Background & Introduction

In about 1992, I bought a 1972 Chevy Nova (along with a 1969 Nova parts car) to replace my 1974 Nova that was totalled by someone who ran a stop sign and T-boned me right behind the driver's door. Enough damage was done to the unibody to make it a poor candidate for repair.

After a LONG search, I finally turned up a '72 Nova that was for sale. Oddly enough, my dad and I had looked at this car three years earlier when it was for sale (in very nice condition) by a different owner. When we looked at the car, it appeared to be in completely stock condition with a poorly done paint job in approximately the original color, Covert Tan. It had a factory 350 with a 350TH tranny, but beyond that it was a pretty basic car, with standard bench seat interior, non-power drum brakes, no AC, etc. But man, was it clean and straight! We were ready to buy it at that time, but as luck would have it the transmission went out in Dad's '74 Nova Custom as we were pulling away to go back to town to make arrangements for the purchase. By the time we had that problem sorted out, the '72 had been sold.

A year later, I saw the same Nova for sale in a different part of town, parked at an abandoned gas station with a cobbled-together dual exhaust hanging loosely beneath the car, literally held up with wire and some of it touching the ground. I could have cried. When I found out what they were asking for the car, I did cry. Okay, I didn't really cry, but they were nuts and so I passed on the "opportunity."

About a year after that, my '74 had been totalled and I was looking for a replacement Nova. I saw an ad for a '72 for sale in a neighboring town, so Dad and I went for a drive. Believe it or not, it was the same '72 Nova again. This time the price was down to only $600 and it included a '69 parts car. That was the good news. The bad news was that the engine was not running, the 350TH transmission was gone with a 4-speed in its place but not set up. The automatic pedals were still in the car and it looked like a shotgun had been used to make a hole in the tunnel for the 4-speed shifter. The bench seat was missing and some ratty Camaro buckets were bolted in its place through holes in the floorpan with no reinforcement. The seatbelts were gone, the rubber floormat was gone, the dash pad was shot, the windshield was pitted beyond repair inside (apparently by someone using a grinder at close range is all I can figure), the trunk lock was forcibly ripped out, and more.

We trailered both cars home and stuck the '69 in a machine shed, where it sits to this day. With considerable work I got the engine running in the '72, but I didn't trust it and with no clutch pedal setup I obviously couldn't drive it with the 4-speed. So I turned to my crunched '74 and pulled the engine and tranny (also a 350/350TH) and did a transplant into the '72. Dad and I rebuilt the entire front suspension (kept the original springs) with PST components, replaced the brakes, fixed some wiring, repaired the hole in the deck lid where the lock had once been, and replaced the ill-fitting and rusty Cragar S/S mags with Rallye wheels that had come from the same guy who sold us the Novas (Dad bought them separately and then ended up giving them to me for the '72.) It was back on the road again, not as good as when we first saw it a few years before but much better than when we finally bought it. As it turns out, the owner before the guy I bought the Nova from was the son of someone Dad knows at the university and we got a little more background on the car's recent history -- but best of all, we got the original bench seat back, which had been sitting at this guy's house for a couple years!

Anyway, I drove the '72 for a few years in college, adding an Edelbrock Performer intake and 1406 carb along with a B&M shift kit but not much else. It was the "getaway car" for my wedding in 1996, but in 1997 it started blowing oil out the front of the engine so much that I couldn't drive it and Dad pulled it back to Minnesota on a tow dolly. (I just didn't have the time to troubleshoot the problem and by that time I had picked up a '74 Dodge Dart Swinger and a '76 Swinger as well, so I didn't need it for transportation.) It stayed in storage for six years while I graduated, had three kids, worked a series of jobs, bought a house, built a garage, etc.

Finally in July 2003 I spent a few days back in Minnesota for the express purpose of getting my Nova back on the road. Figuring the oil leak was a bad front seal on the timing cover, I raised the engine, dropped the oil pan, pulled the necessary parts, and replaced the timing chain cover and oil pan gasket. I took it for a test drive and it looked like everything was fixed. All was well as I traveled back north toward the Twin Cities, my wife and kids following in the minivan. Temps went up while I idled in traffic, but oil pressure stayed up. Things got worse once we hit the faster speed limit north of the Cities on I-35, however, and I started losing oil. Long story short, I went through more than a case of oil over the next few hours, stopping every 20-30 minutes to add more oil. I finally got the car home and parked it in the garage, disgusted and disheartened by this terrible turn of events. I just hoped I hadn't done any permanent damage.

I'll spare the extra details of the troubleshooting. As it turned out, a bolt was missing from the front of the engine block near the fuel pump. It is a direct shot into the oil passages and at higher RPMs (for example, at 70+ MPH) oil can be sufficiently pressurized to blow out this hole if it's not blocked by a bolt or plug. This apparently was the problem way back in '97 and despite all my work I still didn't fix it in 2003. When I put a bolt in to plug this hole, the oil leak went away entirely and that problem was solved. I still have a tranny leak, but that's probably just a matter of either tightening bolts or replacing the gasket. From summer of 2003 until fall 2004, I drove the car off and on just for fun and not as daily transport. It was parked in the winter and brought out again in the spring, but I had little time to do much work on it. For fun daily driving, it didn't need much except for new brake wheel cylinders and hoses up front in spring of '03.

So that's the point at which this website picks up: the "restification" of the '72 into a very straight street car. I don't want or need a show car, but I want something rust-free that I could drive across the country if need be. Join me in following my progress, won't you? :-)