1967 Casper Nova Part IV - Build Finale

Previously on search and restore

the 67 Nova really started to take shape and his paint was mapped out and the guns loaded

the hot rod, the Wilsons called Casper slowly went from Gray Ghost to a more familiar friendly white.

Today, she becomes a driver again

and the keys to this better than new muscle car are handed over to a very proud and speechless owner.

Oh, look at that. Oh my God.

22 days, 1100 man hours later,

our team of professional and volunteer builders have done what would have taken a year to do in most high end custom shops,

take a rusted, worn out classic and turn it into a show stopper.

This build is due in part to the dozens of aftermarket companies who stepped up with donated parts and services. The builders and volunteers who gave their time

and the sponsorship of Lock type

and the Hankel Corporation.

I think we're all gonna feel a lot of pride. We're all attached to it already. Um We're attached to the family even though we don't really know them that well. We, you know, we've, we've talked to them enough and we've just kind of know story and we've all put in so much work into this car. I'm just gonna bring us to tears. I know that for sure. I can't believe it's getting, you know, we're getting very close and, uh,

it's gonna be fantastic. I think that the kids and

Andy are gonna be

really, really excited.

I'm hoping that gives him some healing and he moves on and, but doesn't let go of his memories that, you know, come with the car

and that's what it's all about

and what the wilsons don't know is they've inherited a new extended family here.

Men and women who have twisted a wrench all in hopes of putting some big smiles on some little faces. But before that happens, the car's gotta get finished.

Extra volunteers this week include TC Penick from Bay One customs who took care of the car's wiring. Uh My job for the car was to wire the car,

uh

mount air conditioner system.

But as I got here, there were a few more little odds in the end than I had to do. I used the, the big cool system, American wire system and I've been in jail and then graphed them all together.

It's uh

figure out what we're gonna do here.

Brian Finch of Hot Rod transformations brought along his buddy, Mark Turner earlier. They helped mock up a lot of the brake lines.

Ok?

See what

this

on the driver's side

and

all that work really paid off when it came time to install the brakes.

Hey, Tommy, I found the other one

first off, we gotta get the calipers on

start the assembly coming together and then we gotta put some brake lines to it.

The brakes on this car are very important.

It doesn't matter how fast you go if you can't get it slowed down. So we wanna make sure everything's correct and right on this for Andy hauling his kids to the ice cream stand.

Its pretty good boys

and to complete the braking system, Tim made his very own hand formed stainless steel brake lines

and with the back half of the dual exhaust hung into place, it finally allowed the guys to get the new fuel tank mounted underneath the trunk.

I lost my dad to cancer here just at the end of last year, uh three weeks and that was all we had that we from the time we find out until we lost him.

Uh So this is kind of like a,

my dad was very good at helping others without really telling anybody about it. These stories come out after his death.

And so this just is my way of kind of bringing some of that back saying, hey dad, you know what I'm doing? Something pretty cool for somebody as well

and it means a lot. It really means a lot that way

up next. All the little things that can bog down the tail end of the bill and later on, the Wilsons are reunited with their family treasure.

Ok. I've got some youtube and email to catch up on. You guys. Get busy.

Check my

ebay

auction this morning.

What are you selling?

Far parts, noble parts, no

part

to most people. The car is looking almost done,

but the last 10%

can take the longest the fluids, the weather strip, the shifters, the cables, the mirrors, the handles, all that stuff seems like it takes forever sometimes

day 24 and lots of check marks needed on the to do. Boy,

you might try you pinky out that might help you

to

do.

That's not funny, man. How that hurt.

Oh,

yeah.

With Rick, enjoying the relative quiet of his art studio.

The pace outside in the shop is really picking up familiar face. Dante from advanced auto glass has stopped by to work his magic on the Nova

and like the other volunteers for Dante. This just isn't about restoring

this classic ride. Anything I can do to help anybody at any time is great. I'm I'm proud to be a part of it

with the glass in. It starts to become a process of the installation of hundreds and hundreds of small parts that all make a complete car.

Uh I'm not a very good upholstery person for years. My wife did it with me, but I got stuck doing the headliner with Rick.

Sometimes it looks a little bit like a sleeping bag, but at least it's in there

more than 40 years after the dealer installed the air conditioning, we're installing a more environmentally friendly system. Thanks to vintage air

ready. Yeah,

with the things to do list quickly turning into a double checklist and also reminding us why we're here. Progress on the car has hit an absolute fever pitch

and looking like a car indeed, with a lot of the trim work and major things like the carpet finally going back into place.

And since Andy's family had lovingly bestowed the name Casper on this car, the badging was going to have to be very special.

Ok. This is Andrew from Motorhead Design House. She's got a very, very special surprise for us. Show us what you've got. Ok. Well, we've worked up some cool emblems for Casper.

What we did was we started with the

Nova emblem. What I had to do was pull the details from this font

and create the Casper font.

This is something that people are going to remember for the rest of their lives. So thank you for being a part of this. Yeah,

thanks for the opportunity.

Next, all the finishing touches. Then time for a nice quiet test drive when search and restore continues

27 and the seats going in confirms that Casper is getting ever so close to becoming a driver.

Look at this.

One of the last Freebies delivered was a set of billet hood hinges donated by the ring.

Now I'm taking

home.

No, we didn't get no hood hinges for the Nova.

Ok. The guys are gonna go test drive the car for the first time. Check out the brakes, all that kind of stuff.

Hood still needs buff. So when I'm gonna stay behind buff the hood,

uh, it's just called being efficient

driving after all that work, don't it?

I don't know. You haven't let me drive it.

That's right.

That where we was growing up starting a misfire, losing juice or gas,

we lost everything

and with a half gallon of gas, the men were back underway

now, unlike a lot of car shows on TV, we didn't build this Chevy for some superstar athlete or Hollywood celebrity.

Now,

this is for a regular guy with a regular job who lost the love of his life and is now living for his kids.

And what Andy doesn't know yet is that the Wilson story has touched the lives of everyone involved. None more so than our build leader Tim Strange. I wear this, this bracelet on my wrist

because everybody that we know has been touched by cancer.

Cancer really sucks.

I wish I could build a hot rod for everybody that's ever been touched by cancer. It would make their pain go away

and bring back their loved ones,

but you can't do that.

So when this opportunity came around for me to come down here and build some cars for some people that are very deserving

and try to make their lives a little brighter.

I thought I'd give it a shot.

I ran a shop for 18 years. Built cars for people all over the country. Won more awards than I could ever think been in over 250 magazines worldwide.

This build here means more than just about anything

that I have done.

Ok. Everybody, the eagle has landed. They are here, they are here.

It's time guys. Four weeks, a lot of late nights, dozens of volunteers.

We rebuilt this Nova with all donated parts. We're ready to give it back to Andy and his family

and make his dreams come true.

All right. Come on in.

Come on in.

My first question is, are you nervous? Very nervous. Very.

I'll be happy if I don't pee myself

here.

So

I know I just said that.

But yeah.

Hey, Tommy, you got the car ready

all dressed up, ready to go.

My heart's piling on. I can't wait to see Andy's reaction and the kid's reaction

when they see the car for the first time,

we really just can't wait to see Andy's reaction.

It's been amazing and, uh, very happy. We can't wait to see Andy's reaction.

Here. They come,

everybody.

This is the Wilsons, his family and his buddy Ellis.

Hello?

See, we've been working a lot of long hours this last month.

If it wasn't for lock tight.

And their sponsorship of the build we put in over 1600 hours on your car last month.

Wow.

So that's like a year's worth of work in a normal hot rod shop.

Yeah. So, uh I bet you're pretty excited to see the car, aren't you? Very,

very excited. Ok. Break for lunch. We'll be back tomorrow.

Oh man,

Tim. Always the kidder.

Now this is the moment everyone's waited for talk and say, hey, Tommy, bring me my car.

Hey come

bring me my car.

Yeah.

Oh God

do

this.

They're the same people.

Can you guys see this? Stick your hand out. Look at how that hand is shaking.

I'm a little shaky too but

we did all that work but we kept these nice worn out keys. Still the same.

There you go baby. Oh

my God, that's beautiful. Look at it.

We didn't put the uh ghost back in the window.

So we had these specially made for you.

Check these out

still in the Nova Font but it says Caspar right on the side in the envelope.

We kept it white for you. So it's still Casper. But hopefully you like it. We added in some cool charcoal, make it a little bit modern, put a little stripe down the side but it still looks like Casper.

So I know you're a real car guy. So I think you really like what's going on under here? You ready? I'm ready. Sure. Sure. Ready.

Yeah.

No

three.

Well, you're shorter you seen underneath it first,

everything you see is all new

radiator fans,

front runner assembly,

inner fender panels do that. Polish stainless suspension, polish coil overs, 14 inch rotors. You wanna sit in the car, you wanna sit in the car,

you can jump around in there. It's ok. Cli on in there.

Go ahead,

daddy. You have to put your car seats

back

there.

There's much more ahead, including a Casper that's edible and a huge surprise for the little ones. Stay tuned

to nominate a worthy candidate to donate or to volunteer, log on to search and restore tv.com.

It's got all new wiring, everything, new, new steering column, new interior everything, carpet,

sound insulation shifter, it's got air conditioning. So you guys will be comfortable when you're going to get ice cream

back at the shop. Andy has moved beyond words at seeing his old Nova reborn. She's definitely here with us today.

I have to think she had a hand in getting all this going for me

and just when the day couldn't get better

lock type had some more surprises for the family.

Andy, this is Mike Shanahan, director of Marketing for Hankel North America.

He's got a little something special. I think he wants to present you with.

Well Andy first, thank you on behalf of Hankel and the latte products team for sharing your story with us. Definitely motivated us and touched our hearts

and went all out and helping the team restore your car.

And

it wasn't only us that were motivated.

We approached some of our distributor partners as well and they were kind enough once they saw your story and they're gonna donate $3000 worth of product credit to be used for parts, tools and whatever you need to run your business. So that's on behalf of RS US

and Ellsworth of Adhesives. So, congratulations. Wow.

And

we're still not done

because as we all saw today, the story is more than just a story about a car. It's about family.

So they have also started a foundation fund on behalf of the kids to help them with their education

and to start it, they seated it was $10,000 for the Wilson Family Foundation.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, I am.

She just won't stop crying.

Let's get a baby up on the lift. Fire up Tommy

time now to take a look at the underside,

check it out.

All coated man.

Been exhaust.

A little shiny, a little more shiny

all new suspension stainless brake line.

We did like a bed liner material on the bottom, tinted it to match the stripes won't rock chip up. It still looks pretty all new drive shaft, nine inch rear end, Polish stainless four

length,

14 inch rotors and six piston calipers on this baby.

It's amazing.

It looks like a brand new car and it is a brand new car better than new they didn't quite have all this stuff back in 1967.

Man, I knew the car would be really nice,

but

I wasn't expecting that

by no means

and the kids certainly weren't expecting this. Well, Heel

Corporation and the Lochte

team have decided that you guys deserve one more special treat. What do you think?

So, we're gonna send the three of you and your dad

and your grandparents

to Orlando Florida

for a vacation

at

Walt Disney World.

What do you

think

next time on search and restore the team is off to Southern Ohio where we meet a man who sacrificed everything for his kids and has opened up his heart and home by adopting Children in desperate need of a family.

Wait until you see what Tim and the crew do to this worn out GMC.

There's a lot for all of us to look forward to. I'm looking forward to

going on a car ride for my ice cream cone.

I just can't believe it.

And the girls were telling me that they had put the

children's fund on the website so people could donate to it.

It's just awesome.

I

like that.

I'm such a good influence. I,

we put together this photo album, we named it

a love story

little book put together of all your memories

and was our privileged work on his life.