Paddy's Nova (re)Build Thread

[PaddyX21]

Well, I guess the best place to start is at the beginning, so...

The story starts with me just a wee kiddy going to kitcar shows with my dad, and probably at the age of 10 or younger I saw my first Nova. That was it - I was sold, I HAD to have me one of those. The Nova is an all original design by the noted designer Richard Oakes, based on a VW Beetle in the same way as a beach buggy, but with mad futuristic (for 1970!) styling. Oh yeah, no doors, the whole roof lifts up on hydraulic rams - quite the party trick! Typical kid 'I want one of them when I'm older'...

...well I got older!

Skip ahead around a decade, and there I was browsing eBay one day when I saw her. Other end of the country you say? 'Needs some work' you say? Deaf ears - I had to have! So hours and hours on trains and there I am, cash in pocket. I did test drive her, and she was a ***** to drive - gear change all over the shop, clutch so heavy Arny would struggle, damp interior. Didn't matter - cash was exchanged, documents signed, hands shaken.











Despite the fact she hadn't gone any further than the end of the road for years, I set about driving the couple of hundred miles home. Around 50 miles in the rose joint on the accelerator pedal reversed itself, pinning the throttle open - cut the engine, righted it and waited for the now severely flooded twin 40's to allow starting. Huge belch of flame and we were off again. Fuel gauge was wired up wrong, reading from empty to full, and with random movements up and down meant zero trust, so I stopped at just about every fuel stop due to having no clue how much was in there, nor how quickly the 1600 twin port air-cooled vdub motor running twin solex 40 carbs that was roaring away behind my head would eat the fuel!
As it got dark, the total lack of visibility to the rear became even more apparent, and at the Dartford tolls trying to get the roof up and reach the booth from a car with a max height of 42" was 'interesting'! The operator nearly fell out trying to take my money - and I could have just driven under the barrier if I wanted anyway!

Anyway - she was home!









to be cont...

[PaddyX21]

...cont

So for the next year or so I used her as a weekend fun car, but she was running less and less cleanly, and occasionally she'd just stop. I knew I was going to have to do something eventually, but I didn't want to stop driving her!

Anyway, eventually the inevitable happened - she stopped, properly. No amount of cleaning and coaxing was making headway, there was just nothing. And the leaking from the canopy was bad too, the interior was getting really nasty.

So I started working away from home, commuting long distances, and didn't find the time to get her sorted. So she sat, for a year.
Eventually I decided to bite the bullet and fix her, properly.

So into the garage she came;



I started stripping the interior, getting rid of anything wet. And looking for the reasons why things (like the fuel gauge) were 'temperamental'



The original builders wiring left me a little wide eye'd, and slightly daunted - at this point I still hadn't found a single fuse...



Side windows were perspex, and showing their 30+ years outside age - out they came for use as templates



Same for the headlight covers



A jumble of dash parts, seats and interior panels starts to build up



Another part in need of replacing - too many speed bumps for that one!



Battery, fluids and hydraulic systems up front in a vain attempt to balance out the weight distribution issues - every little helps!



By now I am very scared of the wiring, but am attempting to label it all up





Ahhh - there they are... they look in good nick, oh wait.. and I wonder what they are wired to...



Must think of a way to hide this, is ugly out on display.



Tracing this back tells me I don't have the original engine either, was a 1500 once



This discovery at once told me everything I needed to know about the original builder, and answered the sloppy gear change riddle - why bother to fabricate a mounting point for the gear linkage when you can tie it in place with an old shoelace and then fill the tunnel with expanding foam to hold it there...





Next - interior stripped out - what was that soggy carpet hiding??

[PaddyX21]

So - I finish stripping out the sodden interior, to find this waiting for me underneath;







The level of filler being used to hide the obviously old, pre existing, rot - rather than dealing with it - further enforces my opinion of the original builder - muppet







This car was MOT'd and on the road remember...







Obviously the water has puddled here, and for a long time.



So - out it comes then, I intended to keep as much as I could, only cutting out the truly rotten parts





I love the angle grinder a little bit too much btw..



At this point the picture diary drops out - the project nearly stopped completely to be honest, the sheer amount of tinworm really got me down. The filler had done it's job and hidden the problem, left it for someone else to deal with - me.

Luckily someone else in my street was building a beach buggy, and when one of his mates saw the Nova one day, then his infectious enthusiasm brought the project back to life.
He was far more knowledgeable about vdubs, and seeing the level of visible rot ensured me that removing the body was the only reasonable course of action to access the level of damage.
Many, many, many hours of grinding decades rusted bolts, and manually cutting through huge numbers of inaccessible body bolts by holding the bare hacksaw blade in my hands, getting numerous blisters, and eventually we were able to free the body from the chassis for the first time in 20+ years. Using motorbike tie down straps we hoisted the body up to the joists of the garage roof, and the full extent of the rot became visible.



Filth and rot



No wonder the pedals felt a bit squishy...



I've a funny feeling that was a jacking point, 'was' being the operative word!



The non-starter



The other 'jacking point'





The hoisting arrangement of ropes and tie downs - Heath Robinson would have been proud!



Anyway, at this point it was blindingly obvious that the floors had had it - so a quick phone call the Big Boys Toys (as it was then) secured a pair of new ones, fresh from Mexico.





Out with the old...







...in with the new





Next - 'Welding' (lol!)

[Fury1630]

Excellent - keep it coming.

[kenjohn]

Loving this thread already.
John

[ChrisL]

Wow, i think if I'd uncovered that much rot on the floor pan I might have had an accident with a can of petrol and a box of matches - lol

[PaddyX21]

So -this is really quite embarrassing to post all over the net lol, but it's part of the story!
I had never welding anything to anything before, but was game to give it a go













Basically, I was struggling to learn on the job, with progress appearing to go backwards with less welds taking, and the frustration of having to grind back and start over. With no-one to instruct, I basically tacked them in place and told myself I'd get a mobile welder to come and finish it later, so I moved on, still full of the frustration.

The next job was the remove the rear shocks as they were totally seized up -could I? Could I ***!



I swore, wheeled it back into my dads garage, and moved house.
Well I didn't move house because of the car lol, but it ended my progress.

I had no space where I was living (houseboat), little time with the long commute (around 120mile/day, every day, on one of the worlds busiest stretches of road, M25), and had run out of tools, skills and enthusiasm.

And then before I knew it 6 years passed...

Next - Venture Capitalism pays out

[PaddyX21]

So, no pictures for this, but at some point in those 6 years, I took the engine off and disassembled it on the bench.
It had been running mismatched heads all along, different valve sizes and everything. On top of this the fuel tank had rusted through and the fuel system had ingested large volumes of rusty water. Long story short, full rebuild was required, and I was quickly out of my depth without guidance. So it sat in a corner and grew spiders and corrosion. So did the 1641 cylinders and pistons I had bought for it. What a waste...

Anyway, jobs came and went, as did places to live. Long story short, mid terrace rented accommodation is not an environment I could (can) see myself being able to afford to move away from any time soon, which was leaving nowhere for the car to live.
So Xmas 2012 and a real stroke of luck happens - the company I work for was acquired by a huge multi-national corp, and all our share options paid out. Still with no tools or space, or skills if I'm honest, I decide to contract Southways Automotive to help me out.
Finally the project is moving again!

July 2013, and they come to pick up the car, I lower the body back onto the chassis for the first time in years and back out into the sunlight for the first time in what seems like forever











Onto the transport we go





And off to Southways.

Text captions that follow courtesy of Southways.

So the Nova then. Originally designed and produced as a kit by a company based down the road in Southampton called Automotive Design & Development, or ADD for short (yeah, yeah, it's not short of attention.....) in 1971. The car is basically that mental GRP shell bolted to the chassis of the original air-cooled VW Beetle.



Since ADD lasted until 1975 with the Nova design, having moved oop-North to Lancashire in 1973. The model was then bought by a Yorkshire-based company who ran production from 1978 to 1990. The particular Nova is a mk2 model, and produced in 1980, and believe it or not, the Nova is still being produced in India as an electric powered-car!



The Nova has come to us for extensive work, both chassis and body/canopy related. And sans engine.....



The cockpit of a Nova is normally pretty-much 1970's supercar style, only this one needs a little bit of elbow grease!



The Nova enters the workshop and tries to look evil.



More to follow, I don't know if there is a post size limiter, so I'm doing this in sections

[PaddyX21]

A Sierra XR4i on modern roads full of monotonous egg-boxes on wheels stands out as being pretty different. But park one next to a Nova (in fact park most things next to a Nova) and they might as well be a Kia Rio!



The Nova enters the '70's zone, along with Hilda the Imp.



The Nova has come to us in bits, because our customer, having owned the car some years already, decided once he would have a go at taking it apart of refurbing it himself, once the time came. He has indeed taken it apart, but that's where work stopped! This is good for us, however, because all we need to do is heave!



If only a Griffith was that easy!



Don't normally get an interior view from below ground level!



Nova comes equipped with uber-cool wheels. Revolutions maybe? Answers on a postcard!
Paddy: They are Revolutions, 15x6 front 15x9 rear



Apparently it is so



The main reason the body was originally removed by the customer was because the floors had rusted through; being able to put your feet on the tarmac at speed isn't as exciting as it sounds.



The Nova needed new floors. Now we're a fan of people having a go, but the risk is that if things are going wrong, for whatever reason, people sometimes don't know when to stop.



Thankfully that isn't the case here. Our client rolled up his sleeves, had a go, and when it became apparent it wasn't going to plan, he just downed tools again and decided to get someone to do it for him! That, is a wise move! Welding is easy to learn, but it's trickier to learn to weld neatly AND with good strength. And trying to weld thin plate steel as a novice is pretty-much the trickiest thing you can try on a car. So hats off to our man for putting the torch down! Practice makes perfect, but he wasn't willing to practice on his floor!



Having removed the floor panels to clean up, more rot has been spotted across this brace at the front of the chassis. This is a standard Beetle panel.



More stress cracks found near corrosion hot spots.



Inside the backbone of the chassis. We think (so far) that this corrosion is the remains of a previous panel which may have already been replaced, so it's possible this looks much worse than it is.



We've decided to best route here is to take the chassis to the guys we get to blast our TVR chassis'. Then when the Beetle chassis returns, we've got a much better starting point. Overall the chassis looks solid, but there are one or two problem areas.

[Tony B]

This is an excellent read, keep it coming.......