1967 Casper Nova Part I

There's a time in a place where automotive dreams come true where dreams that have been faded for decades, get a second chance a chance to once again ride like the wind

today, our elite team of professional and volunteer builders will find and rescue someone's pride and joy

and give a new meaning to the term

search and restore.

We all love cool cars and trucks but building them isn't easy.

Even under the best of circumstances, it takes a lot of time tools not to mention cash,

but when unforeseen problems occur, taking on and finishing a major build can become almost impossible.

Meet Tim Strange, an award winning custom car builder chosen from hundreds of candidates to command the most important build in power block history. The theme your ride are dying.

Joining Tim are some familiar faces and a slew of volunteer builders. Hey guys.

Hey, Mike Tim. Nice to see you again. It's great to be here. Why don't you meet our crew? How you doing guys? Good to see you.

Thanks again for bringing your Lochte

crew and giving us some help on this project. Yeah, it's an honor and privilege to be here.

We all witness people experiencing setbacks in their everyday lives. So this is really a tangible way that Hankel and the Lochte brand can give back. Why don't you introduce this to your crew?

Well, Tim, we have a great team of Hankel professionals here. Not only do they have experience in working on cars, but also they're great believers in the cause. Here today

we have Mary Beth

Karen

Lauren,

Evelyn,

Mike

John

and Carlos.

So whatever you need to do, we're all yours. We'll hold you to that.

I think we have a really good candidate for this first project. So let's meet the family.

Hi.

We just wanna

introduce ourselves and let you guys get to know us a little bit.

Um

To you.

Oh

yeah.

Never a dull moment in this place.

This is Andy Wilson and his three kids.

These are my trophies in my car. Seven year old Gavin

Emmett, who's four

and two year old, honey. I got my dad

together. They all share this small five acre farm in the Tennessee countryside

and share a passion for anything on wheels. From the kids' toys to dad's Classic Muscle. This

is my 67 Chevy

and it, it'll be the one that

I would love to have the makeover done on.

But the Wilson story is less about a neglected nova than it is about the 17 year relationship the owner shared

and he met Jessica Thatcher in eight grade.

The two were a couple all through high school. He loved cars and motorcycles. She had a passion for animals

and was an avid rock climber.

The romance led to marriage after high school

and five years later

they started a family,

first Gavin,

then Emmett.

But when Jessi was pregnant with her third child, they noticed something wasn't right.

She had horrible pain in her shoulder, you know, up here and,

you know, we were trying to figure out did she pull it? Did she do something? Swimming? She got to hurting so bad that,

that she asked me to take her to the hospital.

They transferred her to Vanderbilt University Medical Center where they ran some tests. A couple of days later they told her

she had stage four colon cancer

can

a year ago. She was

the most healthy person in the world. You know,

Jessica was induced at seven months and gave birth to a small but healthy baby girl.

The cancer was so aggressive that it was growing

even after chemo. It, it,

you couldn't stop it

on November 4th. She,

we had all the family come in and

say the goodbyes and,

and then she left us.

That was two years ago since then.

Andy left his construction job and opened up a shop on his property where he runs a small auto repair business. He's close to home and is able to raise his three kids as a single dad taking it day by day.

I'm kind of lost without her,

kind of feeling my way through life and,

and trying to do the best I can. And,

you know, if she were sitting beside me now,

you know, for, I wanna make her proud of the way I'm raising my kids and, and the life I'm trying to live for my kids.

It's pretty powerful stuff, wasn't it?

Yeah, it's him. I can't think of a more deserving family

as I look around. I can actually see some tears on some of these people's faces right now. So hopefully we can, uh, redo this old Nova for him and bring a little bit of cheer back to his life. Let's make it happen.

As you can see it's a white Nova

and when he bought it, it had this Casper decal in the back window and he peeled it off and it still stayed in the window tint

and the kids love this car. They crawl around on it, they play in it and they call it Casper by name. Like it's, it's part of the family with them,

but it doesn't have a motor and tranny. So we're gonna need a lot of parts for this thing.

So some of these guys, we get them to call our friends in the aftermarket and see if they want to donate to the project. I mean, Kevin will go get, it sounds

great.

Cancer has stolen a lot from a lot of people and that's what I saw there

so happy that we maybe can bring some happiness into his life.

It's close to home. So I think it's a good cause and the better we do on the car, the more happy the family is gonna be and

they'll be able to cruise together and hopefully bring back some old times. It's a,

it's a neat deal.

You might think it's just a car, but I think it's gonna be more than that. I think it's, he needs something to spend time with his kids with. So

it's just a car but I'll keep them together. That's what's important

coming up. The guys see just how friendly of the build the Casper Nova will be. And later on the thrash begins

with the family chosen and the guys on the road our first search and restore find takes us to East Tennessee just outside the town of Cookeville.

Well, from the pictures, the car look pretty solid. What do you think we're gonna find?

Yeah, it does. It look really solid. Looks like it's been in, out of the weather,

sitting in a garage instead of a barn.

Doesn't look like there's any animals been living in it.

But you never know. So

that magic moment is when we get it all in the shop and tore down and

get it back from blast. That's usually when everything shows its head.

Well, here we go. Let's go surprise him. Let's do it.

No way. Andy

I am Andy. Hey,

it's Tim and Kevin from Search and Restore. We picked you. We love your story. We would have built

Turn Nova for you. How you doing, buddy? Congratulations.

When we first drove up,

I'm not sure the Wilsons knew what to think. Andy later told us that his oldest boy actually went to get his BB gun because he thought somebody was coming to get all their stuff. It's what,

how is that?

Because that's the, that's the car's name, huh? Is it white? It's white. We've seen some video on it and some pictures. So we kind of know what color it is. Let's go look at this car. What do you think?

This is awesome.

Now, the kids wanted to look inside our empty trailer. So we gave him a quick tour. Here's the trailer we're gonna put Casper in and

take it back to the studio.

Then it was on to the garage to see the car for the very first time and get it loaded up and back to the shop.

There it is.

This is Casper

Tim. This is nice and straight. It is.

Do you get back? All the change that we find in the car?

Depends on how much.

Wow. It looks pretty solid in here.

B

a

little bit of rust starting on the trunk lid. Nothing too major. Look, we get free labor. We get help.

I

grew up around Nova's. I had a Chevelle personally but I had a couple buddies that had early model novas,

they're known for being really bad right through here really rusty. This one's had a little bit of work done to it,

but I think we can save it, man. I'm impressed with how solid this thing is. Dude, before you wrote the letter and sent in the video, what were your plans to do with this, Nova? Well, I had a lot of plans First off, I was gonna be eight. The car

probably put a front clip in it, you know, lower it down, maybe some better brakes,

disc brakes in the front

on the rear end, put Subra

connectors in,

upgrading the rear end that was in it or just going out and getting a nine inch. Well, I think you're gonna be happy with what you're gonna get back. I'm super excited. Cool.

I thought

it was magic moments.

It's kind of fun. Look at that.

So how do you feel, man?

Is it going away?

I'm

excited. Yeah.

Yeah. It's,

it's almost like I'm in a dream

because

it's gonna be weird for not to see it every day. Go say bye to K.

So you think the family's excited? I think they're probably pretty excited but also a little nervous about somebody taking their, their car away and

when we loaded it up, did you hear a little Emmett say bye bye

KASPER.

That's cool.

Next, the team pokes and prods the Chevy two then strips her bare in an exercise that can only be described as organized chaos

right

here.

I

think it's rolling better than it did when it came in

with the truck and trailer. Back from the road. It's time to crack this seal and see what our team is up against. From what I can tell from the outside. It's rock solid, which is really gonna save us. I mean, not bad, not bad at all. I don't think it even needs full quarters. We have to find a way to keep the Casper.

We gotta keep it.

Here's your tool you can use

and you can have the Betty boop floor mats,

a

quarter tank in it.

I got that same shift in the

back

of

it looks pretty good up here. Let's check out the bottom. Let's get it on the lip.

You never know what to expect when starting a major rebuild like this. So, a quick inspection is the first order of business

paint can hide a lot undercoating can too or in the Nova's case. Roofing tar.

I've never seen a vehicle with roofing. Tar smeared all over the bottom of it. The blasters gonna have fun with that.

The guys think all that tar just may have preserved some good bones. That's pretty sweet, solid, solid car.

So

I

think we got a good car to start with.

We're gonna tear it all apart. We'll pull the glass off, all the doors off. The fenders, all the suspension and put on the Rich history. Take it to the blast and get it all stripped down to bare metal. A couple of people taking this off, somebody take this off. A couple people there, a couple of people on that door. That door. Yeah. Where's our tools? All the

boxes, the drawers, everything is labeled.

Yeah,

extensions. I'm gonna take this bolt off and you're gonna have this side and I still got a bolt on the other side.

You are on it.

It's coming apart really good.

It's really solid. It's not very rusty.

I don't think we've broke any bolts off,

guys having a bit of a tough time getting this one bolt out here. What we're gonna do is throw a little bit of anise onto the threads that are exposed right now.

So as it unscrews it, it'll help have a little bit of lubricant there to allow that faster come out a little easier.

That's pretty cool, man. You could actually feel it loosening up as it runs through the threads. It's all about. Yeah. Pretty cool.

More forensics here with the glass house. Yes, it was blue

rock solid, man. Usually they start rusting right through here, start rusting that and then on down,

you got a good piece right here.

Lots of work to do in a little amount of time. This is where a thing called teamwork comes in. I'm into motor sports to kind of anything with an engine. Most of what I learned about cars and about trucks was through watching

power block and muscle car horsepower Xtreme 4x4

trucks and

enjoy them all.

And uh all the aspects from the street to the trail. The lock out guys have been a real big help to us. The ladies have been doing almost better than the guys pushing them out of the way. Getting right in there. They're helping really good as you can see, we have some labeling bags, more

badies wear right front fender bolts. It may not look very important, but that is a very important job for the tear down to help assembly go that much better at the end.

Hey,

back at the power block set, our build team is working to get the Nova torn down quickly for media blasting

only then will they know exactly what's under 44 year old sheet metal. It's kind of cool decipher these trim tags on here that was built in Willow Run Michigan. According to this, it's a 1967 Nova. We already knew that rolled off the assembly line as a plain Jane Chevy two with a straight six. It's gonna be a whole lot more than that though. When we're done with it.

Back in the day, these novas were just like Andy's plain Jane, even though now they're considered classic muscle.

The Chevy two was introduced in 1962 as a humble affordable family style compact car.

Chevy's exact words were maximum functionalism with thrift, whatever the heck that means, maybe something like a boxy body for more interior space with a cheap four cylinder engine.

But to keep up with the Mustang Chevy quickly added a V8 option. Like the 327 you see in the 66 model,

350 horses, basically a Corvette engine and the lightweight Nova meant one thing speed

0 to 60 in seven seconds. The quarter in 15

by 67 the demand for the Nova had died down.

GM then put a lot of their eggs in the Camaro basket.

And a year later, the model got a major overhaul with a more rounded body style seen in a special edition Yanko.

But for many including our buddy Andy, the old body style of the Chevy too. Well, that's the only Nova that matters.

So

world famous Eric

Saliba little shop of horrors, signature edition cutter.

Ok. We're using these screw jacks because once we get that front clip assembly off, this thing will turn right over backwards.

You got any ratchet straps around here,

got you guys

next step. Take this out from under it. Jack it up a little bit. Roll the rotisserie under it, get it off to the blast.

We got the car flipped from the rotisserie

gives us the chance to be able to get it sideways and be able to work on it standing up because there's so much roofing tar in the bottom of this car that the sandblaster probably can't remove it.

How clean do we have to get it? I just got to get the majority of it off. It's kind of a cheap way of, uh,

undercoating

protection of sound deader in her car.

Yeah. It's a joy to have a lot of people doing this kind of job. It's stuff that's just gotta be done. If you want a nice ride,

we are starting to find a little bit more damage. That kind of makes us nervous. There's some repair work or some patchwork that somebody's did in the transmission tunnel and shifter area,

the main sections of the floor still look really good. There's a patch

over that wheel lip that somebody's put a quarter panel on this at one time,

the fun part is gonna be the mock up that's coming next week after it gets back from media blasting.

That's the part that really makes it look like a project. When you put the new front suspension on that motor and tranny, you start building exhaust, fixing all the body. You can finally see what your vision is for the project.

Next time on search and restore worried guy

fears are realized when a solid nova comes back as Swiss Cheese and with parts rolling in the drive train takes shape.