John S 1970 Opel GT

I was contacted by John through the website and was excited to get an opportunity to restore his wonderful condition 1970 GT. Even better, I made a new friend.

This car is in great condition because John took good care of it and now we will get it perfect for him.

By and large the body is in good shape, a couple dents and scratches but nothing bad. It was repainted a while back and it still shines nicely.

The interior is in near perfect shape, we will address a few problems and add some new items for John. The headliner will need to be replaced as it is ripped.

The belly is rotted out, nothing new there, just like the rest on this site. New battery tray will be added as well.

The engine will get rebuilt and the clutch replaced, we will go over the brakes and all of the suspension system. The exhaust leaks into the cab as well as some gas fumes, this will be fixed. We will sand blast the engine compartment and repaint it.

First, out with the engine and tranny. Nothing to hard here just over an hour to get it out. I did find that quiet a few bolts were not tight at all including most of the intake bolts. Could have been some leaking there.

The engine is already being torn down for rebuild and the head is off to be reworked. A mild cam will be installed and hydraulic lifters as well.

The engine bay was an area of concern to John, the car looks nice except here. I will sandblast and repaint the entire bay and forward area before the engine is reinstalled.

The lower half of the radiator was plugged with some kind of gum blocking air flow and may have accounted for running a bit warm.

Now the headlight buckets have been removed and we found a couple items to be fixed. First the last paint job completely missed the light openings and buckets, we will correct that.

Next and most important, the headlight wires were exposed and could have started a fire if the lights had been turned on. I will rewire them and anything else needing correcting as John had asked me to.

Just a shot of the engine compartment with the wiring removed from the forward half of the car. Now the fun begins.

I rewired the light harness and improved the grounding by using a dedicated wire system I created for GT's. I use only the highest quality wire and shrink connectors to minimize future problems. 

With the engine being rebuilt I will now clean and repaint the transmission as well as replace the seals and pan gasket and change the gear oil. John said that if shifted normally but needed a couple springs on the shifter itself.

Cleaned, sanded and painted, looks good.

My parts washer, here only to represent so many hours spent in front of it. One of my most useful tools. 

Here we go again, a rusted belly pan. A previous attempt at a repair has rotted off and is peeled back. We will cut out the effected areas and weld in new metal recreating the original as closely as possible.

Now the engine compartment has been sandblasted and will be prepped for paint. The sandblaster does a great job of cleaning all the hard to get to areas.

The belly area has been repaired and next we will shoot POR to prevent future rust. After that we will install the new battery tray.

The light openings were sandblasted as well, they were over looked in the last repaint. We also will be painting the sides of the light buckets and the insides. I guess they couldn't figure out how to remove them in the last repaint.

Before and after. 

This is how they all should look. I like POR in the forward area as it takes the most abuse from sand and such.