Spring of 2000 brought a WHOLE NEW IMAGE to my car, with the aid and guidance of a good friend Glenn Evans, I processed to rebuild the top end of the engine in the Nova. The Stock Look/Image is gone, and Project: MEAN GREEN began. I orignally planned to just change the carb from the 2 barrel to a 4 barrel and add HEI. Well, I had a 4 barrel Q-jet I was gonna put on, but I didn't know if it was good or not so I priced out how much it would be to rebuild it. Figured, I was going this far, I might as well buy new and avoid any hassles. Well, that's where Edelbrock came in. Got one of their catalog and was pricing things out Figured I might as well get a nice aluminmum intake too. Then we looked at some of the graphs in the book with their "Performance" Packages, and figured, maybe a set of headers would be nice too. Then my friend Glenn suggested a CAM, so we looked thru the Edelbrock catalog at one of their "Performance" packages, but using the Crane CAM. So we went with the 1406 Carb with 2101 Intake combination and didn't bother looking at the Edelbrock CAM or Heads yet. I've heard alot of good things from members of the Nova Webring and Listserv about this combo. Then it was suggested to me to use an ol CRANE cam from my friends car, with the headers, carb & intake but due to problems trying to get the cam and time kinda ticking away, I went out and bought a new CAM & Lifters for it. We began with well, unbolting everything. First things first, took off the hood & grill. Drained out all the fluids, Took out the rad, unbolted the alternator, removed the pulleys, unbolted the exhaust from the manifolds, Tranny cross-member, and so on. Put the engine hoist together and chained it all up. By the end of the first day, the Engine and Tranny were ready to be pulled out. As I started to disassemble the engine, I began to understand more and with Glenn explaining things and answering my questions, I LEARNT A GREAT DEAL!!. Also when taking the engine apart, we discovered a few things. First, the engine itself inside was super clean, thanks to the excellent maintanace performed on the car over the years by my father. Took off the valve covers and this was the first time EVER that a valve cover has been taken off. As you can see, the inside of the motor is REAL CLEAN!. Pulled out the old CAM and to our surprise, the cam was next to worn right out. We had 3 lobes that were almost round, and a few other were pretty worn. A few of the lifters were pitted badly or had the bottom banged in. Also had one push rod that was chipped on one end. With Glenn advising me to replace the oil pump while I had the engine out, we came across something very surprising. When pulling off the pan, we found a ton of plastic gearing in the pan. It turned out to be the Nylon-coating from the original timing chain which I had replaced in 96 or 97, back at 83000 miles, over 25000 miles ago. Also when looking in the engine, there was that plastic everywhere, and we also discovered that the Oil Pickup was 50% plugged with more of this nylon coating. Geez, I nearly had a fit, because the guys at the garage that replaced my timing chain/gear at the time, should of known and checked out the oil pan. So I've had all this plastic crap in my engine for the past 3 or 4 years and having the oil pickup almost plugged, I wonder why my cam is worn badly.... not having the proper oiling, can't say forsure. So we cleaned up that mess and moved onto replacing the oil pump. I just used a stock oil pump, as I have no intent on racing this car. Also replaced the rear main seal as well, which might of been leaking abit :). At this point I discovered I only have a 2 bolt main. So we cleaned out the under-inside of the block and replaced the oil pan gasket and seal'd her up. We replaced the tired and worn out CAM with the CRANE CAM Energizer 272H10. My reasoning for this cam was with working with DeskTop Dyno, and knowing others who have run this CAM, it peaks out at 3500 where most other CAMs I looked at peaked at 4000. It's VERY rare I have my car up at 3500, let-alone 4000. The Crane Cam seemed to be the right cam for what I want. I just want a car to play around with on the street, not a drag-car. Putting the engine back together was kinda fun. We replaced the Oil Pump and Rear Main Seal, cleaned up the inside from all that and then sealed it all up. Flipped it over, and then did the CAM, which Glenn put in, then the double roller timing chain, sealed up the front. While I had the engine and tranny out, I painted up the engine all real nice, BRIGHT CHEVY ORANGE, and I also painted up the engine conpartment and cleaned it up nice. Unfortunealy the paint didn't take too micely on the driver's inner fender. Didn't have any problems putting the tranny and motor back in, tho I broke the dip stick tube so I had to get a replacement, so we put the engine and tranny in anyways. We also pounded in the firewall to make room for the HEI unit. While using a 2x4 and hammer, the 2x4 split and the hammer then flew and smached my fan shroud. DAMN!! I was mad!!, luckly I had the fan shroud around from my old 77 Skylark so I used that inplace of the smached shroud. The next day I got a universal dipstick tube. BOY!! What a hassle to install a dipstick tube with the motor and tranny already in. NEVER AGAIN!! I will leave the motor and tranny out next time if I have to ever get a new tube. Installing the Hedmen Heddars was pretty easy. Like a friend told me, bolt the right motor mount and lift the left (drivers) side and it should slide in. Put a few nice scratches on them, but they fit nice, and I had no problems attaching the column shifter to the tranny, which was a concern of mine. Also, I had to get a new air cleaner as my old one wouldn't clean the fuel line or electric choke. So I had to borrow one from Glenn, one with a flat base. After I had everything back in, we did a CAM break-in. So I started at 2500rpms and varied it alittle, then about 10 mins in, I went up to around 3000rpms, then there was a problem. The lower coolant line of the tranny was spitting and spitting onto the heddar, so Glenn and his neighbor who was helping us out that night, kept an eye on it. We had the hose and fire entingisher ready beside the car. Glenn's wife cleared the kids out of the yard and they moved the car from the driveway so if my car did go up, I could back it out to the street. I got REAL scared when he mentioned we might have a fire. So we varied back down to around 2500rpms and that slowed the spitting and we were able to properly break-in the CAM. Well, it was almost done. So after we shut down the car, I was the happiest guy in the world, and to think my dad thought the car would never run again, hahaha, tis not the case here. I had a ton of visions going thru my head, and thinking, I will no longer be known as the Green Slug. So after we let the car cooled down from the CAM Break-In, I was eger to take it out for a spin. We started up the car, which was running open heddars (grin), and minus one hood, I was gonna go for a little spin around the car, but no luck. Everytime I put the gear into gear, it basically stalled out. As disappointed as I was, and being it later in the evening, I decided I'd leave it till tomorrow and see what's up. After a couple of emails to Bruce Johnson regarding my problem, I asked him what his Timing Setting was, as he had used the same cam in his Nova before. He instructed me to start at 14 degrees and work from there. So the following night, we get out to Glenn, set up the timing, and WOO-HOO!, we have life. Went for a few spins along the back roads and she just purr'd. So it's done!, well, almost, still have to put the Hood on, clean up the garage and my mess. I then drove the car home from Glenn about 1am in the morning. (Selkirk is about 30 kms outside of Winnipeg) drove the car home with open heddars and was very pleased. I was so excited. I guess the rumble of the car announced my arrival home at about 2am, and I was as deaf as could be. My dad was saying something to me and basically I was yelling back at him. The following morning, I drove down to Minute Muffler, and had the collector welded up to the exhaust, and then headed back home to do a oil change. I changed the oil again at 500kms and then at 1000kms, and then back to my 1500-2000kms regular schedule. I owe a HUGE thanks to Glenn Evans, who guided me thru alot and for his patiences with me at the times when I got frustrated. I could of read the same thing over and over, but it just wouldn't click till he took the time and explain it further. I'm sure there were a few times he wanted to smack me upside the head, because I fear the unknown and when I wasn't too sure about something, I tend to panic/freak abit. I also have to thank the Nova ListServ Group, a GREAT bunch of guys who are all very informative and wise. Bruce Johnson, Craig Watson, Scott Windle, Roger, these guys were hounded by emails from me on various questions thruout this project. Especially Bruce, as I spent alot of time emailing him about "Should I" or "Shouldn't I", basically he convinced me that I should have fun with my car. I originally had no plans on ever modifing my Nova to anything beyond stock.

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