Driveway Dreams Ep. 3 ｜ HOT ROD Revives a Big-Block ’72 Chevy Nova ｜ MotorTrend

I like the old Ford pickup. Heck yeah, we should have drove the brown hat. Two Corvettes, 56 Chevy. I thought we were here to work in Anova. How's it going? I'm Lucky. Stan. Nice to meet you, Stan. Hey, Sean. Nice to meet you. This is you too, right? That's me, yeah. Okay, 56, a couple Corvettes. And we got this thing sitting on the street. It's a very interesting story. I didn't end up with this car just through looking around for it. I wasn't actually looking for it at all. I was actually looking for a truck. And I found this truck on Craigslist. Once I bought the truck, it was time to get it home. And we get out there and try to uncover through all the stuff that he has in the backyard and try to pull it out. And Dave opens up the garage and there we go. There's two split windows in the garage. And that really piqued my interest. Through my relationship with Dave, I was able to score the split window. And after he ran through the money for the first car, I was able to pick up the second car, the split window. And then we just had a great relationship, anything he needed. My father was an old plumber and I had a lot of plumbing supplies. He used a lot of my tools. And I always knew about the 72 Nova, but I wasn't into it too much. But then his health started to decline. And once he passed, he told his girlfriend to contact me and make sure that I get the car. I felt kind of bad and I wanted to kind of honor his legacy and really get the car going, get it on the road, get into shows and stuff like that. So he was a good friend. Got side pipes on this thing. Real retro. That's cool. Let's get to the fun part. Yeah, I like the paint. It looks good. It'll buff out. Yeah, that'll buff out. All right. I wasn't expecting a big block. It's a super rare and exotic engine. So you said, what's the size? 427? It's a fake 427. It's a 454. Okay. He's got the extra acorns there. Yeah. Well, hey, man. Squirrels gotta eat. Yeah. So you said you were having some electrical problems. Yeah, I took the dash apart. I didn't put it back together. Oh, like, yeah, he's got a wiring diagram card. I just noticed that. All right. So you got that printed out. So, I mean, I don't see a lot of mechanical stuff that's sketchy, but I do see a lot of electrical stuff that's sketchy. Technically, everything works, right? It started, it ran, and drove. You said you wanted to look into potentially doing power steering. Yeah. We're limited on space, but we can research that and maybe come up with a different header combination or maybe one built for power steering. Yeah. And then the one thing I'm not going to be able to look away from is the engine compartment wiring. You did this? Yeah. It looks awesome to a lot of people, for sure, and it all works. So that's all great. Unfortunately, autoelectric, I like to hide stuff. So I'm going to reroute all the wiring safely in the wheel well areas, maybe relocate this stuff out of the weather, maybe put a little panel inside there so it's out of the weather. And then, unfortunately, your squirrel is going to have to find someplace else to live, buddy. Yeah. Thank God it doesn't get towed from the street here. This is a pretty sketchy neighborhood too. Yeah. Yeah. I think we are the sketchiest thing in the neighborhood right now. Literally just me and you. We might be. So we should probably get this thing back to the shop and get it taken apart. This is a lot better looking than when we first saw it. There's a lot less gerbil food in here is what I'm going to say. We had decided to save everybody the joy of watching this vacuum and intake manifold and pressure washer engine bay. But we did do all that. We kind of had to evict all of our furry and scaly friends. Unwanted visitors. Yeah. I think, really, it's just evaluate what needs to be done. I mean, stuff like this, it just doesn't fly. I mean, you cover it up and it still hangs down. It's not good. Yeah. We were talking about some other things too. Obviously, we've got a power rack and pinion steering system we're going to put in here, but that's going to require a couple of changes under the hood too. Yeah. I think, really, the next fiasco is going to be, oh, putting it on the lift. Right. The side pipes are kind of like 70s chic, but yeah, they make it hard. 70s chic. I like that. I think they're going to make it difficult for us to get the arms of your lift. So they're disco? They're disco pipes is what they are. I like that. Okay. Keep going. I've never actually used these extensions. Dude, look at that. That's a couple of u-bends they took advantage of. Yeah. It kind of looks like it was all built. I don't see anything that deters me from wanting to work on it. I'll work on the top. You work on the bottom. No worries. Oh, wow. All right. There's oil pressure. Perfect. The battery's charging. It's charging. It's actually running pretty decent. Yeah. I love teasing the side pipes, but they don't sound bad. They don't sound bad at all. It's not okay. Yeah. I don't necessarily think I wanted to rev it or anything, but it sounded okay. I got to admit, I didn't think this thing was going to start at all. Gas leak. Probably should be a threaded fitting. Yeah. I kind of frown on, if it's a push lock fitting that's designed for that, that's okay. I frown on hose clamps and high pressure. Yeah. Yeah. So there's some other sketchy stuff under here we'll unsketch. Yeah. Starting with this, all that, two wires. So that's going to help the 60 foot time because now the left side is going to be a lot lighter when we cut all this out. Here's, I don't know what that is. This was that small pulse timer one. I don't like it either. We can't be friends. Nope. Okay. Hey, walnuts. Cars come into people's lives through a whole variety of channels. In the case of Stan and his Nova here, the previous owner was a fellow Corvette collector. He passed away and in his legacy, the family wanted Stan to have the Nova and carry it forward. For Hagerty, cars are much more than just the parts that they're made out of, the steel, the rubber, the engines, transmissions. It's honoring somebody's legacy, somebody's memories and building memories in their honor. And in that vein, Hagerty offers customizable insurance that lets you get the coverage you need that's appropriate for your build. For more information, go to Hagerty.com. Awesome. Look at that. Look right there. You flat rated that thing. Look, he had it taken the whole thing apart. By the hour. Safety third, Lucky. Safety third. So the one thing that's actually becoming a little more clear, I was just talking to John about, is that the original owner had this idea of potentially building a little Nova that looks like a muscle car and handles well because it's got Hotchkiss springs, performance shocks, aftermarket sway bars that are definitely oversized, a lot of performance parts on the car. And then we're kind of going with that same flow by putting power rack and pinion in here. So I think it's going to be pretty awesome to leave the side pipes on it so it looks like a, you know, cruiser from back in the day. And it would potentially handle pretty well. Yeah, that would be cool. If this thing had stock exhaust manifolds or block hugger headers or anything other than these giant tube prehistoric collector edition, there would be no interference issues. So we're going to clearance that a little bit. It's kind of bad that they're getting you with a giant crescent wrench, but that's a hammer too, you know that. All righty. So problems need to get solved, but for now, obviously it steers. Let's just hang a power steering pump. Careful, careful. That's better. Oh, you know what? I'm glad he got that bracket kit. That's a good kit. Okay, good. Plugs right in. Look at that. Wonderful. I'm surprised. I am pleasantly surprised. Okay, so the Nova had some vintage original style radiator upper mount that was a little bit sketch. I went next door. I snapped off a piece of metal. We've gone ahead and replaced the fan shroud. This one bolts in. There's no duct tape holding it in. No crazy glue or bondo and tech screws. That one might need a little adjustment. Yeah, yeah. All right. We're very close. This is my multi-size calibration tool. One size hogs all. Fan shroud is installed. Radiator is secured. I'm going to whip up a small harness, mount some relays, and a nice little stash area over there. We are changing the alternator. It's one of those unexpected things that happens when you're working on someone else's car. You never know what parts you got. This alternator, when we started the car, it was outputting 15.5 volts, which really was messing with the fuel injection system, causing it to run badly. Lucky took the power wire off the alternator, and the idle smoothed out, and the engine sounded great. I don't know if this is some sort of a race alternator, but anyway, not good for this application. I'm going to swap these out right now. Hit it. Okay, I'm going to let it run for a little while, put a little heat into it. Hopefully, very confident, when it gets to around 180, the fans are going to come on. Didn't notice that we're seeing a little bit of coolant leaking out of the weep hole on the water pump. This is an original water pump. Kind of should have replaced that right from the get-go. I'm just kind of hoping it would be okay. We'll have to change that pretty soon, but it's not going to stop us from moving forward, getting the dash together, getting the wiring cleaned up, and taking it for a little spin. I don't want to die alone. Get in. You know what happens if you have five gallons of bad gas, and you put in five gallons of good gas? It kind of neutralizes it. Oh, you got 10 gallons of bad gas. Hey, look, it's Stan. All right. Love the Scythe pipes. I think they sound awesome. You know what? We waited until we got it running before we made that decision. Sounds great. Sounds awesome. It's so funny, we drove past some people that looked just like you a little while ago. Oh, yeah? Yeah. They were waving, but I couldn't tell if they were giving us the peace sign or what, but... It's clean, though. The acorns are gone. Yeah, we tried to leave you some in case you wanted a snack on the way home or something, but... Yeah, there's a few right here. There's a few right there. I pressure washed most of them out of there, and then when we were, like, blowing air hose around, more fell out. New fan. Yeah, yeah. Fan, fan shroud, alternator replaced, power steering pump. I took your stainless fuel line through the fuel pump idea and just sort of modified it a little. Oh, nice, nice. Yeah. Oh, wow. And I saw you move the steering. Oh, yeah. It's like it's power. It's like, I see the power steering pump. Yeah, it's full power steering. Your chrome radiator bracket, I don't know, just wasn't working for me, so I made that today. Yeah, we routed all the wiring harness that used to go above the distributor. Everything is wrapped and down underneath. I was still going to put a couple zip ties on that right there, that main harness. Well, I like the car a lot. We were talking right before you came in. Me, personally, I kind of leave it the way it is. You know, like you said, put some different new tires on it. Yeah. Maybe lower the front just a little bit, but I don't know. I like the way it looks. I like the faded paint. I would wash it with Ajax about four more times, polish up those wheels and put some new rubber on it. Yeah. And drive it until the police tell you to stop driving. That's a great plan.