1970 L78 NOVA

[BJCHEV396]

Here's an email that I got from Al Huscroft.I bought the Nova off of him almost 13 years ago.He owned it for about 25 years.He rebuilt the motor and I have all of the invoices,bills and info on the rebuild.


The short block is a LS6 ,it has all the factory hippo good stuff. Forged and cross drilled crank,7/16 dimpled rods,forged 11:1 Pistons, 4 bolt hi nickel block. The short block must have been changed early in the novas life as I recall the date code on the block was 1973.when I rebuilt the engine it was still all std and I had it bored .030 and the crank turned .010 under and the all rebalanced. The Pistons are the proper 11:1 forged. The rods were all polished ,magnufluxed and resized.i had to replace one rod as one did not pass the magnufluxed test. I ordered a new LS6 rod from the GM dealer. The heads I believe are original to the Nova as the casting dates seem to be correct for the time the Nova was built. I also had them rebuilt with all new guide and stainless steel swirl polished valves. When I was trying to track all of the prevoius owners I got back to a guy who bought in Edmonton in about 1974/75 and he said that it had the LS6 engine already. I asked him who he bought it from and he did not know or kept any records of the sale. I never went back to edmonton motors to find if they had any records of selling the car new and try following the owner up to the mid 70s. I always wanted to know why the short block was changed,whether it failed ,froze,or if the owner just wanted more power. I don't think the car was raced or abused as it is in excellent shape and has to be the tightest muscle car I ever have in in( sure miss that car). Anyways the other day I was going some paper work and I come across a note I made on the front coil springs. I replaced the front coils in about 1980 and when I took them out they still had the paper codes attached to the coils and recorded them, I will email to u for kicks. I never checked the code but would it would brake down to big block with f41 suspession. Did I give you the original spiral front shocks when you bought the Nova? I don't now when I will get out there but every day is one day closer, all the best in the new year!!