 20 years ago. So we are going back to a Day 2 theme. Early on, the car had Cragars and a hot 302. Here is our take on a Hot 302!
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To say we are satisfied with the new short stroke motor would be an understatement! We were able to make 500+hp out of this little mill with a bit of rpm. The Nova has had 4.88 gears since 1968 and they'll be hanging around some more.
The 350 LT1 that is currently in the car was due for valve springs and some other freshen-up components so we decided to try and trace things back to its 1968 Day 2 configuration. Keeping with the spirit of that idea, we sourced a 1968 CE block from sYc member Danny D. It was a virgin bore motor and in excellent condition 3959512 dated J 10 8 with CEO 0899 10 stamped on the pad. thread for ref:
http://www.camaros.net/forums/showthread.php?t=203132
Next we bought a set of 1968 291 heads which are original 2.02's. Fortunately, Tim Napa68 had just what we needed. The heads got a full overhaul. Other than a bit of bowl work behind the intake valves, the heads remained stock. Ports were all left untouched. We did knock compression down to 9.3:1 to be more street friendly and with a good ring package we don't think we're losing much dynamically over the OE slugs and rings. Bearing spacers to run a 283 crank.
Had a bit more fun with the Day 2 theme and topped it off with an Edelbrock STR-10 intake and a pair of 660's. Tossed in an old points distributor we were lucky enough to run on Nova Jed's SUN Distributor machine.
Cam selection isn't gonna be made public for whole world to see/debate. Just grab me at a show if you want to talk. This is just the beginning of the whole Day 2 revival and I'll be looking forward to updating you as it evolves. The key points here are that we have relatively stock 1968 casting 291 heads, 9.3:1 pump gas friendly compression with an old school Crossram intake carbureted and an old school GM points distributor cranking out over 500 hp with as many Day 2 parts as we could use! We couldn't be happier! These results were with 93 octane we picked up on the way to the dyno from a random Sunoco station.
My buddy Andy is now with Hilborn Injection, but we go way back a lot longer than that. It was nice to collaborate with him after all these year. Thanks pal!
