An attempt at subtlety in a crowd of buffoons

[gunchsta]

I've been lurking this site for a long time, and I've gotten countless ideas and motivations for my build, although it isn't specifically "stanced" by any stretch of the imagination. It is lowered, it does have bigger and wider wheels and tires that it would have from the factory, but the fitment is by no means as precise as most cars on here.

I guess I would like to extend my gratitude to this authors and photographers that are a part of this website for giving me something to study to in the cold dark that is winter in Minnesota.

I would also like to share the process of assembling and modifying my car to it's current state with you all, if you're interested. Like I said before it is not the poster-child for stance, but I have tried hard to do clean, subtle, and unique modifications that aren't as common in the 'muscle car' scene.

Enough rambling, here's a couple pictures, I have tons more I can share if there's interest, if not I am completely happy settling back into the background as an avid lurker.



Underhood



Thanks for looking!

[loekaaz]

What is it? I'm European Nova wagon?

[gunchsta]

63 Nova

- I should also note that I've upgraded nearly every part of the drivetrain and suspension. It would have originally had an anemic inline 6 cylinder and a 3 speed manual transmission on the column. It now has a v8, 3 speed automatic, and an upgraded rear end/differential. In 2013 the car made 325hp to the rear wheels and ran 12.8 in the quarter mile pulling the front left tire 6".

[Azrial89]

Another Minnesotan and a Wagon, automatically a fan. I really like what you have done under the hood, very sanitary. Would love to see more of this thing.

[_e90]

That's a really clean engine bay .. Wouldn't have expected it from the outside, to be honest. Nicely done. Do you have anything else planned for it? Maybe some wider wheels/tires on the back?

[gunchsta]

Another Minnesotan and a Wagon, automatically a fan. I really like what you have done under the hood, very sanitary. Would love to see more of this thing.

Thanks!

That's a really clean engine bay .. Wouldn't have expected it from the outside, to be honest. Nicely done. Do you have anything else planned for it? Maybe some wider wheels/tires on the back?

That's exactly what I was hoping for- the goal with this car has always been to keep the outside modest and the drivetrain/suspension stout. I'm not a fan of the over emphasized "sleeper" term, but I wanted my car to surprise people.

before this goes too far, for clarifications sake, the title of the thread refers to the muscle car 'anti-import' culture that has gaudy over done riced out muscle cars, then spends their days sitting in lawn chairs talking about how much better their muscle cars are than rice, and how the kids just aint' right. /rant.

Anyhow, like I said I've always wanted this car to be subtle on the outside, but have high performance goodies underneath and be able to surprise some of the more modern stuff on the road. The story goes (told by the previous owner of the car when I bought it 7 years ago) that this car was sitting in a junkyard in arizona or new mexico, ontop of another car, waiting to be crushed. A friend called a friend called a friend and before too long it was down from the crusher pile (by way of forklift if the underside of the rockers tells me anything) and on its way to the cold north. Previous owner gets it in running condition with parts from a 65 (converting it to a v8 and 5 lug wheels) and the help of his son. Well, time went on and the son lost interest, so the car sat. Until I came and took it off his hands. To this day I still think I paid a lot for it, but these cars are relatively rare in a wagon, and certainly rare as rust free as this one is.

I have some pictures that I can add later of it in the very early stages of ressurrection, but for now I'm going to try to start as early on the timeline as I can and fill in the rest later.

first order of business was to re-build the drum brakes (all 4 corners!) that locked one wheel and caused the car to dive hard right with the application of the pedal


once that was accomplished the side trim needed some detailing

and the other side


with the brakes fixed and the trim cleaned up, the car seemed presentable enough to cruise around town and run errands in.


That's how I cruised it around for a while, and I was relatively satisfied.

[gunchsta]

That year (2007 I believe) I took it to 'Back to the 50's' - the biggest vintage car show in Minnesota and had a blast. The show has a cut off of 1964 so I was excited to have something that I could get in with.

I took this picture of the car in the rain at the show that I liked


and I bought this neat old clear air cleaner. It was some gimmick from the 60's that would allow you to 'better tune your carburetor' because you could see into it as it was running... the lid was glass. I'm quite certain it was the lid to a pan with an air filter and a base


Sometime later that summer I also came across this neat 70's tachometer, so I hooked that up and it even still worked. The needle was a little lazy, but it moved and functioned, and it looked 'correct' to me so I ran with it for a while.

[gunchsta]

The next step at this point, the car was running strong (for a 1965 engine that was re-built who knows how long ago) so I thought it needed to be prettied up a bit. I found a neat set of cal-custom finned aluminum valve covers from the 60's and started to clean them up a bit. This is about half way through polishing


after getting those cleaned up, and getting an intake manifold with a breather on it so I could use them, I pulled the engine and cleaned that up, re gasketed it, and painted it.

on the stand before going back into the car


going back in, or out, I can't remember which...


Back in the car again, you'll notice the glass air cleaner is gone... well, no hood and a glass air cleaner lid got me a little nervous, so I decided to take that off for the time being.

[gunchsta]

wheels always need to be changed right? I found a set of off-brand American torque-thrusts from way back when on craigslist for $50, so I snatched those up, polished the rim, and mounted them on the car for a while.




14x6's baller status!

[gunchsta]

One night a buddy and I were driving around beating on the car and we stabbed the throttle, car went like stink for a second, then just fell on its face. We limped it home, and vowed to diagnose it in the morning.

It didn't sound like anything extremely catastrophic but you never know...



Now I knew. It had somehow broken a valve spring but didn't drop the valve!


That seemed pretty cool to me. I mean it's a bummer a spring broke, but I'd been pretty hard on the ol girl for a few years, and on a total unknown of an engine it held up just fine. Small failure like this is no big deal.

So I pulled the heads off and sent them out to be cleaned up, re surfaced, new valve guides, and of course new valve springs. This would turn out to be a mistake in the future, but at the time it seemed like the right thing to do. I had intentions of keeping the car 'vintage'

here's what the engine bay looked like then... as you can see it's pretty sloppy. This was, admittedly, after I'd already "cleaned it up" once. There's always room for improvement right?

[gunchsta]

Once the heads came back from the machine shop, I buttoned the engine back up and took it back out for some more abuse. Well, I found the next weak link in the driveline...



I was out bangin' gears and I grabbed 3rd a little too agressively and sheared a couple teeth off the input shaft of the manual trans that resided in the car at the time. This is also of 1965 vintage so I can't really be too upset after 50 years that it let go. I decided that because I wanted to do some drag racing, an automatic with a high-stall torque converter would be the most predictable and durable route to go, so the blown up 4 speed came out, and turbo 350 was fit in its place. Luckily for me the output shaft of the automatic was the same spline and same exact location as the 4 speed so I didn't have to modify the driveshaft, just bolt it in and go.

the mighty th350 the first time it was re-built

[DER E30]

Before this goes too far, for clarifications sake, the title of the thread refers to the muscle car 'anti-import' culture that has gaudy over done riced out muscle cars, then spends their days sitting in lawn chairs talking about how much better their muscle cars are than rice, and how the kids just aint' right. /rant.

I 'd at this. I've seen it firsthand and it is pretty stupid!

Looks good! Waiting for more to the story!

[Imaeechew]

LOVE IT. My first car was a 64 SS, until someone ran a stop sign and t-boned me. My dad just finished restoring a 63 convertible last year. I have always wanted a wagon but I can't seem to find any in my neck of the woods.
Can't wait to see what you do with this, Chevy 2's need some love

[gunchsta]

I 'd at this. I've seen it firsthand and it is pretty stupid!

Looks good! Waiting for more to the story!

Cheap chrome dress-up kits, t-shirts to match their bondo-laden cars...


Anyhow, back to the story: So, the manual trans blew up and I replaced it with a more durable, more predictable automatic. I'd been doing some drag racing and wanted to do more, so the automatic was the logical choice. Boring to some, but it made the car really consistent and predictable, and a blast from a stop.

Time passed, the car made some passes down the dragstrip, some weekend roadtrips to the track, I was having a blast and the car was working well. I went to the last event of the summer in September, ran the car, drank beer, and had a blast. Car ran fine all weekend, but on the 3 and a half hour drive home it started to over heat and get pissy. It had always had intermittent cooling issues, but this was more defined than before. Pulled off the road, let it cool a bit, added some water, and continued the trek home. The car soldiered on despite what would later turn out to be a blown headgasket.

at the track with my pit bike


I make it home, start looking into whats wrong with the car, pull the heads off and find a bad head gasket. No real surprise. Since I had it apart I took the heads to a machine shop (not the one that assembled them after the valve spring broke) and had them look over them before I put them back on. I was suspicious of warping or some other mechanical issue because of the cooling problems I encountered.

Long story short the heads were beat. The valve springs the last shop put in were far too heavy, and they were actually hammering the valves closed against the older, softer valve seats, and they'd done some significant damage. Most of the valves were recessed into the heads, and they'd need major machine work to be revived. I had a decision to make- Revive the heads and continue with the unknown 50 year old smaller engine, or upgrade to a newer small block Chevy, the ever popular 350 ci version.

I considered the fact that over the years I'd upgraded the drivetrain from the back bumper forward, upgraded rear end, aftermarket axles, gears, and hardware, the transmission was all set up with a good torque converter and a big fluid cooler, and the car had some fantastic traction bars. It was ready for more power. I decided to mothball the little 283 that had faithfully introduced me to drag racing for a more modern and powerful 350ci engine.

I apologize for the next set of pictures as they're all cell phone pictures of 35mm pictures, but it's all I have and you've been reading a lot... so you deserve at least some images.

Under the knife in the garage, new to me engine on the stand mocked up with headers, rear end in front of the car getting new brake lines, new oil pan for my goofy front end on the work bench.

[12vsex]

love this , coming from an old school American iron background I am already in love. Keep it up for sure , Its reasons like this that makes SW so cool , such a wide variety of cars.