The fifth time we got together it was way down in Mobile. Barry got there last on Friday evening so he missed the karaoke cell phone call (let James tell that one), but after that we just sat around watching movies and talking. Saturday we all headed over to where James has his GT and the guys who knew what they were doing (not this writer, obviously) plowed into the project GT. Barry took a few pictures of the car and the people in, over, and under it. Sometime during the day James's dad came by. It was really good to get to meet him. We all would like to take the turbo-charger from his F-350 diesel and put it in a Probe Later on his family brought doughnuts and soda. The car did start once or twice, we just couldn't keep it idling. We think the cams are still slightly off.
Saturday, while the project GT work was being done Barry made a little boo-boo. We used his distributor to try to make James GT project start. The area around it on his car was marked from where James and he had taken out the original and put in a replacement before he could make it to the last B'ham meet. Well, he took it upon himself to replace his front valve cover gasket and clean up the cover itself. He cleaned off the part of the mark made on the edge of the cover for the disty's placement. Putting it back in was shear guesswork. Oops!

After everything was said and done we got cleaned up and headed for Gulf Shores for dinner.
On the way there we saw plenty of Police. We passed one waiting to turn onto the highway from a side street and knew he was going to look us over. Sure enough he pulled out and went VERY slowly in the left lane while we puttered at the speed limit in the right lane. We think he thought if he hung back far enough we would take off. Alpoc members are smarter than that . There was no indication from Barry's Valentine One for about five seconds, and then Wham! the K band went wild! Multiple times! It was hilarious.

Well, Gulf Shores on Saturday night was interesting. The hunger made the trip seem longer. We had all skipped lunch. Then when we were there in Orange Beach we saw it was run over with Spring Breakers. We were separated by a Jeep Cherokee for a little while. It's occupants were jamming to some music that was loud enough to obliterate the sound of the rod knock all of us around it could hear. Now that was funny.
Not so funny was being separated enough so that Matt couldn't see the turn from the beach to state highway 59 (?) to go back home.
What was a blast was the six lane section of the road where Matt and Barry pulled up on each side of James. The light goes green, engines roar, James lays back and discovers why he wants a GT. Matt started pulling Barry in 3rd gear. I guess the intake and some other stuff makes his faster at higher speeds. Barry feels he must stress that he almost never treat his car that way. Nonetheless, it was terrific fun! (We found out later that Barry's GT had a clogged catalytic converter).

We all slept pretty well Saturday night. We were all going to do a little sight-seeing Sunday but didn't feel like driving so we sat around and shot the breeze inside for a while. Then we went outside, talked, looked over each other's cars, etc. James drove Matt's around to get the feel for a GT and some more incentive to get his running. Matt drove Barry's around to test how the short shifter felt to him. Matt also drove James' SE around to see how a 2.0 felt.
Then James pulled out a GT emblem and started placing it all over the car to see how many spots it could be placed.

Barry then made the mistake of tightening one of the bolts holding the accelerator bracket to the back of the intake just a little too far. Chalk up another broken bolt to Barry. He seems to do that with regularity. While fiddling around he found the problem with his car's idle was that the cable was positioned slightly wrong. The holes in the bracket are slightly oval, allowing for some adjustment. He disconnected the cable and found the idle to be in the right spot immediately. Then after fooling around with cable housing routing he discovered that when the bracket bolts were loosened the cable got the necessary slack. So, he tightened them back up and SNAP! Oops. It still works so at this point he said that it was time to leave well enough alone! 

Matt adjusted the position of his front bumper to get it to line up with the fenders and hood a little better. 

We all left about 4:45 to go home. Barry had the pleasure of going up state highways (lots of two lanes) while Matt took Dan and Felipe back via interstate highway. 80 mph on a two lane is fun!
The first thing Barry did when he got home was buy diapers. He knew he was really home then