Do keep us updated, sounds like a great father-son project. Your son will definitely remember it for years to come.

Novas always looked nice too.

Things have progressed nicely since!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8G6r...ature=youtu.be

Last weekend we did the rear brakes.....drums, shoes, hardware, wheel cylinders, e-brake cables, and the master cylinder as well. I want him to be safe in stopping this thing once we get it done, so that was a mandatory next step. We'll get to the fronts in a week or so, then bleed the whole system. Much to my shock and amazement, all of the lines were original and broke free without any issues :)

We've got the valve covers off, there was a leak (not a big surprise), so he's stripping them with aircraft stripper. We'll clean them up and paint them to make them look pretty as long as they're off.

It goes into reverse, but not in any of the forward gears. Since the transmission was totally rebuilt, I'm betting that a band or something broke or came loose. My theory is that gears 2 and 3 work fine, but first needs attention. We'll get there :)

If it's auto it has a 350 trans and one of the easiest units to rebuild, no drive gear, hmmm. Those 76 Novas were decent cars just make sure the front frame is solid. Check the choke pull off was a big problem back in the day and even bigger in the winter. If you know the Rochester 4 barrel carb then you know how to set it up if not find someone who knows them since they have been gone for so many years. This generation of auto techs have no idea what a carburetor is, lol.

I rebuilt a "computerized" quadrajest last year. If I can do that, this one will be a cake walk :)

Yes the quadrajet is the Rochester .

Sweet Nova, practical too. Lots of potential there.
Ha! Same sort of thing happened with an early '88 Escort I got when I was 17. We got it from a dealer who was desperate to unload it; he gave us some load of crap about it going up for auction before we said we could get it. Yeah, it was a rust bucket with a cracked windscreen and a busted quarter window sitting across the road from the dealership. I believe it was the same wheel that was locked up; we towed it with a pickup truck 4/10 of a mile to our destination, locked tire screeching the whole way. I was following and was very tempted to let go of the steering wheel to cover my ears whenever possible in case of a loud blowout. I heard we passed a cop on the way there who gave us a surprised look but kept going. The tire was worn right down to the steel belts.

I never got it on the road but drove it back and forth in the parking lot enough to get somewhat used to a manual shift. The clutch eventually quit.

Bud of mine had a '76 PONTIAC "Nova" 4 door. It has the 200 & some six cylinder & auto in it. He worked-And now owns-a company that rebuilds/services gravure printing presses. Their specialty was working on printing register devices, which is a black art. But Elmore was pretty smart on this stuff, he rigged a few of the register control motor up & made himself an impromptu bottle rocket launcher, mounted under the front bumper. Damthing actually worked pretty well for awhile. That "Nova" had had a hard life-His mom or dad, I can't remember had wrecked it in '77 or '78, & they cut the bad parts off, & mated another Nova up w/it. They kinda pushed the limit on how far you could "Revamp" a unibody car. Drank many a Co'Beer in that car, though..

Speaking of the "Pontiac Nova", did anyone see what happened to Roy Scheider's Ventura in The Seven-Ups? I haven't seen a car chase end quite like that any other time. Too bad about the phony engine sounds though... and using the steering wheel grip to sound the horn... and the shifter being in park when the car is supposed to be in motion.

Well, my son's finally admitted that the car's a little too big of a project for him....

These are the shots we last took of the car back in September....I started bodywork and shot some color on the fender just as a little encouragement. I can't say that I blame him.....at almost 17 now it *is* an ambitious project.

A turbo 350 trans or dropping and fixing the freshly rebuilt trans would get the car driveable (it has all new brakes and runs fine). Now, do I take over the project, give him his investment back and finish it and drive it myself, or sell the car as is?

Especially, taking into account that the '62 Mercury Meteor I bought last August is a few issues and a little finishing work away from being done enough for daily use......

Perhaps he found out what the car's name means in Spanish...

No va = It won't go.

Seems like a good time for a lesson in perseverance plus figuring out when to enlist help. Can some things be done by both of you together and others be done by him (like the painting) with some encouragement and letting him know it's normal that learners don't always get it right the first time and may have to do it twice? It can be hard for a kid to realize that he doesn't have to be perfect from the get-go when he tries something with Dad watching.

Believe me when I tell you, I'm far from a perfectionist....I'm a realist. I don't have any high standards that are intimidating him here.....I just don't think he realized the amount of work it takes to complete something like this.

I knew that when I got the car. And now, my son understands this....but it's things like this you can't explain....you have to experience. I told him that this past summer was the last summer he will have for the next 50 years all to himself.....from there, he'll have an employer that owns a good share of his time.

I'm very proud of the amount of work he's done, and I'm not upset in the least that he's changing tack.....sometimes in life you need to learn when to say when and not let pride get in the way of accomplishing something that may not be important enough to you to do. It's all about choices and opportunity cost.....and why I'm half tempted to finish the thing to show him what he could've done if he wanted to.

Tim - Cry once, I say - buy him a 2017 Acura NSX or TLX. Done! :D

Based on how good that Mercury looks Tim, Id say you are doing him a great favor just setting an example in perseverance already.

He can realize for himself its time to cut losses, get the trans moving and prep it for sale. Somebody who is all about body work would recognize the value of having all those mechanical items already addressed.

Does he have an idea what he wants as a replacement?

My dad had a very utilitarian view of cars and I was not permitted to buy anything over 10 years old with over 100K miles. My first car was a 1973 Fury cop car, an emissions-control disaster. I had to learn everything about carburetors, intakes, exhaust etc by helping neighbors and friends. My second car was a 68 Mustang with a 289-2V, totally appropriate for an 18 year old.

Most of us who started driving as the big 4 automakers were cheapening, downsizing and basically experimenting in awful ways making cars ugly, which took decades to reverse. We revered cars from the pre-1975, that ran on regular gas and had vacuum hoses for only necessary functions. Unfortunately, the older dudes that had the 1950s-early 60s cars weren't letting them go anywhere close to our budgets :(