1972 Citrus Green Nova L78 clone.

novab · #1 07-05-2016, 11:06 PM

Well this build began in 2008 when I sold a 71 Nova that I had since 1989. I drove that car to high school and was my everyday ride. In around I built that into the Orange one you see here. I sold it in 2008 to a guy who held onto it for a year and then he resold it. The car is now in Ontario. I picked up the red 1972 Nova in 2009 in Hatfield PA. It had been sitting in a driveway for around ten years. I went up to the door to see if the owner would sell it and he did. My idea was to build an L78 clone. There are a lot of things that a trained eye can pick up on that are not correct for an SS but this is not a numbers matching build. This is just a build that I was able to do on my budget. Not all parts are NOS GM parts here. I think I saw every country written on the boxes when buying some of these parts. I achieved the look I wanted and I did an ok job on replicating what it should look like. I did all the work on this car except for the body and paint. All the details and assembly was completed by myself and some helping hands. This was the first time that I had ever done this much work on a car.
I started the project by disassembling the car down to its shell. I had the body and frame sand blasted. The front sub frame and suspension was then painted all black. I assembled the front suspension and got the sub frame ready. A friend had done the body work on my orange Nova had then started the bodywork on this one. He went at it pretty good and then he really slowed down. After about a year I made the decision to take it out of his shop and into another friends shop. This was a part time project for a friend of Shaun. He has a full time job as a body man during the day. He was not too sure what the other guy had done so most of the body was taken down to bare metal again. Shaun is a perfectionist and it shows in the final product. Body work went on for I guess 5 more years. Very slow going but Shaun was at least working on it a few nights a week and weekends. As long as I saw work getting done I felt ok even if it took a long time. He had lots of headaches with body panels lining up good. Probably a combination of the aftermarket ¼ panels and maybe the first guy installing them a little off, not sure though. The doors are GM but needed a little lengthening to fit the fender nice. Shaun used a welding rod along the edge to lengthen the door for proper gaps. Watching him file the panels and metal straighten everything was interesting to watch. He didn’t just mud everything to make it look good. Everything was now blocked and ready until…… one frigid night Shaun had got to his shop, flipped on the lights and heat. He then glanced at the roof and saw a 6x6 area that looked as if it was dented down. After a lot of head scratching he was wondering what in the world was going on. He started to notice as the shop got up to temperature that the dent would go away. He thought back and remembered straightening a decent size dent in that area. He also remembers having a hard time doing the straightening in that area. Well basically with the rise and fall in temperature in the shop had led to the roof panel changing with the temperature giving him so many problems. He had to sand off all the work in that area and try straightening again. Well he had no luck. He could not get the oil can effect out of it. So after being so close to paint we had to cut off the roof and get a new one. We looked in some yards and didn’t have much luck. We gambled on a new one and hoped it would fit. Would you believe after all the body fitting headaches, the new aftermarket roof fit like a glove. Unbelievable. Well back on track and it was painted shortly after that.
The car was painted with Dupont ChromaPremier with 72500S clear coat. The color is 1970 Citrus green code 43. You may even notice the spare has green overspray blown through to the backside of the wheel. Now the fun part starts for me. Many nights and weekends of assembling. Years of looking at pictures and research helped a lot. Assembly went pretty well considering I had never done a car to this extent myself. This is the first car I have ever wired. I used an American autowire kit. It went well. I had recovered the seats myself and they were ready to go. I wanted someone else more skilled to do the headliner so I had a guy come to do that. I told him the story with the roof and told him to be very careful. Well wouldn’t you know it, while putting the bow clips in he wanted to bend the roof support ever so slightly at two of the clips. After he did that I thought that I better take the sheet off the roof and make sure nothing was happening. Holy cow as soon as I took it off I said woooooaa stop. You just dented my roof. He denied it and said there was no way that doing what he did would dent the roof. Well buddy look at the rest of this car and tell me we left two dents in the roof right where you were prying. I don’t think so. Well he went on his merry way without finishing. Shaun and I were sick to our stomachs. Shaun fortunately knew a paint less dent removal guy who came and removed the dents. Thank goodness. Started it up, all the wiring worked like it should. It’s now July of 2016 and it has been at some shows and I am enjoying the heck out of it. The car runs great. A lot of thanks goes out to the people who helped me along the way. They know who they are if they read this. If you live in the southeastern PA area you may see it around.
Here is some info on the drivetrain. The motor is a new GM crate 454. Holley 780 cfm carb. The 4 speed is a Richmond Super T10 sitting on the correct cross member. And the rear is a 12 bolt with 3.55 gears. Pypes exhaust with a cross flow muffler.
I will post more pics after this batch.