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During the first year of my driving the Nova, I hit a small utility pole at a gas station as I was pulling into the lot, it was quite the small lot, I should of gone elsewhere but figured I could make the turn. I didn't even know I hit the pole, but my friend Clint told me he thought he heard something. I got out of the car and yup, there's a pole in my front fender. The pole pushed in abit of the front fender just a few inches below the marker light, which again, my dad was able to fix. We removed the battery and gave her a light tap and the dent popped out.
| My first accident happened one day in February of 96, the one and only day I took the car out of the garage in the winter. I was rear-ended (bumped) by a little Honda Civic. which was hit by a bus and slide into me. There was no damage to the Nova, but the front and rear of that Civic showed damaged. |
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The cops treated the scene as a fatality because of the condition of the gentlemen at the time. My car was impounded by the Police and had a safety inspection to make sure the car was safe and road-worthy. It was said with the amount of liquor he had consumed, he was very limp and loose on impact. I found out weeks later, he spent 11 days in hospital. He suffered from only minor internal injuries. After the investigations and dealing with the insurance company. The gentlemen was fined for the amount to fix my car. Total damage wasn't too bad, straighten up the hood latch assembly and needed a hood and front grill. It took almost 3 months just to find a hood, the body shop we fixing the Nova located one in Saskatchewan and had it shipped. All that left was finding a front grill. I went every weekend, early in the morning going around to all the local junkyards looking for parts, but Novas were hard to find anywhere. I met up with a father/son team who were stripping down an 71 nova, and asked them if they had any parts for sale. They asked me what specificly I was looking for, and I replied I'm looking for a front grill for a 73/74 Nova. Amazingly enough, they had 3 spares kicking around in their garage and they sold me one. Spent all that time scouring the junkyards over the winter and the next weekend after the Nova was fixed, there's a 73 Nova sitting right in the front on the 'new' cars area in the junkyard. The grill was gone, but the hood was there, and in nice shape too!. I grabbed that hood and kept it for a spare. I would say this event with how hard it was to find parts, was the start of my 'hoarding' over Nova parts.
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Had my second accident on Oct 5/1996, as I was driving down a major street, a lady was running across the street, made it across but her friend only made across 3 lanes and I hit him in the curb lane.
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My second major accident with the Nova happened September 14, 1997, when I was cutoff by a lady driving a truck. She made a right turn from the left lane, and well, I tried to avoid her, but I caught the corner of her truck. I didn't think the car would ever be fixed, due to the damage. This accident happened about 4 miles after I left my work where I had it up on the hoist and even painted to front rims. Well the help of a few of the local scrap/junk yards, and with knowing some people at the neighborhood body shop, I worked out a deal with the insurance company and was able to get my baby fixed. Luckly the hood was alright, but my front grill was cracked in a few places. The body shop was able to plastic-weld the cracks, and did a very nice job. I didn't even noticed it was cracked till I had it off when I repainted the grill a few summers later.
I cannot thank Stu & Gary, and their staff enough !! |
A BIG thank you to
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My third accident with the Nova happened September 12, 2021. I was driving and changed lanes to go around some cars turning at an intersection. As I was following the person infront of me and glanced quickly to see if another cars in that lane was turning too, when my girlfriend SCREAMED!! I slammed on the brakes and as a million thoughts are going through my head, there was no where to go, no where to steer away before hitting the Ford Escape in front of me. Guess I managed to swerve a little to the right, which very possibly saved my front clip. DAMN!, damn damn damn ... all kind of visions of what kind of damage may await me.    Thank goodness it was a VERY SLOW IMPACT, just a 'love tap'. The other driver was unaware that I had hit her. With the front of the Nova diving to come to a stop, the bumper slid under her bumper breaking her muffler bracket and the fender extension came into contact with her bumper and that's where the majority of the damage was done. The fender extension is bent slightly inwards, lower bezel chrome tweaked and drivers fender wrinkled. Front bumper was undamaged! No frame damage at the front, infact the fender still lined up perfectly on the body. I got lucky, VERY LUCKY. Would like to think the recent 'Front Disc Brake' conversion played a part in minimizing damage.
With the way our insurance works here in Manitoba, I've decided to avoid dealing with them and I'll look after repairs to the Nova myself. So far we've been able to work most of the dent out. To do anymore, I'll need to remove the fender. I did purchase another 'drivers' fender to have on-hand incase I can't get it fixed. |
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