Anytime you make it this far south Nate, just let me know, and I'll throw a brisket on the smoker. Oh, and forget riding in the truck, I'll let you drive it.
Matt
You're too kind Matt. And I shoulda known that you would do your own smoking too! I want to try that some time. I saw Ferm making his own smoker in the Projects forum and it looked like a good idea....I probably don't need anything that big though, at least not to start.
It sure would be cool if the 6.5ers did regional get togethers. I'm a new member of the Cadillac and Lasalle club and participated in my first National Driving Tour and it was a heck of a lot of fun. It was hosted by the Motor City region of the club. It was a 4 day event with an itinerary for each day that included interesting places to see and scenic drives to take. I only participated in one day of events, but I was very impressed with the organization of the event. Each year a different region of the club hosts the event so each year you can tour a different part of the country. It isn't cheap, but also meals are included and so is admission to any of the sites on the tour. Of course on top of that you have to pay for gas and accomodations too.....so yeah, it's not cheap. Point is though, it sure would be cool to see some of you guys and gals that we regularly communicate with in person and see your 6.5s in person too!
One of the places we toured with the Cadillac club was the GM Heritage Collection, which is GM's personal car collection. There weren't any 6.5s in there but lots of cool GM iron on display. I looked in to it and you need a group of 30 people to tour it (it isn't open the general public). It made me think that maybe some day I could get some of you guys and gals with significant others to come around and do a tour of some kind. Nothing as elaborate at was the Caddy guys do but enough that we could get together and meet and see some cool stuff we may not normally get to see.
I did some poking around on the website a while ago and found that there is indeed a section to try to get people together, but it doesn't appear to get used. I wonder if people would even notice if something was posted there?
Maybe next year I'll get inspired enough to try to coordinate something. I do like when I read that 6.5ers who are geographically close to each other get in touch or visit each other when travels take them near another member. That's good stuff. Maybe it makes sense to just keep it to that and not try to formally organize something? I don't know.
Ok, I wasn't planning on spewing all of that this morning! Hopefully my next post has more engine assembly going on and less kumbaya.
Oh and because any post is better with pics, here are a couple pics from inside the Heritage Collection.
Hopefully this will be the last time you ever have this engine apart again. 
