July 22, 2005: Bluebelle is kind of a "rusto-rod". An original Florida car with only 41,000 miles when we got her way back in 1986, she still has a solid original body despite 19 winters of outside storage under Western New York snowbanks!

Paint is a 10 year old coat of blue-tinted Kondar primer over the original Marina Blue.

The old girl is still running her original 283 and powerglide with a total of 105,000 miles, about 35,000 on pro (.060 over) rebuild of the engine. Original 3.08 rear is a little lame but the engine is real strong and performance is pretty good...

Recent improvements include Edelbrock Performer intake and 600 CFM carb, Carter Hi-Perf Fuel Pump, K&N Stainless Air Cleaner, and Summit Braided Lines. Running a Pertronix module in Accel blueprinted distributor, Autolite custom wires that were a real nice fit, and Bosch platinum plugs right now. Compression is pretty high with unleaded gas and it will ping if I bump spark up to the point where it should be for maximum performance. Gas milage looks like better than 17 mpg on first full tank so far – better than with the stock intake and 2-barrel! Also new last year are the Wheel Vintiques 15-by-7 4.5-inch b.s. "Chrome Corvette Rally" wheels and Dunlop 195-60s on front, Goodyear 205-60s on rear. Right now I have a set of original Chevy "derby" caps on the wheels but I have a set of the Wheel Vintiques "'56 Chevy-style" caps on order – these will look like the original '55 center caps I have on my '55 Chevy 210 2-door!

Interior is all original except Custom Autosound AM/FM cassette and S/W Oil Pressure and Water Temp gauges. The cloth upholstery is slowly disintegrating and door panel cardboard is going bad but the carpet is like new. A good deal of space under the dash is taken-up by the Frigidaire Dealer-installed A/C unit - the compressor clutch "froze-up" on me several years ago but I am still dragging-around about 250 of A/C hardware even though it doesn't work. The cost of freon alone is prohibitive to getting the system back in running order, but it looks impressive!

The suspension is all new over the past 10 years or so with new front springs from National Nostalgic Nova, new 5-leaf rear springs and Gabriel gas-shocks on all four corners. The front springs had the wrong "twist" on them (NNN's vendor screwed-up and they had a whole shelf full of these!) so I had part of a coil cut-off. When I broke one of the original mono-leafs a few years ago I opted to replace them with 5-leaf springs. The net result of the lowered ride height in front and stronger-than-original springs in the back is about a 2-inch "rake" in her stance with which I am not entirely happy. The problem comes-in with the strong 292-inch engine which now spins the tires with minor provocation – any attempt to "jack-it-up" with the PG's big torque multiplication results in seemingly endless quantities of tire smoke!

I'm running the original rams-horn exhaust manifolds with custom-bent 2-1/4 inch duals and turbo mufflers. The stainless exhaust tips came from JC Whitney and were a great deal!

If you look closely you can see that I have painted every-other alternate rectangles on the trunk-lid diecast trim plate black & white – it looks pretty cool, I wonder why nobody else has done this?

I bought a "Nova SS" emblem for the grille and put a pink pinstripe in the center. The pinstripe matches the one on the aluminum body-side moldings that I painted dark blue matte color to contrast with the light blue primer.

The beach towels on the front seat cover-up a multitude of splits and tears in the original fabric - you can see the back seat is really nice! These are seats from another '67 Nova 4-door, Bluebelle's original seats were re-upholstered once already with after-market cloth and that has worn-out now too. The original seats are standing-by for a second re-upholstery job!

This spring when I was cleaning her up I noticed a wet spot on the passenger's side front carpet. When I pulled it out I discovered that the cowl vent on that side had become clogged with leaves and pine needles and overflowed water onto the carpet at some point – the "toe-panel" at the front of the floorboard on that side is now perforated with rust! Repairing this will be the first sheet-metal repair I have made to the car in all these years of outside storage, and I'm not looking forward to it! (I did dig-out the 2 inches of bondo in the dent on the passenger's side rear door recently - the sheet metal underneath is like new but I'm no body man and I see no good way of repairing that short of a straight rust free door!)

May 19, 1997: Above is a picture of our '67 Nova, "Bluebelle." We got her picture in Nova Times in April '95 and she continues to be a good reliable old car! As you can see from the picture she has a poor paint job (Actually it's just blue tinted primer! I haven't even to disquise any of the minimal rust on the car; you can see a little rot on lower front fender in the snapshot.) The picture was taken with a Kodak DC-50 digital camera. Not bad, eh? (I work for Kodak and have one for doing tech documentation in my job as a product development technician.)

We are the second owners of Bluebelle. She spent her first 20-years making one trip a year back-and-forth between Rhode Island and Florida. At 20 years of age (in 1986 when we got her), she had 40,000 miles on her odometer and came with a Florida title! We love the old girl and have taken good care of her for the past 11 years, but it's time she found a home with someone who has a garage for her to spend the winters in and who is willing to invest in a little body and paint work. She now has 92,000 miles (24K on a professional re-build to the original 195-horse 283). I am just getting ready to call the shop to schedule her for her 3rd set of upper ball-joints, otherwise everything mechanical is in excellent shape:

Excellent original PowerGlide (serviced every 24K since '86)
4 Goodrich Radials on Olds Rally rims
The cleanest original carpet you'll find
2 complete sets of original seats (both need upholstery)
ACCEL blueprint distributor
Dealer-installed A/C (needs new clutch)
COMPLETE documentation:

Copy of Florida Title (NY State took the original!)
Window Sticker
Owner's Manual
Protect-O-Plate
Original Bill-of-Sale
Build Card
Nova Accessories book