Forged From Fire - Chris VanWerden's Nova Nearing the Finish Line on Rebuild for Drag-and-Drive Return
It’s easy for a ’67 Chevrolet Nova like Chris VanWerden to go under the radar. Its clean white appearance, complete with factory moldings, hub cap wheels and a small cowl hood doesn’t alert people to its performance.
Last summer, the Nova garnered a lot of attention, but unfortunately for Chris, it was for the wrong reasons.
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Chris was leading the Dial Your Own class at the 2023 Sick Summer Presented by TBM Brakes, posting identical 10.178 runs between Cordova Dragway and Great Lakes Dragaway.
With a rain out on day two at Byron Dragway, Chris rolled into Tri-State Raceway on day four trying to keep the lead, which meant the Nova known as ‘Betty White’ had made more than just a couple passes.
On his final run of the day, a 10.152 at 131 mph, Chris shut down the Nova and made the turn off the race track to discover smoke coming from the hood.
It turned out to be a fire, and although Chris was able to exit without any injuries, unfortunately the same wasn’t true for the car. The fire consumed a lot under the hood, and Chris had to drop out of Sick Summer.
Nearly a year later, the Nova is nearly back to a painted and ready rolling chassis, although Chris was never able to definitely say what caused the fire. “My best guess was something with the fans,” said Chris.
He did use the rebuild time to update the roll bar to a new roll cage, and the driveline and wiring are next on the ‘to-do’ list.
The Nova will continue to employ the previous 421 cubic inch small block Chevrolet engine, naturally aspirated, in hopes of diving into the 9-second range when it gets back to the track, which Chris estimates will be next year in preparation for its next drag-and-drive.
“It’s been on the back burner a little bit,” Chris said. “I’ve been doing a restoration for a customer, so that’s taking up most of my time. The cage is 90% done; just have to do the door bars. Paint is all set. So the big thing will be rewiring it. Everything else should be pretty easy going.”
Written by Derek Putnam. Photos courtesy of Sick the Magazine and Chris VanWerden.
If you have thoughts / feedback / ideas, please e-mail us at derek@sickthemagazine.com