bet its a 250 six with a three on the tree?
it was when I got it.
okay here goes:
in '98 I bought a 77 Nova, orange hatchback, two door with a 305, turbo 350 tranny. a kid had overheated it, father in law had taken the heads off, couple pistons were fried etc.
I rebuilt the motor, put about 70k on the motor.
got married, had two kids. could not stand the two door with two kids, I wanted to put two car seats in the back and have an honest to gosh four door, meanwhile those hatchbacks, which are the greatest thing since sliced bread, are also hollow and the cancer can not be stopped anyhow, anyway. they rust from the inside out. I tried several times to stop it, short of complete acid dip.
so I bought the '70, and like hillbill said, three on the tree, 250. I drove it home from houston and the linkage would bind up really bad, complete POS. as soon as I got home I called my buddy who owned a junkyard and asked him "hey will a turbo 350 trans fit, will I need to cut the driveshaft, or lengthen it and what about the crossmember....." he said no it is a direct drop in.
so I pulled the manual, and got an automatic steering column, had to get a radiator with cooling lines, made my own cooling lines....what else...had to heat up a powerglide linkage in a 750C oven at work, bend it to work and rig up the linkage a little.
then I was worried about the pilot bearing in the back of the six cyl crankshaft, gawd I remember one night thirty degrees laying on my back trying to chisel it out, which i finally did, I couldn't move my arms later.
anyway I really liked the auto trans with the 250 but it had two bad cyls, i changed the valve stem seals but nothing helped it would drink oil so I got rid of my two door 77 and pulled the motor out of it and put it in the 70. those old style mounts are kinda tough, one side I couldn't line up so I took an old main bolt, sharpened the end with a die grinder and tapped it in.
what I recall the most is this.....when I got the motor ready to drop in I had as much stuff hooked up as possible, I had the distributor in, lined up and everything....well, I stabbed the motor and could get the dowel pins in on one side, then I would go to the other and it would be off, back and forth and back and forth....
well what it was I had an HEI distributor which a 70 firewall doesn't have clearance so I was rolling back and forth off of the distributor. finally got the BFH and pounded the firewall in and got her done.
(Im tired of typing)