Update June 30, 2011
It has gotten a bath. The blue is really bright in direct sunlight, but appears to turn a deeper shade around dusk and at night.
Been Driving it
Yup it's on the road. It doesn't drive too shabby for a car sitting for almost 8 years. It needs tires (the steering is a little wishy-washy) but other than that it's running pretty good! Just to be safe, I also changed the oil & filter. Replaced the air filter too, it was filthy.
Cleaning up the interior
The mice have made a mess of the interior. I had to remove the rear seat because it stank like mouse urine, feces, and almost like there was another dead mouse back there. I am removing the carpet because it smells and the mice left all kinds of feces all over it. It will have to come out at some point anyway to patch the rotting floorboards.
Once I get some more seat time I will fill in more details like how my fuel economy is, and how it feels driving an old car again after so long. I've been pampered by cruise control and fuel injection since the nova has been parked.
Update July 5, 2011
Compression Test
I ran the motor for about 5min which warmed up the engine to about 150*F. I then pulled one spark plug at a time and cranked the motor 4-5 times over with the throttle closed. Here's the results:
The engine appears to be fairly healthy. I had hoped for all the numbers to be over 130psi, but I'll take this as the motor has over 117,000mi, only has 8.1:1 compression, and has been overheated in the past. I also checked all the plugs which were healthy looking, checked the plug wires which were all under 10k ohms, and cleaned the cap & rotor electrodes.
Driving
The car drives surprisingly nice for one that was sitting in a field just a couple of years ago. Brakes work great, no problems with the engine stalling or running rough. Transmission shifts good and it handles curves just fine. The car just lacks passing power but that's because it only had 110hp when it left the factory back in 1978 in the middle of the smog era.
I did have one issue when merging on a freeway or just heavily accelerating for a long period of time. The engine would just die on the top end, I'd let off the gas, and it would catch and go again. If I left my foot in the throttle it would die again. I removed the fuel filter with the check valve from the carburetor since I added one to the fuel line when I replaced it. No more issues and I can accelerate up to freeways and climb hills without any problem now.
I'm going to drive it back and forth to work this week and see how it goes.
Update July 17, 2011
My drive to work is all 35-55-35-45-50-35mph changing speeds. Even with a lack of power I don't have any problems accelerating to 55mph to merge onto the freeway. Peak torque is delivered at 1800RPM so I barely have to get in the gas to change from 45mph to 55mph and a downshift is unnecessary.
Electric Fan
I'm working on getting this car as fuel efficient a possible. The goal is 20-22mpg for my drive to work. The first step I took was removing the factory mechanical fan and installing an electric one. I wired up a toggle switch in the dash that trips a 40 Amp relay to power the fan directly from the battery terminal.
Electric fan mounted to the radiator. It is powered right off the battery by a relay and a 40A fuse.
I am not planning on installing a radio in this car so I used the holes in the dash for mounting toggle switches. The left one controls the relay to turn on the electic fan, the right one turns the amplifier on to power the 6x9s in the rear deck. I went ahead and used the old radio power line as it is already fused and switched by the ignition. This way I don't accidentally leave the fan or amp on and come out to the car to find a dead battery.
Removed Carpet
The interior still stinks of dead things thanks to the mice. I decided to remove the front seat in an attempt to clean it, and to remove the carpet.
Here you can see what the carpet looked like after removing the front bench seat. Nasty. The worst part is this is not the original carpet. I found a tag under it from an automotive upholstery place!
The carpet removed reviles two rusted out areas. There is a rather sizable hole under the driver's feet. It appears there used to be one under the passenger that was patched (which explains the replaced carpet) but it is also rusting through again. The rest of the floor pan looks new.
There that looks a little better. I took a piece of aluminum I had and put it over the hole under my feet. Then I used some floor mats I bought back in 2002 for this car to cover up the rusted part. They manage to cover up most of it and make it look at least respectable. The floor is going to be patched next time I'm up at my parent's. My younger brother is going to weld some patches in.
That's going to be all for a little while yet. I need to figure out what I an going to do to replace the seats as they stink. I scrubbed the front seat down with upholstery cleaner but it didn't help. Now it just smells like dead upholstery cleaner. I think the cloth is actually rotting from sitting so long. I also need to change the diff fluid and finish flushing the transmission.
Click here to continue to page 5 where I work on exhuast and fix my stench problem.
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