[Nicks67GTO]

Well i over the last 2 months i pulled the entire front end apart and cleaned everything. I got my unnecessary firewall holes all welded in and cleaned up. I got the firewall painted along with the front chassis. I installed my AC delete.com parts wich i can say im very pleased with the fit and finish of this stuff. I also bought a Wilwood 7/8" master cylinder to run the factory brakes for now. Heres a couple shots of the action.

[Nicks67GTO]

a few more...

[Nicks67GTO]

Sorry if the pics arent A-1 quality. For some reason my digital camera dosent like my garage lighting

[Nicks67GTO]

ZING!!!!

[Nicks67GTO]

thanks Greg!

[Nicks67GTO]

Goodguys DesMoines was a blast again. This will be an every year event. They let us run until 9pm Friday and Saturday. The track was big and pretty fast. The "Duel in DesMoines" was pretty cool as well. I, of course, was no where near making the duel portion of it but I made both time cuts to keep running, so I got to run all day both days. The highlight reel was that I got to run my mom, dad, wife and a friend around for their fist ever autoX runs. We got done and my wife said "ok that was really fun, i get it now" and my 65 y/o mom was ready to go again right away. 69 y/o dad was impressed. Haha. After all the racing, Saturday night there were fireworks to close it out and the kids loved it. This is an excellent event and a great time. If you're anywhere remotely close its worth your efforts.

[chemnick]

Nick:
Just did the AC delete kit on my 67 too. It's nice to retrain the AC dash function controls with this kit and still return to the stock AC setup under the hood at a later date if desired. Good looking job!!

Chemnick

[6 Grrrs]

Originally Posted by chemnick

Nick:
Just did the AC delete kit on my 67 too. It's nice to retrain the AC dash function controls with this kit and still return to the stock AC setup under the hood at a later date if desired. Good looking job!!

Chemnick

What are specifics on the ac delete kit?

[chemnick]

I would have to dig out the paperwork to be exact, but I believe the kit was for 64-67 GM A body cars. It came with the delete plates (fiberglass), blower wheel and motor, heater core, sealant and directions. If you want to keep your AC wiring (engine side) intact, you have to make a hole for the fan speed resistor and use it. then you have to plug off the vacuum lines that went to the vacuum chambers that are on the evaporator and fan ducts (engine side). The company was someplace in the Midwest I think.

Chemnick

[Old Blue 66]

Those seats look really good. I have a friend with a 66 full custom build and he did the same thing. Even had the dash pad stitched to match the seats. The interior is all black and he did not put in the wood grain insert on the dash bezel. Looks great.

[Nicks67GTO]

Originally Posted by Old Blue 66

Those seats look really good. I have a friend with a 66 full custom build and he did the same thing. Even had the dash pad stitched to match the seats. The interior is all black and he did not put in the wood grain insert on the dash bezel. Looks great.

Thanks! If I do anything with the interior it will be to have a glossy vinyl looking stock style cover put on the seats but I doubt ill do anything to be honest....

So ive been thinking about what im going to do with the dash. I know im going to run Speedhut revolution series gauges. I'm going to do the same thing that Bob {old66tiger} did a few years back. That turned out awesome. Ive seen it on another 66 GTO dash on PT.com. It looked great too.

I don't care for the stock woodgrain though. I might just suck it up and go with a stock insert but I would really like to find a way to run a nice subtly colored insert in the stock dash. Maybe a smokey gray insert with a 2" flat black stripe running horizontally across it between the gauges? Maybe even a glossy black stock style walnut. Im just not sure how yet?? Anyone got any suggestions on how to do this or where to find an insert blank?

[Nicks67GTO]

Back at Street Machine Nationals in StPaul I was discussing future events with a friend. He had mentioned that there was a hill climb in Waumandee Wisconsin. Fast forward to last Friday. I packed up the GTO and headed up to a spot about 3 miles outside the middle of nowhere to take part in a vintage hillclimb race. Your car has to be 30 years and older to run.

Friday night was homemade brick fire pizza and good beers on a farm with the rest of the field. Saturday morning 8:30 AM was the event and it ran until 5:30pm. The hill climb this year was a 500' ascent over 1 mile and no guard rails so there was definitely an element of danger though it wasn't really scary. The location had been moved from the last 3 years because that surface was unstable due to a recent recovering of the road. It's typically a 500' ascent over 2.4 miles on the original location and is supposed to be back there next year.

I have to say this event was awesome. Everyone was a great, pizza was stellar, scenery was beautiful and the race was a blast. I got to ride in some pretty cool cars when I wasn't running. The event is limited to 75 entrants though we only had 51 I believe. Its mostly older "British" type sports cars like Triumphs and Austin Healey's and such but we had a pretty good musclecar showing with a Fox mustang, 2 mid 80's G body's, a 66 Chevelle, 63 Chevy II, 68 Camaro, 68 Mustang and my 67 GTO. Next year if you're in the area and you want to get involved in a blast of an event that only costs $75 bucks, I highly recommend this one...

Directly below is a video of one of my runs. Click the small picture and it will take you to the video. Of course it looks slow because we're on video but I was probably in the 65mph range on one of the long runs in between chicanes. Just a heads up at the end of the video the passenger drops an F bomb right before I shut the camera off....I think he was just a little excited



Random shots of my drive there and the event. I think the drive there and back was just as nice as the event.

[Satyr1966]

Sounds like great fun. If I ever get to retire, I hope I'm able to do some fun stuff like this with my car. With all the work you've done on your car, I hope you did well against the competition.

[Nicks67GTO]

Originally Posted by Satyr1966

Sounds like great fun. If I ever get to retire, I hope I'm able to do some fun stuff like this with my car. With all the work you've done on your car, I hope you did well against the competition.

-Do it now. You never know what's going to happen. I was going to put this stuff off but had some life changing stuff happen in June and it made me realize... you have to do stuff now.

I got 18th out of 49. The car is much better than the driver at this point.

[Nicks67GTO]

I'm also doing the Jeep GC power steering box swap. I started a thread about it in the street section. The link is here. It basically gives you 12.7 steering on the cheap. Ill easily have less than $150 in this and have some tight modern steering in the end. Bolt in deal.

Here's a link to the thread.

http://forums.maxperformanceinc.com/...d.php?t=685111

[Nicks67GTO]

Well I got my Lakewood scattersheild fit up. I got this on EBAY for pretty darn cheap and I now see why. The fit of the back plate was pretty bad. Horrible really. I had to take material out all the way around the crankshaft hole just to get it to go on, then a little bit out of the dowel holes to make it work. Its a good thing the back plate dosen't need to be a precision fit. This took a while and was pretty frustrating. I also had to remove overhang from the rear cam plug and take a bit out of the oil pan rail to get the stupid MF'er to work. The good news is that the bellhousing portion went in without a problem and everything seems ok with it. I had it blasted by a buddy and I painted it a satin black. I think the Lakewood red is obnoxious.

[Nicks67GTO]

I also found a NIB Centerforce SFI flywheel with the factory balance in it on EBAY a while back. I mated it up to the crank with some ARP bolts i got on here from a PY member. I ended up not using the spacers that come with the bolts. They were just thick enough it almost created a small interference with the clutch disc. It was very close. My clutch guy didn't care for it so he checked a couple things and gave me some star washers and it turned out perfect.

Speaking of my clutch i went with a dual friction unit from a local guy. I ran this clutch with a different style disc behind my last car and it worked great for 8 years taking some serious abuse. This one is a step up from the last unit i had.

I also chose to go with a B.O.P. pilot bearing. It went in easy and seems to be a perfect fit. Wade from B.O.P. is a great guy to deal with.

[Nicks67GTO]

Here are a couple shots of the Richmond 5 speed mounted up. I'm going to drop the engine in and then mount the bellhousing and tranny underneath the car. I just had it all together to check, double check and triple check a bunch of little things so i snapped some shots.

[Nicks67GTO]

Here she is awaiting her 455/5speed transplant tomorrow!