Pro Touring '69 Chevelle build thread
 

I never shared this car here since I figured the interest was more stock original and Day-2 style cars on this forum, but Mark asked about this car in another thread, so here's the full build, starting from the beginning.

In the spring of 1998, I bought my '69 Malibu for $500, running driving unmolested car, but quite rusty. 250hp 2bbl 350/TH350 car with A/C, 2.56 open 10-bolt, Lemans Blue with excellent condition black cloth bench interior.

I was 15 years old at the time.

Fall of 1998, Dad had waited a few months after I bought the Chevelle to transfer the title so he would get 30 days of free insurance at the same time I got my driver's license. I had a farm-permit, which turned into a full license on my birthday, so at 11:59pm I headed out, knowing I would have a license by the time I would get to the highway, taking the Chevelle for a short drive.

The next day, I found some blue enamel that matched, brush-painted over all the rust, and sprayed black over all the lower body argent silver which hid the rust well. I had bought some 15x7 ralleys, and got the used tires off my parents' Caprice. The car looked great from 50' away. Unfortunately, I never took any pictures of the car at that stage... It only lasted 30 days on the road like that.

That winter we started the body work at Dad's body shop. This was planned to be a quick job over one winter, but the project stalled out for a little while after the metal work stage was done.

Like most of our car projects, what was planned to be 6 months for paint stalled out for a while and turned into 2-1/2 years. We took the car apart when I was 16, but I really wanted to have it done before I graduated high school.
Spring of 2001 we got serious about getting paint on it and freeing up the space it had been occupying in Dad's body shop. Huge thanks to Dad, the paint turned out awesome, and still looks great 20+ years later.

After paint, I assembled the Chevelle in May of 2001. The picture on the trailer was when we hauled it to a shop for exhaust and alignment. I was finally able to drive it to school the last 3 days of my Senior year.

With the completely stock drivetrain it was a very nice comfortable driving car. I drove it daily like that during the summer for two years, putting 9,000 miles on it in 2001, and 8,000 in 2002.

Fall of 2002 I thought this car was "done". It ran great, drove great, and I could see no reason to change it. Being completely satisfied and done with this car, I just knew I would have all sorts of free time, so I started looking for another project car to build.

I bought a '66 El Camino in late September.

One week later, my Chevelle was rear-ended at a stop light.

One week after that, I met my wife Jenna.

A week later, I took her on our first date in this car. She thought I was a dork, but liked the car enough to agree to a 2nd date.

Two weeks after that, the original 350 blew a head gasket or cracked a head (still haven't taken it apart to diagnose) on the way to meet her parents the first time.

So much for the free time and plans not to mess with it.

I bought a used, completely stock '77 400sbc with 200,000 miles on it, and cleaned and painted everything under the hood, and added some chrome. I had the TH350 rebuilt with a shift kit and a used 2400rpm B&M converter, and found a 3.08 posi rear out of a '66 4-4-2.

It was back on the road by July 2003, but the new quarter panel was in primer that whole summer. We repainted the back of the car some time during the winter of 03/04.

In 2004 the Chevelle was fixed from the crash, and back to being a great cruiser. I changed wheels again (3rd time) to some 15" Torq-Thrust IIs that I bought used. It wasn't fast, but it made noise and did some decent burnouts.

I was getting bored with it, and thinking about selling it.

That fall, a friend talked me into going drag racing at Rock Falls, WI. I was reluctant, but he reassured me that the car didn't need to be fast to have fun, and I was really no more likely to break things there than I was doing the dumb things on the street that I was doing all the time anyway.

The car ran very consistent, with a best of 15.045 @ 89.9mph. With some beginner's luck, I went multiple rounds, but red-lighted in the final, taking home a 2nd place trophy that was way more satisfying than any car-show trophy I had ever received previously.

The hook was set. Racing restored the fun, and I started planning how to make the car faster.

In 2005, I went drag racing a few more times, and the old tired 400sbc was getting slower each time. I was getting interested in "Pro Touring" type car builds, and wanted a more modern drivetrain. LS1/T56 was the dream, but they were still prohibitively expensive at the time. I bought a wrecked 9C1 Caprice and salvaged the LT1 and 4L60e.

The original frame had a lot of rust, so I bought a better one, boxed it, and started building my first suspension setup with handling in mind, using mostly dirt-track parts and tall balljoints with stock spindles. I started building the new setup while still driving the car.

In the fall, I took the car apart and got to work on the frame swap. I was young, energetic, and didn't have kids yet, so things actually moved forward at a pretty good pace. I had a deadline though, Jenna and I were getting married in May and I wanted to drive it to and from the church on our wedding day.

May of 2006, I don't know what motivated me more, the idea of having the car done for our wedding, or my brother Chad telling me that I would never make it.

This first picture is around noon on the day before the wedding. Wiring was pretty much done except power to the fans. I worked on plumbing the fuel system, and Dad, Chad, Carl, and Joe worked on fitting sheet metal, hanging bumpers, and putting the interior back in it. I still hadn't heard it run yet. It was still up on stands when we went to rehearsal. After the rehearsal dinner, I made some coffee and got back to work. Between the caffeine, nerves, excitement, and stress, I was throwing up outside the door of the shop shortly before I test fired it. About 1am, I heard it run for the first time.

The morning of the wedding, we hung exhaust, did a quick string-line alignment and hit the road with only about 30 seconds of run-time on it... About half way to the church, the temp gauge spiked. When I painted the engine I removed the temp sensor from the head and installed a temporary plastic plug just to keep the threads from getting paint on them. When I put the new sender in, I used a different port and forgot about the plastic one, so it dumped the coolant when it warmed up. We towed it to the church the rest of the way behind Joe's Firebird.

My groomsmen fixed the car while I was in for pictures, (and then took a nap on the floor of the church) and another friend took the car to his house and washed it. He reported that the temp gauge still read pretty high, so a temporary fix was made to make the fans run... Jumper leads alligator clipped to the battery.
When we were leaving the church after the wedding, the temporary fan wiring lasted about 10 seconds before it caught fire. That was ripped off, no damage done, and away we went to our reception and all 80s hard-rock wedding dance with my awesome wife Jenna.

After the wedding, we had planned to drive the Chevelle to Tennessee for our honeymoon, but it had a few small mechanical gremlins I didn't figure out in time for the trip, and wasn't confident in its ability to make a long road-trip yet, so we took a daily driver instead.

Once sorted, with the LT1/4L60e and 3.08 gears, it ran a best of 13.8 at 97mph, and got 22mpg on 87 octane. It did everything respectably, but fell a little short of my expectations, hoping for a 13.5 or better.

We bought a 66 Chevelle wagon for Jenna that needed suspension and brakes, and there were some cool new things coming onto the market, so in 2007 I swapped most of the setup from my Chevelle onto hers, and I bought the new ATS AFX tall spindle, SPC A-arms, upgraded to C5 Corvette front brakes, and 98-02 Camaro rear brakes on a used 12-bolt with 4.10 posi. The new brakes required new wheels, and I scored a deal on some 17x7 and 17x8 from Billet Specialties.

With the change to 4.10 gears and stickier tires, I improved my 1/4-mile ET to 13.62 at 98mph. I was losing interest in drag racing though, and focusing way more on making it handle.

In 2008, after 2 years of driving with no speedometer due to the modern transmission not having any way to run a mechanical cable, I decided to adapt an electronic speedo into the stock dash. I also wanted better seat bolsters to hold me in place while cornering, and to change the interior to "parchment" off-white from the original black.

Scat had just introduced their new "Procar Rally" seats, which had nice bolsters, but also styling and sized to look great in a musclecar without the high-backs that most other bolstered seats had. I decided to buy those seats, and have them custom upholstered with correct '69 style pattern inserts. It was kind of expensive, but worth every penny! I still love these seats.

For gauges, I wanted white faces to tie with the interior color and the stripes, so I cut and welded on the gauge panel to adapt 5" Autometer Phantom speedometer and tach into the stock cluster, and put a gas gauge in the clock location. One cool original feature on a 69 Chevelle dash that I knew I would miss was the little blue bowtie for the bright light indicator. I designed a small custom bracket and panel with a blue bowtie light to go in the PRNDL location. I also used the Corvette style font but read CHEVELLE instead to tie in with the Corvette brakes and fuel rail covers.

I finished the install just in time (bolted the front seats in while Jenna loaded the trunk) to drive the car to Nashville, TN for the Chevelle-abration show in June, and while the AC didn't work yet, the white interior proved to be a good choice in the 105° heat down there!

That's great!!

In 2008 I was finally ready to try autocross, but had no idea where to start. Car Craft Summer Nationals in St. Paul, MN had a small course and I was determined to try it there, but it was not meant to be... Fuel pump problems kept me out of the competition there that year. Later that fall, I found that there were local autocross events held in Winona, MN, so I tried it there for my first event. I was slow, but steadily improved with each run. I only got in one event at the end of the season.

I competed several times in 2009, including multiple Winona events, Car Craft, and on the speedway at La Crosse, WI. I was enjoying this a lot more than drag racing.

2010 was a big year for me with this car. I bought yet another new set of wheels. 17x9 Cragar D-windows were the cheapest way into 9" wide wheels at the time, and gave the car somewhat of a NASCAR vibe. With some advice from some very fast local autocrossers, I ran 265/40 Dunlop Z1 Star Specs, which were a top competitive street tire at the time.

My 2nd son AJ was a baby then, and Jenna was off most of the summer on maternity leave. With her schedule cleared, I got a lot of racing in that year running with MAC, COM, and SCCLaC locally. I had my spring/shock/sway-bar combination figured out, and was getting a lot of practice.

At the Car Craft Summer Nationals, I ran fastest of any vintage car for most of the day on Friday. Jeff Smith (Car Craft editor) asked me to enter the Real Street Eliminator competition, so I did. I finished 3rd in the autocross, just a couple tenths of a second behind 2 pro-built shop cars on R-compound tires. I didn't try very hard on the stop box, so my time there was unimpressive. On the dyno I made a meager 256hp. There was a small paragraph in the magazine about me and the Chevelle, and a tiny picture of it on the cover of Car Craft Magazine in their issue with the event coverage.

We then drove it to Cleveland Ohio for the NOCC Chevelle show, where Chuck Hanson did a photo shoot for a full multi-page feature in Chevelle World Magazine.

That fall we made plans to drive the car down to Tennessee with Scott Parkhurst for the "Run to the Hills" pro-touring event. A couple weeks before the trip, overdrive started slipping in my 4L60, so we decided to tow it there instead. We had an awesome time on the cruise to the "Tail of the Dragon" that Friday. At the autocross Saturday I did pretty well, but coned my fastest run which would have otherwise gotten me into the top-8 shootout. My fastest clean run put me in, I think, 9th of about 80 cars in a car with half the horsepower of most cars there on a course with 2 long uphill straights. The following day was drag-racing, and after a few runs, 3rd gear was slipping too, the transmission was toast.

After having some respectable results against some of the heavy-hitters in the Pro Touring community, despite being way outgunned on horsepower, I needed to step up my game, and the transmission failing gave me the excuse I needed to justify tearing the car apart again.

I bought an LS1 and T56 out of a wrecked 2000 Camaro SS on ebay, located near Green Bay, WI. The ad was poorly written, and had a bit of a scammy vibe to it, so it went cheap. Afterwards, the seller called me and apologized for not disclosing that the heads were studded. Good deal getting even better!

I reached out to a friend who lived nearby, to see if he wanted to get together for lunch when I come pick it up. He offered to pick it up for me, and bring it 4 hours closer because he was coming this way for a hunting trip, saving me 8 hours round-trip! He pointed out that it had an LS6 intake and upgraded injectors also!

I had it for a while before I pulled the pan, and when I did, I found it also had a 4" stroker crank, Eagle H-beam rods, forged pistons, ARP hardware, and studded mains. Jackpot!

I tore the car apart in the fall of 2010 thinking it would be done by spring. Our oldest son, Cale was a very easy-going toddler who loved to help, stayed out of trouble, and generally let me get a lot done in the garage. Parenting was easy, right? A week later, baby brother AJ started to crawl, and my free time came to a very sudden halt as he was a mischievous one...

A big hurdle of a LS1/T56 swap was fitting the transmission in the tunnel, while keeping the car low, getting proper driveline angles, and having plenty of driveshaft tunnel clearance.

I decided to just cut the whole tunnel out and make my own. I also fabricated it out of heavy 16ga steel as this tunnel provides a lot of the body's stiffness. Templates were made from construction paper, then traced onto a flat sheet, cut out with plasma cutter, and formed in Dad's home-made 4' sheetmetal brake.

More tunnel pics...

Fitting the LS1 was a bit of a challenge. In 2010, there weren't as many options as there are today, and the Edelbrock headers were the first affordable long-tube headers available for the Chevelle chassis. I picked the Autokraft baffled road-race pan, and wanted to keep the stock low-mount F-body accessories for a clean look while also keeping it all factory GM so it could be serviced with replacement parts from any parts store anywhere in the country.

With engine mounts in the stock location, I had interference of the tie rods to the pan, alternator to the steering box, and the headers hung lower than the crossmember. All of these problems were solved by raising the engine up about an inch, and offsetting it about 1/2" to the right. With the tunnel cut completely out, I had a blank slate for engine placement.
AC compressor fitment required notching the RH frame horn for clearance, and drilling one well placed hole in the crossmember to be able to feed a bolt into the back side of a bracket.

The appearance of the factory firewall leaves a lot to be desired, and cleaning that up goes a long way toward making things look nice under the hood.
I smoothed the firewall and welded studs to it any place where I could to avoid having exposed fasteners.
I made a clutch master cylinder bracket and integrated that into the firewall.
The top edge I cleaned out all of the original seamsealer and trimmed each layer of sheetmetal straight, welded it solid, and formed a new front edge.
I also added a Vintage Air A/C system and hid all of the mounting and plumbing so no part of it is seen on the firewall.

cowl top pics

Between 2010 when I took the car apart, and whenever I finally painted the firewall, (maybe 2014?) we moved twice, and the kids kept us very busy. I worked on it when I felt like it, but over those 4(?) years, it mostly collected dust with short bursts of progress every six months or so.

I blame the kids. It's entirely their fault. I would never leave a project unfinished for years on my own. :wink:

After all the fab work and paint was done, I made some steady progress on reassembly for a little while, but then hit a wall again when it came to wiring and plumbing. I don't enjoy that type of work, and couldn't stay motivated to work on it. I had also made a career move into a position with high stress and little free time, but decent enough pay that I didn't need to be such a tightwad anymore... So, in 2017, I dropped the car off with Steven Kiehne, and picked it up a couple months later with the fuel system and wiring completed, and the car was yard-drivable. It still needed a lot of work to be roadworthy, but I could hear it run, and that was enough to motivate me to keep working on it.

Over the winter of 2017/2018 I finished assembly of most of the car, and bought another new set of wheels, this time finally buying the expensive ones that I had wanted for many years, 18x9.5" and 18x11" CCW Classics. I had to make a little extra clearance in the rear, but I was able to stuff 315/30s in with no rubbing.

By spring of 2018 the car was nearly complete, and finally looked to be ready for the road...

Custom made carpet to fit the floor by Steve Augustin, and Cale cleaning for reassembly...

Summer of 2018 was full of expensive mistakes and lessons...

I wanted to run full 3" exhaust out the back, but needed to complete the install of the Watts Link first before I could do the exhaust, but I had trouble getting the Watts set up correctly. (Turns out I couldn't get the exhaust over the axle with the watts in the way, and had to dump it before the axle, so that was all wasted effort anyway)

I ran the car a little bit with open headers, but without exhaust on the car, the oxygen sensors were too close to the end of the pipe, so it was reading lean at lower RPM, and dumping in enough extra fuel to start fouling plugs. I cleaned the plugs, installed exhaust, and took the car to the Lyle car show for it's first trip out on the road. I didn't realize all that extra fuel had thinned out the oil, and was destroying the bearings.

I bought a cheap junkyard 5.3L to replace the damaged 383 just to get by for the rest of the summer. I then signed up for an autocross at DCTC, where a tensioner pulley seized and shredded the belt. Easy fix at least there.

At Street Machine Nationals, my season was ended with a loose lower balljoint coming apart, jamming the tire into the fender. In all my late-night thrashes, I had forgotten that I left the lower balljoint nuts loose so that I could adjust ride-height.

more pics from 2018 failures...

Over the winter of 2018/2019, I had Dad replace the fender and repaint the whole right front corner of the car, and took the wounded 383" LS1 in to Baier's Engine Service for a rebuild. I pulled the junkyard 5.3 and while I had extra room to work, I cut the frame pockets out and installed Speedtech Chicane upper coilover mounts to change from the old dirt-track spring/weight-jacks to VariShock DA coilovers. I got it all back together and had it tuned by Steven Kiehne, making 434hp to the wheels peaking at 5650rpm.

2019 autocross season was humbling. I had somewhat expected to get right back into it and to be a contender in some bigger events, but after 8 years away from the sport, a lot had changed. The competition had gotten a lot faster, and I wasn't driving as well as I could. I fought brake lock-up on corner entry all season and just couldn't get the feel for that edge with a hydroboost.

I did quite a bit of local autocross, and a little travelling with it. Goodguys Des Moines was its first event of the year. We drove it to the Northern Ohio Chevelle Show 1400mi round trip, averaging about 18-19mpg running 80-85mph. I was awarded a "top 50" at that show of about 300 Chevelles. The car stayed mostly together all season, with only minor issues... I did have to replace the water-pump in the middle of the Northern Ohio Chevelle Show after it had started leaking at Dragway 42 the night before. I trailered it to LS Fest in Bowling Green, but had kind of disappointing results there.

At the end of the season, I started to focus on just having fun, and stopped putting pressure on myself to be fast... and that's exactly what I needed to finally start getting faster.

I didn't change much over the winter of 2019/2020 other than removing the hydroboost and changing to manual brakes. First time out for a cruise in spring of 2020, my 8:1 Sweet Mfg. steering box (new previous fall) had developed a pretty significant leak, and while looking at that, I noticed that I corded the inside edges of the front tires. I re-checked alignment and everything had moved. Less camber, and a lot of toe out led to discovering my lower A arms were just starting to collapse. Thankfully, SPC replaced them with their newer beefier version.

My first event of the year was, again, Goodguys Des Moines.

2020, all things considered, turned out to be a pretty awesome season. The change to manual brakes resulted in more consistency, and with more focus on driving better I made noticeable gains against the laptimes some of my faster friends. At the beginning of the 2020 season, with things getting shut down due to COVID, I was unsure how many events I would be able to attend, so I made the decision to run cheap tires (Federal 595RS-PRO) By the end of the season, I was finally within range where better tires might have made up the rest of the difference. I had a few hiccups and breakdowns, but got lucky with some easy repairs and only needing the trailer once for less than 60 miles.

We also spent a lot of time with some really fun people...

With no karting league at the beginning of winter due to covid, and waiting for parts to come in I made a decision to cut up the rear suspension and change the converging 4-link to a parallel 3-link. Getting decent geometry while keeping the back seat is a challenge. The result is an 11" upper link, offset 9" from center, and a lot of adjustability for anti-squat.

Instant center location is improved a lot over stock, all roll-bind is eliminated, and I have full freedom to adjust roll-center height. The only unknown is whether the 9" offset will work... I'm not smart enough to figure out the math needed to calculate that, so I will just try it and if it doesn't work, I will add a link to the other side and turn it into a parallel 4-link.

I also added a drain plug while it was apart... If you ever put a Ford 9" in anything, get the drain plug option. You're welcome.

Spring of 2021, I decided to finally do a project I had wanted to do for about 12 years.

I bought a fiberglass hood from Glasstek, and modified it for functional heat extractors that I moulded into the hood and tied into the shape of the SS bulges. The holes are right behind the radiator, located in a low-pressure area and will help pull high-pressure air out from under the hood, significantly reducing aero-lift at high speeds, reducing under-hood temperatures, and increasing air flow through the radiator.

The fiberglass hood also removed 40 lbs of high-centered weight off the front of the car. (Stock hood 72.3 lbs, FG 32.3 lbs)

Over the years I had changed my opinion on a few things, and wasn't real fond of the smoothed rear tail panel painted body color anymore, so in 2021 I added the trim back on, and painted the panel satin black like a factory SS car.

I also moved the battery to the trunk to help balance the car, and bought a fiberglass trunk lid to help shed some weight.

I wanted to take advantage of the aero allowances for the classes I intend to run with. What you see here is a ridiculous looking 10" SCCA CAMT-legal spoiler. I also made an 8" version for USCA events. It will be easy enough to swap out size and adjust AOA depending on use... Big one at steep angle for low-speed events (autocross) and smaller ones laid back more for higher speeds (roadcourse)

I don't expect everyone to like it, but it is there for a purpose, and I will take any performance advantage I can get.

As usual, completely changing the car meant re-learning how to drive and set it up the following season. The 3-link took a few events to get dialed in, but when I did, it really helped the car everywhere.

Having conventional spring/shock in the rear was limiting my ability to take advantage of the adjustable rear roll center as I could only find "rear" springs up to 250lb rate. I discovered that I could use a "front" spring from a QA1 hybrid coilover setup, which opened up a lot of options for spring rates. I moved to 350lb with great results.

Changing anti-squat from 180% down to 110% really helped in both braking and driving off the corner. Eliminating all of the roll-bind made it more predictable mid corner.

I ran a few events with the steel hood and trunk back on it as I ran out of time doing the body work on the fiberglass parts.

Still a street car doing street car things...
Drove my Chevy to the Levee but the Levee was dry... stopped at the Buddy Holly crash site on the way home from Goodguys Des Moines.

I was signed up for UMI Autocross Challenge 2021, and decided if I wanted a shot at winning an invite to KOTM, I'd need the fiberglass parts and the spoiler mounted. I didn't have time to get blocked smooth and painted, so I shot them with black epoxy primer and installed them unfinished for the rest of the summer.

Fresh 295/35/18 squared Yokohama A052s, as well as taking 40lbs off the front, 18.5lbs off the back, and adding the spoiler did the trick, as I won the invite by 0.059 second over 2 days.

Summer of 2021 I decided with all the uncertainty in the world, I had to do some things while I still could... I didn't want to be that guy in 40 years saying "I wish I would have..."

I registered for my first Ultimate Street Car Association event at Road America. I put my old tires back on for Road America, so I could save the Yokes for KOTM. This hurt my times quite a bit, but being my first time on a big roadcourse, I was more concerned with being smart and keeping the car together than my finishing position. Of 21 cars in GTV class, I finished 11th overall. 6th in the Autocross, 7th on speed-stop, 13th on the road course, and dead-last on Design & Engineering judging... that was kind of a kick in the pants, but I knew having no radio, horn, or reverse-lights would hurt the score there.

My best lap at RA was a 2:56.379 (full course + the "bend" motorcycle chicane instead of running the "kink") Ran over 130mph in 3 places on that track (138mph on the front straight, 135mph down into T5, and 132mph into Canada Corner.)

My last lap, I was finally comfortable enough to put down a flyer, but accelerating up the hill out of T5 the car started billowing smoke. I thought I blew it up, but oil pressure was good and no knocking sounds... I had less than a week to fix it before KOTM, but hadn't really figured out the problem yet. I thought I filled the catchcan and burped oil onto the header, but was wrong about that...

One other highlight of the Optima event at Road America for me was the karting enduro. My team didn't win it, but I narrowly beat out pro-driver Billy Johnson on lap-time, scoring the fastest lap out of everyone!

The night I had to load up and leave for UMI King of the Mountain 3.0, I discovered the real reason for all the smoke. The rear seal on the T56 was leaking really bad on acceleration, and the driveshaft was throwing trans fluid onto the exhaust. I didn't have a new seal, but I loaded up anyway and headed to Pennsylvania. Thinking about the problem on the way, I realized I'd be driving right past Summit Racing in Talmadge OH, and would have no problem getting a new seal on short notice there. I replaced the seal at UMI Motorsports Park, but also discovered another problem. The lower brace connecting my 3-link upper frame mount to the lower mount was starting to buckle. I had made it out of too thin of metal for the stresses I was putting it through, and braking into T5 at Road America from 135mph had pushed the driveshaft too far into the trans, wiping out the seal.

It was too late to fix the brace, so the decision was made just to replace the seal and run it for the weekend and weld in a new brace when I got home.

I finished 14th of 33 in the vintage class at KOTM among some really fast competition, being the fastest A-body there.

The decision to run KOTM with a buckled chassis brace probably wasn't a smart one, but I had already towed 14 hours to get there before it was discovered... When I got home after the event, the brace had fractured on both ends and was laying loose on the floor of the trailer. Putting the car up on the lift revealed that repeated flexing was tearing the rear crossmember away from the frame rails. The rain on Saturday, with the last runs of the weekend being in the wet probably saved me from more serious problems.

I built a new brace out of much heavier material, and added some gussets. I now paint all of my chassis modifications in light colors (white or silver depending on what I have on hand) to make inspections for cracks easier.

The end of the 2021 season was an awesome local event in Wisconsin Dells. It was a 2-day event with a "CAM Challenge" shootout at the end of each day, and some of the fastest CAMT cars in the upper midwest were in it. The host club used a picture of my car from the previous year on the "big check" to the winner.

On Saturday I qualified for the shootout, but in Round 1 went too hot into one element, lost the back end, and wiped out a wall of cones, so I didn't make the final.

On Sunday, I qualified, went top-2 in round one, and ran my best lap of the day to win the final, taking home the "big check" for $25, making me a semi-professional racecar driver. :laugh:

Winter of 2021/2022 Dad and I traded cars for the season. Neither of us wanted to work on our own junk, but we both were able to get stuff done on each other's cars.
His skills, garage, and tools are better set up for paint and body, and I'm better set up for chassis and mechanical work.

He got my Chevelle hood and trunk painted while I installed power steering and did some suspension work on his '68 Camaro.

Spring of 2022, with the new hood/trunk and no stripes.