May 25.3 Nova Update

Chris and I stopped in at Kurt’s over the weekend to check out the progress on the Nova. It’s definitely getting much closer to bringing it home! All the braces are in now on the main cage, new steering column is in, shifter mount is done and seat mounts are almost finished. He’s also finished up the fuel cell/water tank frame, electrical disconnect bracket, and was working on the J-Bars that go to the front subframe.

Check out the new steering column which replaced the heavy OEM column that weighed 24 lbs. Not sure what the new one weighs, but it’s got to save quite a bit. The car sure feels different setting in it now, the drivers seat is much lower than before which is a good thing. With the seats my helmet almost touched the headliner, now I’ve got plenty of room above my head.

The shifter is now in a very comfortable & natural location without having to loosen the belts when strapped in. Kurt rigged it up on a post so that if we want to pull it, it just takes one quick release pin. He also made up some nice braces that fit the back of the drivers seat which is a good safety feature. I have heard that in some bad crashes under certain conditions the aluminum seats can fold up, loosening the belts. With those back supports that’s not likely to happen.

While we were there, we test fit the new Advantage Fiberglass deck lid. It seemed to fit decent, not bad for $100. It weighs 9lbs, the stock steel decklid and associated hardware (hinges, etc) weighed 52 lbs – net savings about 43 lbs or so.

I believe we also finally decided where to put the battery, we’re going to stick it over the back axle as with the water tank in the rear, the car should have plenty of rear weight now. Hopefully that will prove out to be the right spot. With all these changes to the car and where the weight is at, it’s anyone’s guess how it’s going to work. Hopefully we’ve made all the right calls and she’ll go straight with no fuss.