[troy_barker]

VERY NICE GTO Nick, Beautiful ride!

[Nicks67GTO]

Originally Posted by troy_barker

VERY NICE GTO Nick, Beautiful ride!

Thanks Troy!

[Nicks67GTO]

The last few weeks I did a little work. Nothing too cool but progress is progress. I added a Derale power steering cooler to the underside of the driver side fender by the front bumper. I drilled some holes in the inner fender, used rubber grommets and ran the lines through under the battery. It should get plenty of air and be protected under there. I also added a new 150 Amp alternator from http://www.qualitypowerauto.com/ I don't necessarily need it right this second but my old alternator was just that....old. This gives me room to grow with my electronic parts like EFI, electric fans and fuel pump. Install was bolt in and all I had to do was parallel another #10 wire from the alternator to the starter post.

I signed up for my first auto X next Sunday. Its a local Iowa chapter SCCA event held about 2 miles from my house. If the weather holds out i'm hoping to give it a crack! If all goes well there i'm going to make plans to hit up Goodguys in DesMoines over the weekend of the 4th of July. Is anyone else that follows this thread planning on going?

[Nicks67GTO]

Last weekend I ended up heading to the Goodguys Heartland Nationals in DesMoines with the intention of running my first auto X. I drove the GTO down from Waterloo since its only about 2 hours on the dot and I got a solid 16.5MPG running 75-80 MPH the whole way. I was pretty pleased with that. One thing led to another and I ended up auto X'ing all day Friday and Saturday. What a great time. One of the best times iv'e had in a long while. I dropped 9 seconds off from my first lap to my best time, I didn't smash the car up or break anything and just had a blast. Mission accomplished. The weather was beautiful, I made some new friends, saw a lot of old ones from around my area and ended up finishing with a best lap of 45.5 seconds with a lot of room for improvement left....especially behind the steering wheel. The winning time in street machine was a 40.xx. I took lots of people for rides, met folks from the pro-touring board and all around just had one of the better weekends iv'e had in a good long time.....So I guess that means I'm heading up to St Paul to do it all over again for Street Machine Nationals....anyone else heading up there?

Here's a video of one of my late runs on Friday....gotta throw a shout out to my wife, she was holding my 6 month old son in one arm and taking the video with the other haha. You can hear my little girl saying go daddy go in the background too. Ahhh what a weekend. If you click the picture it takes you to the video.



Ryan Buck rode along and stuck his GoPro cam up on my vent window. This is the same run as the one above but its a car vantage point...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB_TpAfk1IY

Heres a few random shots from the weekend...










Look who showed up to the fun...

[URL=http://s239.photobucket.com/user/novaguy73/media/Goodguys%20DesMoines%202015/20150704_133023_zpsm3y50r1i.jpg.html]

[vidguy]

Gorgeous GTO. Love the black top, chrome roof trim leading to the slightly raked rear...
Wheels too.
Glad your having fun resto modding that car. 67' is a beauty of a design that you made even better.
Good share. Thanks.

[Nicks67GTO]

Originally Posted by vidguy

Gorgeous GTO. Love the black top, chrome roof trim leading to the slightly raked rear...
Wheels too.
Glad your having fun resto modding that car. 67' is a beauty of a design that you made even better.
Good share. Thanks.

thanks vidguy!

[Nicks67GTO]

I decided to drive up to St. Paul this weekend for the Street Machine Nationals and was not disappointed. It was a great event with a huge turnout, even with the big showdown with Car Craft just a few hundred miles away. The Auto X was huge and pretty fast. We were all well into 2nd gear through a lot of the course. Although I didn't lay down any barn burner times, I had a blast. I took a video of a run and got a few pics on a couple of websites that covered the event. I also did pretty well at the speed stop competition besting some newer Mustangs and putting up a pretty competitive time so that was kind of cool. Anyhow I ended up putting about 700 miles on the old girl, got around 15 runs at the Auto X, 10+ runs at the speed stop and rolled 16.8MPG on the way home! I had one electrical gremlin strike and I think I have it narrowed down to an ignition switch.

I did learn that the higher speed showed a clear weakness in my tire selection {Nitto555} and my driving ability, so both will clearly need to be corrected....haha

Packed the car...



Encountered a ton of rain....




Got up really early...



Beat on the old girl pretty good...


{click for video}





Headed home!...