(Words and Photos by David Carroll) Where do I begin? The process started about 2 years ago when I asked a few Norcal Nova friends to be on the lookout for a 3rd row seat equipped early Nova wagon. I was looking all over for a decent project that I didn’t have to spend a ton of money restoring. Perhaps the perfect daily driver if the price was right! So I thought…… After searching for a few months I got a random call from my well known Nova buddy Joe Seeno (been building cars ever since he could) and he said HEY…. I have a buddy that wants to sell his 3rd row and I know its not going to last long if he puts it on CL. I said where is it? Prunetucky!!!! (AKA Prunedale Ca) When can I see it? This evening I have time Joe said. So I ventured down to Prunetucky to see this Nova sitting in a field under an oak tree.
Little bit of rust, replaced fender, original 194 with a 2 speed power glide and all the seats in it and bad tires to top it off. It was perfect! I said how much? Joes Said $5500. I said see if he will take $5000 and Ill come back tomorrow at lunch with a trailer! Sure enough he said YES!!!! Thank you Joe!!!!
Once I got it home it was time to access the real damage, eliminate a few spiders per my wife’s request and give it a good ole bath!!!!
That evening I said what the heck ill see if I can get it started after sitting for well over 5 years in that field. Grabbed my trusty Redtop Optima battery, hooked up a make shift gas can to the fuel pump and began turning it over and over and over. Nothing…. well maybe its not getting enough fuel yet. Pour a little down the carb…. Fires then dies…. ok this is progress. little more fuel down the carb…. fires and runs for a little bit. Once again… more fuel…. fires!!!! YES!!!!! acorns out the tail pipe, dust and smoke….. BUT it runs!!!! The next day I took the tires over to a local tire shop got new rubber so that I could actually take it for a test drive and have decent rollers once we decide what we were going to do with it. Do we make it a race car? Fun driver? Or all around Family Fun cruiser? The vote was Family Fun Cruiser and race on occasion!!!! 😉 Literally within two days of having the wagon I was driving it to work! pulled hard to the right with the one drum brake actually working and the 194 ran like a top minus all the fuel leaking between the manifold gasket. Gas + Hot Exhaust Manifold = not a good combo! I didn’t drive this car very long let alone far with all the unknowns that existed. It was time to plan!
The initial goal was to build the car for HRPT (hot rod power tour) 2019 and join a lot of our friends across the country on this epic drive. it would have put well over 5000 miles on the car once we were done! Now that’s a test drive!!! I would make the adventure out to the east coast with my oldest son Chase who was 5 years old at the time then have my wife and youngest fly in for the remainder of the trip. We started by taking out all the interior and seeing how the floors were. Little bit of Flintstone Rust on the passenger floor but only on the forward half which was good and i found out that the entire driver side floor had been replaced with some OK work until I looked underneath. Yikes. Unfinished welding all over the place! Once we accessed all the damage and determined that we were going to redo the body it was time to get to work!
I consulted with a few local body shops got some quotes and was amazed at how much it was to do everything. No wonder some of these classics are costing so much to redo. I decided to use a local Old School Body guy that has been working on cars for well over 50 years. Rich (The Body Guy) grew up locally and worked for a lot of classic car restoration shops. We talked about the game plan and began to strip the wagons 3 layers of paint off in the late fall! I am not sure you have tried using aircraft stripper in 40-50 degree weather but it didn’t seem to want to work at all in my garage. I talked to my other body guy Nick who suggested that I use Visqueen over the stripper after I apply it because its helps the chemicals react better (tip of the day). So I did and saw the paint lift much easier then when I had nothing. The paint didn’t seem to want to come off of the vehicle for some reason or perhaps I didn’t have the patience to sit there stripping it off. Either way I commend those that work on car day after day doing this type of work because it ain’t for the faint hearted that is for sure.
Days turn into Weeks that later turn into Months. My garage was a wreck! Dust everywhere for days and I am still finding it now not to mention how pissed off my wife was with me tracking this stuff in the house. What stuff you say? BONDO!!! Body Filler!!!! Body Lather!!!! Once Rich got to work on the body panels and a few areas patched like the passenger rear lower quarter (typical) and some of the roof line it was time for the see all fix all solution. Now I have seen Bondo put on cars in small proportions in small areas but not an entire long roof 60s wagon. We are talking practically a suburban but lower!
Rich explained that about 90% of the bondo applied ends up on the ground. I think I am in the wrong business when 90% of my product ends up on the ground or trash because 10% if you do the job right is all that should remain on the car if not less. It felt like this process was taking forever and in some ways it did because we are talking 1 person fine tuning those body lines like they’ve never been done before from factory. Doors jams aligned right, body lines flowed front to back with one straight sharp edge all the way down. Smooth as silk when you run your hand across the panels! It was coming together and man was the wagon looking good. Now lets talk timeline! It was oh December by this time and I was hoping to be all done by May 2019 in order to make this HRPT trip. After attending SEMA 2018 with our Chevy Vega and racing in the Ultimate Street Car Invitational thanks to Falken Tires I began talking to various companies that would potentially be apart of our build. To Be Continued!
Video, dude, VIDEO!!! THIS LOOKS AWESOME!!!
Early wagons like Chevy, Ford, Mopar that were called “compact” cars make really good drag cars. The cars are 50/50 weight distribution in stock form and that can be changed to 40/60 very easily. Jegs runs an ET car that is a wagon like this one. Hope to see more of this build. Cool car!