1971 Opel GT Full Restoration

We started with a less than perfect body, less being an understatement. We stripped the car down completely, until we could pick it up and move it around with ease.

Then we started removing all of the body filler that we could find on the car. That is when we got our first surprise, as you can see by the pictures we now knew what we had gotten ourselves into.

We ordered our sheet metal from Opels Unlimited and received the back third of a GT. The underside and inside of the car was very sound so only the body shell was in need of replacing. We cut away the metal with a die grinder and a cut off wheel, this worked very well.

The next step was to weld the replacement body panels to the car. That was accomplished by using a small wire feed welder, vice grips, body hammers and infinite patience. Richard is a very good welder and was able to put the car back together without any warping.

We drilled out the spot welds on the rear valance panel and the rocker panels; I can’t say enough how important it is to have a VERY sharp drill bit.

That was a very time consuming process. Once the welding is complete a grinder makes short work out of smoothing the seams.

The car was taking shape nicely, and now it was time for the sandblasting. It cost about 450.00 and was well worth it, I could have never got the car as clean. The sandblasting reveled other minor imperfections that would need attention, as some of the lower sections were very soft.

As we cut metal away we cleaned and primed every area we could possibly reach to stop any future rust.

The belly of the car was another nightmare, rust had eaten holes through it and dents were many.

We cut and replaced it with another from Opels Unlimited.

While the new panel was basically sound, it did have many dents and would take many hours of work to straighten.

We had one very good idea; we hung the car from the rafters in my garage by two heavy-duty straps.

This allowed us to rotate it into any position we wanted, thus making the bodywork much easier on the back.

Here are some shots of the body patching we did.

Using a vice, die grinder, body hammer, vice grips and a lot of patience we were able to fabricate patches that were nearly perfect in form and left very little need for body filler on the seams.

This patch is in front of the passenger rear tire.

A little patch to the belly, note the strap.

A solid, rust free body smoothed out to near perfection.

From this...

To this!