@eugenelazarev9795
What a fantastic factory black example of Nova SS! Guys thanks for giving a second birth to the most beautiful and rare cars in the world!
@queticomoe4495
LMC going the extra mile for a customer! GL with your search!
@robertchristie9434
From '66 to '70 all my friends either got drafted or enlisted. The ones that made it back wanted a new car. This Nova reminds me of my buddy who mustered out of the Navy in late '68 then hired in at Chevy engineering in Warren Michigan. First thing he went to the exec turn-in lot that had mules, one-offs for Milford testing, show cars, etc. He bought a '68 Nova SS 2-door that had a 350-350 hp Vette drivetrain, was Nassau blue with a finish that looked 3 feet deep & had only 200 miles. He found out it was a show car & paid $2,300. for it. He owned it for about 10 years. The big three back then had a lot of one-off special exec orders that weren't documented or a ready drag car, like a couple of all black '69 427 SOHC Mustangs I saw at the Ford Rouge when I was a Tool & Die apprentice at Dearborn Assembly in late '68. The build sheets said they were 6-cylinder plain jane notchbacks. Great times & memories.
@gregcampbell3064
I loved this show and was so into these cars and remember these episodes.
@Flies2FLL
In college, I drove an '85 Volkswagen Scirocco 5 speed Turbo. Yes, Volkswagen produced 52 turbocharged cars in 1984 and 1985, the majority of them Sciroccos. I bought one. This was a turbo system engineered by Jackman Racing, and it WAS covered under the original Volkswagen warranty. It used an IHI RHB5 non-intercooled turbo at 6 psi to take the engine from 90 hp to about 130 hp, and since the turbo was very small, lag was minimal and the car accelerated like a bottle rocket. The only problem: The dealer installed kit did NOT have any sort of flex pipe, so I and others that had these cars had no end of problems keeping the exhaust pipe from cracking. At the time, flex pipes were not easily available so I just had the pipe welded and replaced rubber hangers yearly. The kit was designed so VW could go racing, but rules changed and it wound up costing VWOA a ton of money~ But...These 52 cars were the first true 1.8t's. And collectable now.
@tomcole4736
I had 72 Nova back in Hight School, Lamar, class of 80. It was my first car. I bought it from my older brother with the sell of my Steer in FFA. It was definitely not a road racing car with drum brakes, had issues racing around Houston in it, only safe 10 to 20 hard fast stops in it until they were very spongy. That is why I learned how to do 180's in it. It was light, easy to make go fast, its a go fast straight line kind of a car...mine was a sleeper. Sweet 350 with mods and large exhaust which made it quite and you could barely here the cam we put in it. Todays kids are video games, we were car heads trying to go fast. And back then it was a camaro/mustang, cougar killer...yes I said Cougar. Back then those cars were versy fast compaired to everything else on the road. Lots on them were at "The Hole" in Houston. I miss those days. Tyrying get my son into fixing up his grandfathers truck he gave him, 2003 sliverado, 4.8 V8....there are some go fast things we can do to definitely make it funner to drive.
@timmatheny-lo9ze
Had a friend in high school. He owned a 1968 Chevy II . 325 hp, 327, 4 spd, 355 pos. That car was quick.
@RickHaile
Found a Nova being parted out. It was a 70 SS with a 350. It was complete. He had put on an aluminum intake and couldn't get it started. I bought it for $700, restabbed the distributor, and drove it home! The car ran and drove great! It also had a 3:08 12 bolt posi. rear end! Mind you this was in about 1988. In those days it was just a car, and not overly valuable!
@hughobrien4139
Seeing so many of these segments pertaining directly to the “aluminum head” BBC drives anxiety within.
I grew up branded by Chevrolet. My father received a brand new 1966 Impala SS 390hp/427 for high school graduation. It was a well known car around our fairly large town while I was growing up. The old street racing stories I would hear were legendary. It was a unicorn car that would show up and whip the rest of the cars in the region and go back to the shop. It was heavily modified by the time I was old enough to recollect anything about it. Roll cage big tire car. Smoothed over firewall.
My father had not realized just how rare those cars were going to be and grew ashamed about his choices after the fact. I loved the car. There was always new better built engine and transmission for the car in the mix until the market for these cars untouched was realized. After that it was taken apart in hopes of restoring it back original which was going to be major costly.
The last engine he had built was a 427 with factory aluminum heads. It seemed like a unicorn engine.
I grew up to work in the automotive machining industry. The local shops I worked in were full of men that had performed various machining operations on that engine over the years. It was built when I was about 14. The engine ran very little my father was skeptical about running it but would never explain why he had spent so much and stopped. We understood the situation with the car, but the engine was no doubt valuable.
In 2000 I was employed by a machine shop specializing in large displacement BBC racing engines. The shop had been in business since 1962. So there were rather historical engine parts laying on shelves in that shop. A few sets of heads with Lee Shepherd’s stamp on the ends of them. One of them was a set of factory aluminum big block heads.
I began inquiring about these factory aluminum heads with the shop owner. Explaining that my father owned an engine that had a set of these heads bolted to it.
I was afforded the opportunity to learn a big history lesson and a very big lesson in metallurgy.
I was urged to disassemble my father’s engine and do some checks on those heads.
My Boss was adamant that those heads were too valuable to ruin by racing and that if they were still good they needed to be sold in leu of new aluminum castings better suited for performance.
My father was reluctant but finally agreed. By then I was well versed on performance BBC heads. Could make them flow extremely well. Knew what was and wasn’t going to work.
These aluminum heads were virgin. Never any port work. Just a basic old school 3 angle valve job. Factory guides that were still in great shape. No knurling or anything. My boss ran a hardness test on them and verified that those castings were very valuable and should be sold.
I was allowed to clean them up. Flow test them, they were a mess for airflow quality. They simply did not perform well at all. 315cfm. I could get oval port heads to easily flow 330cfm.
So the decision was made to make place these heads on the market. Around 2004-5 those heads sold for over $2000.00. That would buy about any conventional aluminum big block head on the market at that time. I was happy.
I began looking at all of these old factory aluminum cylinder heads on these shelf. The Reher Morrison set with Lee Shepherd’s stamp on the ends as well as several other sets of these heads. Another key detail in that time was the man working with Lee Shepherd porting heads at Reher Morrison came to work in the shop with me. Older fellow with a ton of knowledge. He was directly involved with those stamped Shepherd heads in the shop. We messed around testing those heads for fun and for a history lesson. I think they flowed 380 cfm with more welding done to them than anyone could imagine.
Saving the main moral of the story for last. The major lesson of importance learned was heat treatment in aluminum and what happened when it was gone and what had to be done to get the aluminum head re heat treated.
Short said the heat treatment to those factory Aluminum heads was terrible to begin with. The antimonies in those castings made it impossible for any quality heat treatment to work. They were going to be short lived under the best of circumstances. The normal thermal cycling of an engine running is going to take life out of these heads each time the engine is warmed up under normal conditions.
All said and done my professional advice on these heads is to never use them. If you’re a numbers matching stickler and the car has to be original, then do not drive these cars with these heads on them.
If you must drive one of these cars do yourself a favor and remove the numbers matching engine and put it on an engine stand sound and ready for the next owner. Build yourself a sound engine that isn’t going to be so costly if it’s hurt.
These aluminum heads are nothing to take for granted. You can not see heat treatment going away. You can only perform a harness test on the deck surface of the heads and by then it’s over with in many cases. Guides and seats will fall out of these heads. Many of them already have.
@markhale8084
THANK YOU PETER KLUTT…so tired of rarity claims based on presence of a tissue dispenser (or color combo). It’s the body/drive train combo that matters!
@ralphgreenjr.2466
I had a bright red 1970 Nova SS 396. It became the base for a 454 build with Crane cam, Hedman headers, and a Holly 1100 cfm 3 barrel. It was the only car my wife and I owned. She was hell on power shifts goint to the grocery store!
@thepicklejar7939
Holy crap ...... was I watching you on TV 20 years ago??
@jimmininger3014
I bought mine new it was a 1970 Nova SS L78 cortez silver with a black vinyl top. Sold it 2 years later. Now I have another 1970 Nova. Love um.
@stevenherbert4779
Been a fan for years! I was 16 in '70 Detroit with a good looking older sister. Alot of older guys treated me real good. One had a '70 SS 396 L-78 he paid $3k for New. On the pretense of me cleaning the Nova I would drop him at work and pick him up afterwards. It was Dyno Tuned and did you know a TH400 Shifts itself at 7,200 RPM? With a 3:55 and E-78 15's I Drove away from an LS-6's Smoke 😇
@rcfred_689
That car is just spectacular!
@bigdaddy3927
You guys are and have always been a cut above others in this game…IMHO 👉🏼👈🏼 Godspeed from the States🇺🇸
@kennethrine8171
My Brother had a 1969 NicKy Nova SS in 1984 and I had a Dodge Dart GT 340 he would beat me 8 times out of 10. That car was a runner. Thank you for the video
@charliechristie2949
My friend bought one new in 1970 with a Turbo Hydromantic. L78. Was a sweet car. He eventually swapped out the 396/375 to his TOW car, a 69 Chevelle. He put a 427 in the Nova.
@CaptainCraigKWMRZ
When the paperwork says it doesn't exist... I figure you have an uphill battle. Even if it has a pink ashtray. This guy has always given me "used car guy" vibes. I've watched him on several car shows going back to about.... 15 years!
@mikeh.753