El Camino Nitrouso lives! When we last visited MaxChevy’s band of miscreants and the old editor's newly primered '67 El Camino, we were licensed for street driving…but not really ready for the strip.
In order to get Nitrouso ready for that we decided to add basic safety related improvements. The first thing we did was to replace the junkyard tires with some up-to-date street radials. In keeping with the get-the- most-for-the-least project credo, we began rooting around for a tire deal.
We settled on BFG GT Radials, 85-series on the rear and 65 series on the front. The lower profile of 21st century rubber (as opposed to the circa 1965 tires that were on the Camino) lowered the ride height about an inch and improved the way the Camino handled during a four-wheel drift into our driveway.
We bought the tires at Costco where the tire crew balanced and mounted the tires at no charge and informed us that after installation on a car like El Camino Nitrouso, a burnout in front of the bays was mandatory. Since strictly obeying the rules are part and parcel of the Nitrouso manifesto, we reluctantly obliged. The burnout ended in the parking lot of a conveniently located Chili's. The MaxChevy crew took that as a good omen and ducked into the restaurant, ordered up a brace of their signature "El Presidente" margaritas, and waited for the smoke to clear.
Once we’d dealt with the tire problem, there were a couple of other nagging little details. The old Burkster didn't relish the idea of racing the heavyweight El Camino with the 1967 seat belts. It just so happened that we had an extra set of RCI belts left over after the were replaced with another set in DRO’s “Project Four-Link” bracket dragster. So we took the El Camino over to Bill Weckman's Granite City shop and, after a beer and burger at O'Connell's Pub, Bill propped us up in the seat and fitted the belts. Weckman drew the short straw and helped position the crotch belt.
