Congrats on the good finish and time with your boys. Hoping you are safe this weekend from the storm!

Sorry I've been slacking! After Charlotte, I was done and out of money. After I posted that on my FB feed a local shop stepped up and said they would help me get to NOLA! So me and two buddies (and a Dog) all loaded up in a borrowed RV attached the trailer and headed 19 hours south to run the NOLA Optima event. It really wasn't as bad as I thought, we swapped out drivers every 6 hours and drove straight through. It was a wet weekend for sure! AutoX was first, and all the cars ran in the morning because of the coming rain. I was able to hang in there with the GTV class, but I was no match for Jake Rozelle or Mike Maire. Hey I'm 350hp down to those guys, who knew it would make a difference on the autox course. With the IRS in my car, I'm losing time at the launch and with short courses, there's just not enough time to reel them in. I managed a third place finish behind Mike and Jake, and standing on the podium with those two guys is a pretty cool deal.

The afternoon brought rain and the speed stop, which was on the track. Again this was a very short (11.8 secs) run and in the rain. The GTV class was very close, I managed a 5th place spot. I was only .500 tenths out of a podium, that's how close it was.

D&E, throw that out the door, they hate my car for some reason. Maybe because it doesn't portray the aftermarket, maybe because it's just raw and has a little rust and a lot of dings? Who knows, the paint is 30 years old, but it still looks good in pictures and on TV! I even tried to add some bling to the engine bay to no avail, I finished last in GTV and 3rd from last overall with only 57 points. That's 34 points down from the 3rd place GTV car in D&E. That's mighty hard to make up on the track.

Sunday was my day! Road Course day! But we didn't get a lot of track time. The first session everyone was going off because the track was green from all the rain and still damp in some spots. The first session got red flagged when Mike DuSold went for a wild ride. It was finally drying out when our group went out right before lunch, but on the forth lap it started raining pretty hard at one end of the track, we had warning and we all slowed down to about 35 mph. Well if you saw the show on tv last Friday, you'll see me go for a wild ride! into the gravel trap I went. good thing it was lunch and no one lost any track time because of it, because it took 30 minutes to get me out! and another 30 to clean all the rocks off the track that were falling out of my car like a sand spreader in a snow storm. During the break we cleaned the rocks out and inspected the car and made sure nothing was damaged, then the rains came again! We were sitting in 3rd behind Mike and Jake. It didn't look promising, so we started to pack up stuff and load the car, no way were they going to get the track dry and no one was going to get faster in the wet. We loaded up and went over to the gift shop to get a NOLA shirt and some stickers ect... As we were grabbing lunch we heard them on the track running again, so I pulled up my laps on my phone and saw James Shipka just ran .1 faster than my time! Oh **** we gotta go back! We unloaded and got the car ready just in time for our last session of the day and the track was pretty dry. James and I had a battle for third place back and forth and as I beat his lap, he would beat mine. In the end James came out on top with the third place spot.

At this point I had enough points for the Vegas Invite, but there was one more event left to run in California and it would all come down to who did what and who won in and who didn't.

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and let's not forget about Racetrack Ralph, getting ready to load up for the Big Easy!
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I see your still killing it Mills :thumbsup:

Update time! I didn't make Vegas. Oh well, maybe this year. I did run the car one more time in Nov and put it away for the winter and ready to go for this year. In the meantime I picked up a TrailBlazer SS for next to nothing that had a locked up motor. I hit the jackpot with this one! The guy didn't know much about it other than he wanted it out of his yard! I drove up to Jersey and bought it and drug it home. Pot of gold! this thing had a Manley 4" Forged bottom end in it with CNC ported heads and Comp cam! Plus headers and full exhaust, a stall and an RPM Stage VI trans in it! The motor is now rebuilt with a milder "tow" cam, some oiling goodies from Improved Racing, and I stole the CNC heads for the Camaro. Now it's time to focus on the new Camaro motor for this year. Anyone wanna buy a 4Runner?

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Awesome find! Things like this are always something I hear about second hand. but never seem to find myself. Congrats!

Nice find Mills! whats the new Camaro motor?

Bigger, Better, Stronger... :-) not leaking any details until it's in the car and Kicking some butt! When you get back Stateside I'll fill you in. Let's just say there are people out there that want to see me in Vegas next year!

You came up on that deal!

I wanted to buy the wife one of these but unfortunately about 38 of these came up missing last year within a 50 mile radius of my house. So they are on the black list for for now.

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Mills, Your inbox is full

Winter Update! First off, I took most of the winter off to save money and work on other "Domestic" projects and I took a little R&R to drive down to Dayton for the Rolex 24. But now the Camaro is back in the cross hairs. I picked up the rotating assembly for the new motor today from Va Speed and was talking brakes when they said I have this brand new take off set of C7 Calipers for an insane deal! I asked could I take them back to the house to see if they bolted to my Spindle. Well yes they do! Brake upgrade on the Horizon! I also scored a Dana 44 rear end this week! wow, Karma is being good to me for a change! More to come... Stay tuned!
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