In the last video we saw Tommy giving us a tour of this machine and get it out of the spot it had been sitting in for 24 years. Now he’s going to try and see if it even runs.

When Tommy goes hunting for hot rod projects, you always know that something cool is going to follow him home. In this case he wasn’t hunting as much as he was taking advantage of a great deal with little information about the car, its history, or anything else. It’s rough. It’s ugly. But is it worth it? Watch.

Video Description:

Finding a CHEAP V8 project car is tough, and this $500 Nova was a bit of a gamble. Will it start after 24 years parked? If it does, my gamble pays off…if it doesn’t, I’ll probably just haul it off for scrap or re-sell it. I bought it basically sight unseen, and it came with an extra engine and a bunch of parts. Usually, when a car is parked for so many years, and comes with an extra engine, that’s a bad sign. But I had a good feeling that we could get this thing running again after checking it over in our last video.

Even though the body is rusty, the engine looks to be complete and it’s hard to beat the reliability of a tried and true small block Chevy engine. Even though this isn’t a desirable 350ci engine, the little 305 was a tough workhorse for the time. This one features a two-barrel carburetor, and it’s backed by a TH350 automatic transmission and 2.41 gears out back.

In this video, I try to crank this old car. I don’t rebuild the carburetor. I don’t replace any ignition parts. I never even pulled the spark plugs out of it! I just wanted to pour some gas down the carburetor, hook up a hot battery and see what happened. The results are satisfying because this thing is proving to be a promising project car. Overall I spent $100 in addition to the $500 purchase price. I haven’t had this much fun for $600 in a long time!

These fourth generation Novas (1975 through 1979) don’t get a lot of respect from the old car community, but they’re really growing on me. I daily drive a 1977 Nova four door and this 1978 Nova two door is my latest obsession. I have some plans for both projects, but you’ll have to wait and see how it all pans out.