Devils Tower

Devils Tower

Sunday, October 27, 2013

The NOVA project Part 3

 I decided if this was gonna be a daily driver I needed to update the  braking and steering.    I ordered up a kit from Speedway Motors and the new coil springs and new sway bar from Summit Racing.  
A pretty daunting task at first glance.
The original drums were fine in 1963, but driving habits are a lot faster now.
 The old sway bar was 5/8" in diameter.  Pretty puny in my opinion.  I upgraded to a 1-1/8" sway bar.  This would cut down on body roll.
The hardest part was getting the original coil springs out of the towers.  We ended up building our own spring compressor.  It took a few days, but we rebuilt all the bushings, tie rods etc.
I changed the front spindles to 5 lug.

I figure if the wife is going to drive this car, a power booster and dual reservoir are a must.

I switched the wheels out to 15 inch.  I bought Wheel Vintiques 15x6 with a chrome out lip.  I painted the inner section black.  I finally decided on 195 65 R15 tires. I usually run big and littles on everything but, I wanted something I could rotate, since this is going to be a daily driver.  The scary thing is this is the stock tire that comes on the Toyota Corolla these days.
Sitting back on the ground.  The springs are still pretty stout.  They will settle down over time.