’66 CHEVY NOVA REBUILD A 10-YEAR LABOUR OF LOVE
Working alone in his Calgary garage, Harry Harder rebuilt his 1966 Chevy Nova from the ground up. Building any custom car is a time-consuming task, but this retired dentist has the right attitude.
“During the build, when neighbours would stop in to the garage and look at the project, they’d say, ‘What a big job!’ ” Harder says.
His reply? “It’s not a big job, it’s a million small ones.”
After a full decade of construction and the completion of all those small jobs, Harder’s ’66
Nova will make its Alberta show debut at the 54th annual World of Wheels at the BMO Centre at Stampede Park. The car will be on display with more than 250 other customs, hot rods, restored cars and motorcycles Friday to Sunday.
Growing up on a farm near Lethbridge, Harder was handson from an early age. He learned to weld and wrench, and with help from his father, rebuilt a 1963 Chevrolet Nova. Just after he was finished high school, Harder took the six-cylinder engine out of the four-door Nova and put in a 327-cubic-inch V-8.
Shortly after that, while visiting Speedway Park in Edmonton, he witnessed a 1966 Nova beating a 1968 Mustang 428 Cobra Jet in a drag race. He says that’s when his love for the shoebox-style 1966-67 Chevy Nova was truly cemented. But it wouldn’t be until 2009 when he’d find the right car to start his own project.
Originally launched late in 1961 as the Chevy II, the Nova was an intermediate-sized and economy-focused vehicle in Chevrolet’s lineup. Weighing about 2,500 pounds, the cars were powered by either a four- or six-cylinder engine.
A Super Sport option, first offered in 1963, added a hint of performance but the car was still equipped with a 194-cubic-inch six-cylinder engine. In 1964, Chevrolet added more engine options, including 283-cubicinch small block V-8s, followed in 1965 by a 327-cubic-inch V-8.
Second-generation Chevy IIS launched for the 1966 model year with a complete makeover and more powerful eight-cylinder power plants, and the cars remained close to unchanged for 1967. These shoebox-style Novas were only offered for that brief two-year span.
A friend in the Lethbridge area knew Harder was looking for a
’66 Nova. When he spotted an ad in a local newsletter offering a fairly complete and running twodoor ’66 with automatic transmission for sale, together with a ’67 four-door parts car, he alerted his friend. Harder went to look at the cars and bought them both.
First, he focused on stripping the four-door car, which originally had a standard transmission, for parts. Then, he brought the two-door car into his garage. He took it apart and had the car media-blasted to remove all old plastic body filler and expose the worst areas of rust. With the body mounted on a rotisserie, Harder replaced both sides of the rusted-out floor pans with sheet metal from Classic Industries.
He ordered a kit of parts from Heidts Suspension Systems to put four-wheel independent suspension under his Chevy. For power, a wrecked 2010 Chevy Camaro with just over 3,000 miles on the odometer donated an LS3 engine and six-speed standard transmission. To accommodate the larger powertrain, Harder had to remove the transmission tunnel from his Nova and cut, fold and weld together a new one. What Harder didn’t do himself was the final bodywork and paint — that was completed by T&S Custom Paint and Body Works out of High River. He also called in Murray Wessling of Minute Muffler to run the 21/2-inch diameter exhaust tubes from the headers to clear the new independent rear suspension and exit in the stock position, just behind the rear wheels. The majority of the interior was done by Degreeve Auto Upholstery. The rest of it is all Harder’s hard work, including wiring in the new engine and all of the power options he added.
“In hindsight, I’d have saved a ton of money by getting the best car for the project out of the U.S. that I could find, but I’d have missed out on all this fun doing a million little jobs.”
Plus, there’s the pride Harder will feel when showcasing his handiwork while the car is on display at the World of Wheels — and ultimately, when he’s cruising down the road.