(Words and photos by John Ulazek) – Introducing Project BSx. While we batted around a lot of ridiculous names for this project we are going to keep it simple, BangShift X-body gives us BSX.For Bang Shift’s next build we are going to rescue a stalled project car, dial back some of the original ambition, and get it on the road. When this car was started, over a decade ago, Nova’s were not a very popular choice for a full tilt pro-touring build, therefore it might have been trend setting or at the least not been “ another damn Camaro” .

Fast forward to present day, and the bar for pro-touring cars gets reset continuously with endless variety. Thus relieved of the need to set the world on fire, we are going to focus on the details that make a well balanced, if somewhat middle of the pack pro-touring car. The aim is a finished build that is reliable enough to drive to and from demanding events such as autocross and track days in relative comfort. To help us achieve this we have consulted with Kurt Urban Performance to guide us on the choices we will make along the way. Kurt Urban Performance specializes in building motors with substantial horsepower, superior durability and optimized components, for the intended purposes. While that might sound like marketing speak, consider that Brian Finch competed at Optima events for two years with one of Kurt Urban’s motors without failure or rebuild. In our initial discussion with Kurt about how we should proceed on this project, he immediately wanted to know specifically what we planned to accomplish with it. After we outlined our aspirations Kurt began talking in terms of duty cycle. Like a welder, the duty cycle for a car is the maximum amount of time you can run at 100% power in agiven period of time before you have to allow time to cool off.

If our Nova had the stock chassis and tires we wouldn’t have the grip needed to stay in the throttle very long at an autocross or road course so relatively speaking its duty cycle would be short. This Nova has a Detroit Speed subframe up front and Quadra-Link out back with coil overs. The tires are a sticky 315 in the back with 265’s up front. This setup has way more grip than the stock car would with bias ply tires, and as such we’ll be able to keep our foot in it a lot longer. Because we will be able to burn so much more gas on the track, we will have to make sure we choose parts that will allow us to manage the heat that’s generated.

The car will also be capable of sustained high G performance, which will be difficult for a wet sump pan to handle. As we are starting with a clean slate, we can choose parts for the various vehicle subsystems that match the capability of the chassis. For instance, we know the power steering pump on the a truck motor is going to give us vague steering feedback and boil fluid as its valved to allow low steering wheel effort for parking lot maneuvers like backing up a trailer.

So about that motor in the photo — yes, its yet another junkyard 5.3 from a truck, and yes, we know 5.3 builds have been done to death. What matters for our application is not chassis dyno heroics, but a broad, usable power curve and managing the heat that is generated turning left and right for sustained periods of time. These problems would have to be solved regardless of what motor we choose. Salvage truck motors commonly end up as life support for forced induction, but on the advice of Kurt, we are planning on staying naturally aspirated, at least initially, to keep things simple. Superchargers make great low-end power but they add weight, cost, and can suffer from heat soak during a 30-minute track session. Turbos would be a load of fun as well but cost, weight, and complexity go up again. Its not that we couldn’t make power adders work, but people have enough trouble making NA motors live on road courses, so we are going to focus our energies there first.

Our Nova is equipped with a Detroit Speed hydro-formed subframe. We decided not to powder coat or paint it because we thought we might want to weld on bosses for brake or cooling lines. Even though this bare metal subframe was shipped from Detroit Speed with a rust inhibiting coating, it still picked up rust from storage in a garage that was not environmentally controlled. If we had to do this over again we would have had Detroit Speed powder coat the control arms and then focused extra energy on applying rust inhibitor to the subframe. Detroit Speed used this car to develop its Nova Deep Tubs and they also installed the firewall fill plate as well as the blasting and epoxy coating of the shell.