Realized that I hadn't updated you all on how it went.
I long hauled with my brother and a friend of ours this year. Took the Grand Prix again so we had 3 cars that were all pretty wild forced induction 3800's.
Yes the Montana has a supercharged 3800 in it haha!
Gotta love the hotel parking lots! This was the first night in Memphis. Our hotel was about 30 minutes outside of town and we still had a lot of power tour people in the parking lot!
This year was the hottest Power Tour I think I've been to so far. Nearly every day the temperature was in the upper 90's and the humidity was pretty bad too. Because of that the venues didn't have a lot of people hanging around. The first venue seemed like it shut down an hour early, right after we finally were registered.
Thankfully we had one day in Pensacola though so pretty much everybody went to the beach at some point from what I heard and could tell
Views like this are what we saw most of the week
I had a lot of issues myself this year though. A lot of other cars were fighting the heat, I heard about a lot of cars overheating from some of the people I talked too and heard lots of stories about vaporlock too. Thankfully my car didn't experience any of that. I did fight an oil leak all week though and self-ejecting serpentine belts too.
I spent the first hotel night trying to fix an oil leak from my oil sender fittings around my pressure sensor and turbo feed lines. Thought it was a loose fitting but it turned out to be a cracked oil filter adapter - not something auto parts stores stock and not something I was able to patch up that night. It would've had to have been welded to fix it and it's cast aluminum so it would've been a nightmare to weld.
Thankfully we found a few junkyards nearby, one was supposed to have the part we were looking for because it's very specific to a 4th gen f-body with a v6. There was one yard that had the exact car I needed so we set out early the next morning to get the part!
As luck would have it though, the one car that had the right engine and the right part was missing its engine after only being in the yard for 3 weeks. I didn't realize people were actually interested in pulling these motors so that was a surprise and a let down.
Thankfully I found a w-body adapter finally that I thought would work, installed it and cobbled together some fittings for the oil feed to the turbo and was able to get back on the road!
Issue resolved!
Or so I thought... By Wednesday I had finally realized the oil my engine was caked in wasn't going away, it was getting worse. Then I lost my first serpentine belt on the morning drive wednesday but thankfully we were able to find a replacement nearby and get the car back on the road. The old belt was a few years old and the A/C bracket was a little suspect due to some other changes I had to make in the car.
By this point I stopped running AC thinking that was the cause of the belt coming off.
At the hotel that night though the new belt came off again, but thankfully the car was stopped so I could just put it back on.
The next day I bought two new belts just in case it were to come off again. Long story short I used all 3 belts I bought on power tour even without running the A/C. It was some pretty Roadkill stuff going on here.
The car never really lost too much oil but I'm pretty sure the oil leak was the cause of the belt coming off. I eventually found out when I got home that the new front main seal I installed was leaking too and caused the oil bath.
I had really hoped to Autocross this year, but figured with the oil leaks it might be best not to oil down the track or push the motor too hard.
All things considered the trip didn't go too badly. It was super hot all week, I was fighting the oil leaks and self-ejecting belts, and my autocross dreams were crushed. The car ran amazingly well though otherwise and I got to meet some pretty cool people this year too so it was a pretty good trip all things considered!
Oh and of course we arrived at the last venue in Atlanta and got our long haul plaques!