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Okay let's start the picture extravaganza.
This year's Power Tour had a much different feel to it. Last year, there were known celebrities scheduled at each stop for autography and photograph sessions. None announced this year, although I did run into and talk with Lucy Costa and Mike Cotten at some length. They were the only "celebrities" I found all week, mind you, I was not looking very hard either. This year's tour was more about Route 66 and less about the stop venues (to me at least). So that is what I concentrated on - Route 66 and side visits and less on the venues, the pictures will show that.
On with the show, this is it!

Day One - Joilet IL - Route 66 Raceway Park
On my way to the track, I decided to make a little side trip before I got there. If you are fan of the original Blues Brothers movie, you will recognize this place. This is old Joilet Prison, that was used in the movie.

You can tour the prison. I did not, but judging from the cars in the parking lot, I was not the old person on Power Tour to think of coming here.

Jake and Elwood on a nearby parts store wall.
"We gotta' go see the penguin!" "We're on a mission from God!" LOL!
Here we are at Route 66 Raceway. It was a cluster getting in though. It seems that Chicagoland Speedway and Route 66 Raceway share the same access road. So those folks that didn't pickup their credentials on Sunday, or single and/or multi-day participants still had to go to Chicagoland first before going to Route 66. So the traffic getting in was twice as bad, since traffic handlers has to determine who was going where.
I did run into Lucky Costa while I was there.

This is the same Peak car that was built on one of the last episodes of Hot Rod Garage.

The green Corvette is the top of the line ZR1 with a flip flop color (it shows green now). This Vette convertible is $188k as built! Woof!

The Power Tour swag truck showing the 2026 PT route.
Cars in the vendor areas.

I see this guy on PT and Roadkill Nights al the time. He always has a different female cop model with him.


Lucky Costa - before I chatted with him.

The Power Tour motorhome. This is the closest I would get to it since taking a photo with your car next to at the end of Power Tour in Tulsa is out of the question for me.

Lucky's Ford Galaxie wagon from HRG. It is Coyote powered now. He's done a lot of work to it. He's documented a lot of that work on his YouTube channel, if you follow him.

A Charger EV

The only thing on the track at the moment is the lane dryer. They started drying around 12 noon. As I was leaving around 2:30 pm, they ran a couple of races and then (as I was still walking to my car) it started raining again. I have no idea how many races were actually run that day.


Some of the folks waiting in the staging lanes - waiting for the track to open.

Back out onto Route 66 - On my way to a place I missed yesterday.


Welcome to Wilmington IL - home of the Gemini Giant
The Gemini Giant is a re-purposed fiberglass "Muffler Man" statue from the 1960s. They are all over the USA. Some we will see later too. You can read about it's history on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_Giant
Did I mention it rained some more?


A quick drive by of the Odell Standard Oil Gas station.

Heading south. RR tracks to the left, I-55 to the right.

This old Texaco station had a broken down Fox body Mustang. I offered to help but they said they had it well in hand.....okkkaaay. Off we go.
Onto Memory Lane park.....




Very cool mailboxes!

The Kicks Restaurant on Route 66. Nice play on words.


This gets me to the end of Day 1 - just north end of Bloomington-Normal IL. Tomorrow PT will come through this area before turning east towards Rantoul IL. I can run down to here in the morning and head towards the state capital, Spingfield.

Here’s frosty, pulling in no leaks yet.

What until the convention next week Ringo. We have over 850 people registered. A max of 300 cars for the parade, and we expect something close to 500+ cars between the points judged, popular vote, and road warrior sections.

Kiwi - the '74 GTO was the last year for the GTO before the 2004-06 resurgence. The GTO was moved from the A-body (Lemans) platform to the X-body platform (Nova/Omega/Ventura/Apollo) in 1974. It was the best power-to-weight ratio GTO until 2004. However, it is one of the rarest. It is the only GTO that came with a shaker hood.
Now back to the Dust Off......

A Canada-oly Parisienne with a Chevy Stovebolt straight six!


PTM dousent, Smoke Signals columnist, and still a GM employee with over 50 years of seniority - Dmitri Toth - talking - as usual! LOL!

A Cadillac LaSalle - at a Buick/Olds/Pontiac/GMC show. Go figure. Cool none the less.

This Olds was very cool with it's partial glass hood and dual quad Rocket V8.

Sometimes I think that the Buick GSX is the most badass factory muscle car made. I know I am bias but still, it is badass.

Now here is a very cool car. This is one that ol' Frosty had not seen before today.....

This is a 1936 REO Flying Cloud. REO stands for Ransom E. Olds, same man who founded Oldsmobile). From 1927-1936 REO produced cars but after 1936 switched to making trucks exclusively. So this is not technically an Oldsmobile, but a sibling of sorts. Still very cool car.

Up until now, there are two cars I have not shown. That is the FP contingent of the show - Indyman Joe and me - since Justa and JustaG6 were off lollygagging at some sort of wedding instead. I blame Justa for the bad luck that followed since he wasn't there to absorb it, like he usually has lately. LOL!
Here is Indyman's DIrty Girl.....

.....and there's Black Beauty.....

...who decided, as I literally pulled into the show, to blow the water pump and bleed out all that rust colored coolant.
I was not happy to say the least. That is the original water pump, it's 40 years old. I thought, well I am at our patron dealership. I can ask them to replace a SBC water pump next week and I don't need a tow truck. I talked to the service manager, they started to write it up, then I was told they don't work on "classic cars". They don't want the liability, WTF? It's a SBC for goodness sake, not some complicated, transverse mounts Asian disaster. No luck - so I gotta find my own repair place.......Grrrreeeeeeaaaaattttt!

So here are the dealership employees and a club member moving BB to a safe spot at the dealership until I can figure out what I am going to do with her.
Fellow club members suggested a place in Dryden Michigan where a young member of the club works as a master mechanic. However, the soonest they could even look at it was the Tuesday, June 23rd, I need BB running and driving for the POCI convention next week!
Monday morning, I found a place, literally across the street from the dealership that could look at it this week. So I grabbed some anti-freeze, topped off the radiator and ran over to a place called Moto Medic in Lake Orion MI. They said they could look at it Wednesday. They looked at by the end of the day on Monday! It was definitely a blown water pump. They really had to do a lot of serious flushing of the cooling system - there was a ton of rust in the system. The pump has been replaced, new coolant was put in, and I picked her up yesterday afternoon. It was not a cheap repair, it cost almost $1k. They said I need to consider eventually replacing the radiator since there is still a lot of rust in the bottom of it but they said they got quite a bit of rust out of her and she is holding coolant now.
Before anyone asks, I suspect the rust came from BB sitting for over a decade in my buddy's pull barn without being run. Mind you, since I brought her out of storage in 2021, she's been on two Hot Rod Power Tours (as far south as Pensacola Florida), and over 5K miles in those years. I have replaced tires, shocks, brakes, spark plugs, plug wires, and rear spoiler since then. So cooling system work is not that surprising - especially with a 40 year old car.
I hope you enjoyed the Dust Off and the drama.....

What a great show!

i have never seen a 1974 gto !!!!!!

i really dont think its wise to use one type of oil on all.
my brand new china van will not like oil i put in my ponti ! neither will my supercharged hemi in the cat !
my 1957 fergy tractor ... well that old girl just loves any old slippery stuff ! i could fill it with banana peals
But you should try it mate.... see what happens

After a robust 3 hours of sleep, after cannonballing nearly 1,000 miles from Tulsa Oklahoma back to Davison Michigan, I was surprisingly awake and alert. Mind you, the thermos of coffee I made before leaving the house probably had something to do with that too.
So here is the 37th annual MIchigan WIdetrackers Spring Dust Off....
In all, we had 93 cars registered with 4 no shows.....Justa and JustaG6 were 2 of them. Something about a wedding in Indianapolis.

Jim Larson's 8-lug Grand Prix

One year only '67 Grand Prix convertible. Nice.

While you would look at this car and say it's a 63-65 Riveria, you would often be right. However, I first saw this car a couple of years ago. It says Pontiac 2+2 on the side. This appears to be some sort of engineering study Pontiac did with the Riveria platform. Notice the 8-lug wheels and Poncho powertrain? This is unique for sure.

I can only dream at this point.....

Gorgeous '59 Olds Royale 88

A rare 74 GTO!


More tomorrow.

And here is a picture of my other one!

Was the test on the truck fleet done with regular oil or synthetic?

Here's something to consider - let's open up a can of worms and talk about oil. Opinions will rush in, tempers will fray and if a certain member chimes in, insults will be hurled. After I performed multiple oil changes last weekend I thought I'd try and get an oil that would cover all bases and buy it in bulk. I read about Shell Rotella, which is a diesel oil. Old flat tappet engines need zinc and diesel oil in addition to containing plenty of zinc is also a high detergent oil. Frequent oil changes are probably better overall than fretting over what oil to use. I reckon I could get away with using Rotella (or any quality diesel equivalent) in the GP and my ute but will use something else in the missus' Mazda and my mower. Having said that, someone on a forum (bobistheoilguy.com) said he has 23 engines at home and Rotella goes in the lot - everything from an aircooled Briggs to a Cat truck motor. Never had a problem.
Interesting.
The Ponti motor, although freshly rebuilt is a 60 year old thing, the ute is 36 years old, mower is 21 years old and Mazda is 14 years old, so I don't think I can hurt anything.
Another comment was that someone said (anecdotally) that a test was carried out where half of a truck fleet had 5000 mile oil changes whilst the other half had 25000 mile oil changes. Upon eventual 1 million mile teardown of all engines, hardly any difference in wear was noted - we're talking single digit thousandths of an inch. You can't believe everything you read of course, but an interesting thought.

Here's a picture of my other Bonneville. Me and my boys are going to restore it. It was a California car, no rot. I'll get a picture of my Laman's up soon.

Nice work. Can't wait to see your show pic's. Hope you have good weather.

1965 GTO

Had some success today...I've been playing around with the Sprint, and identified a few issues.

1. While trying to optimise carb settings (oem Autolite 2100), I found the stovepipe system that heats the auto choke blocked, hence the choke plate wasn't opening fully. Couldn't get any balance where I could have any cold start choke and it would open completely. So...I've set it fully open and am hoping the car will be ok without a choke.
After 3x cold starts it seems if I get the cold start right and manage the throttle ok, it will happily idle after about 15 seconds.

2. I also discovered the vacuum advance unit on the distributor oem Autolite) was completely stuffed. So I've replaced this and upon road testing the ca teens to pull stronger from cruise speed, and the C4 now kicks back immediately, which it wasn't doing before.
I'll recheck the timing tomorrow, just to make sure it's all still right. I look forward to a drop in fuel consumption, because it's currently at 18l/100km!

3. Also replaced my engine temp sensor (for anyone interested, a Tridon TTS023 is a direct replacement (mine is an early series 289 - I think the later ones are different?). Add in a new set of coolant hoses, and I've had success all round.

While I was under the car, I managed to reroute some wiring and also the power steering hard and soft lines, because they were hanging waaaay too low.

And do you know what was the best part of all this (other than the great results of course)?
The parts I needed were A. available in Australia, B. cheap, and C. all landed at my doorstep within 48 hours.
Oh, and did I mention cheap? And available? Oh yeah, I already did and the temp sender unit was hanging on the bloody wall at Autobarn, and cost me...wait for it...$21.00. And have I mentioned available? And cheap?
A. B. and C. NEVER happened for me with the Bonneville. Ever!
Happy Days 😃

Minor preparation for the cruise night show on Friday; made a front plate bracket a few weeks ago and made a custom sticker for the front plate cover. Looks good.