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Gordo's GTX

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#1 ·
Ta-dahhhhh!

Here’s my new car guys. It’s called the GTX for now. The “X” stands for EXTREME!!!!! The adjustable fiberglass wing and the Lenk hood aren’t done yet. I guess this will be my build thread, but it should more accurately be described as my strip ‘n’ build thread because I’m gonna take most of the good stuff off of the Red Baron to build it. The Baron will be dumbed down and I might use it for my bash ‘n’ crash car or flip it to a friend.

I want to do every extreme mod I can think of as I build it including an electronic display dash, electric windows/locks/door openers, maybe an all wood interior(wood floors?), etc. I’ll consider and attempt any mod that no one has done yet. I don’t have the deep pockets of some of our members, so everything that I have the skills for will be done by me. It’ll probably be a 2 year build before I’m done and it’s road worthy. I don’t really give a fig if I ever drive it, I just love having GT’s as a platform to do interesting projects to and I just love having one in my garage to look at.

I bought this car from a guy in Washington State about 3 years ago. He had done most of the mods you see on it, except for the morphed/adapted ground effects, lower rear panel treatment, and the gas cap out the rear. He’d done all the work and then stuck it in his garage for 14 years and moved onto other projects. Five projects down the road, his wife said “You’re not getting another car until you get rid of one you already have!!!” I got it for $1500!!!!!!!!!!!! A steal! It cost another $1500 to have it shipped cross-country to me here in Jersey. I tossed another $5000 at it for kit parts, auto body work to finish and modify it even more, and the paint job. The color is classic Ford truck red. I coated the entire underside, all of the interior, edges, and the engine compartment/headlight area forward of the radiator in POR-15. The Steinmetz flares were properly reinforced by cutting the old wheel arches into strips and folding them out to support the flares. The Ferrari Dino style side air scoops and the headlight mods were done with 3” pipe. He removed the headlight rotating stuff, cut out the bottom of the buckets and pierced through the sides of the buckets with some angle iron to provide a place to mount mini headlight or fog lights in the pipes. I will be putting LED turn signals in the side scoops. The side windows were covered over, but the openings are still there on the inside. I’m going to have Opel blitz’s etched into the old window glass, install some kind of hidden background lighting, and reinstall the windows from the inside.






 
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#1,830 ·
These are the pics of my completed redo of my front suspension, rack rebuild, and sway bar A-arm mounting mods:

Motor vehicle Tire Automotive tire Vehicle Auto part
Yellow Motor vehicle Wheel Vehicle Auto part
Automotive exterior Bumper Vehicle Car Auto part
Bumper Auto part Automotive exterior Vehicle Car
Vehicle Machine


These are the threads where I showed what I did to those items:

http://www.opelgt.com/forums/group-3-suspension-steering/78553-ogts-anti-sway-bar-installation.html

http://www.opelgt.com/forums/3b-steering-linkage-column-gear-box/91689-rack-rebuild-gordo-style.html

http://www.opelgt.com/forums/3a-front-suspension/92329-installing-gussets-gt-control-arms.html

And this thread is the next project on the horizon. I'm waiting for Customs to clear my package of goodies from Norbert. The window adventure will continue when the parts arrive.:

http://www.opelgt.com/forums/2b-sea...rdos-electric-window-adventure-part-zwei.html
 
#1,832 ·
Gordo's off-season to-do list:

Fix radio antenna - done
Redo side rear windows - done
Rebuild steering rack - done
Increase caster - done
Strengthen/refurbish front suspension - done
2nd try at electric windows - in progress
Install plasma plates
Flip my upside down headlights
Redo wing attachment and finish
Install Norbert's trailer hitch reinforcement
Re-calibrate fuel gauge
Install new intake - after Carlisle
Try out smaller 40DCOE carb to see if it performs as good or better and uses less fuel - after Carlisle
 
#1,834 · (Edited)
Dammit! You just had to think of something else to add to my list, didn'tcha? :veryhappy

The solution would be to have some sort of door flappy thing in there, like my Ford Escape has, that is only big enough for gas pump's fuel nozzle to fit into or to reconfigures the filler neck to go straight down to the tank on about a 60* angle. It's the curve/arc of the oem filler neck that is the problem, it begins too far away from the filler neck opening and leaves the top of the filler neck virtually horizontal. If you overfill the tank or you fill it too quickly towards the end of your fill up, the fuel can sort of pool up and want to back flow out the filler neck opening. It's just a few tablespoons worth that likes to dribble out, but it's annoying.

:sigh:


Hmmm....I just reread your question and maybe you're talking about the internal leak I had, due to poor fitment of the rubber filler neck hose. I installed a longer hose and double hose clamped it at both ends. Did it work? I won't know until I start driving the car again in the Spring and start filling up my tank all the way. Presently, I'm choosing to fill the tank one gallon shy of full, originally because of the internal leak, but now mainly because of the filler neck angle.

I don't really know how badly I want to go to war with this filler neck full-to-the-top leak problem. I have a new gas cap gasket and I know that it seals VERY well, so I'm not worried about a full to the top fuel tank causing fuel to dribble out the cap while I'm driving. It's just the dribbling out that occurs when the full tank kicks off the gas station's fuel pump and the gas is all the way up the filler neck. If my GT was normal and had the tire ledge, I could make a pretty good guess as to the angle and length to cut a new straight piece of pipe to be welded onto the filler neck opening. But, my GT has all that wood back there and free and easy visualization of the filler neck is very difficult. I'm sure I could come up with a close enough guess, the filler neck can be wiggled to a wide range of angles due to the rubber body gasket it fits through, but if you have to force it away from the natural angle it wants to sit at, the gas cap cocks at a funny angle. It does that now. It's just an appearance thing, but I'd like to do the best job I can. If I had no other major projects to attend to, I suppose I'd be tackling this issue. Maybe in March/April, when my other to-do's are done I'll look into it.

:veryhappy
 
#1,835 ·
Darn, I'm having a problem on the website here. I'm getting a huge weird dialog box to type in and I can't upload pictures.

Anyway, a while back I bought orange Plasma Plates on Ebay to use in my round side rear window mod. I scrapped the round window idea, but the Plasma Plates arrived a few weeks ago. They're really cool and seem decently made and tests of mine seem to show that they run on 12VDC at less than one amp. I'll need to do more tests to see how much less.

I'll probably put them in the vertical place below the tire ledge where many of us put our speakers. I made 3 videos showing them in my basement and then out in the car to show you how cool they look. Enjoy my next wackadoodle project!:



https://youtu.be/9Udj0r7TNA4

https://youtu.be/EF8vsLJLRtA

https://youtu.be/RBnd3GEeZfE
 
#1,837 ·
Darn, I'm having a problem on the website here. I'm getting a huge weird dialog box to type in and I can't upload pictures.

Anyway, <SNIP>
Hmmm! Me too! There also doesn't seem to be a Font COLOR option in addition to posting pics! Another software IMPROVEMENT?

Attaching pics seems to have the same "basic" system, other options ??

Doug

It looks like Text Color is the tiny box next to "Size" but the text doesn't fit!
 

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#1,838 ·
I fixed my upside down HID headlights today. We discovered that I dumbassed their install back in May at Carlisle. 3 hour job to remove the grill and turn signal cans, then, with arms fully extended into the darkness I had to work blind while I fussed and fiddled and cussed, while snipping all sorts of wire ties and wrenching various things. Then put it all back together. A big PIA that was made much easier because I had my car on the lift and could work standing up with the grill opening at chest height. This job would have really sucked if I had to do it laying or sitting on the ground. It all went well:

Hood Vehicle Yellow Car Muscle car
Hood Yellow Vehicle Car Automotive exterior


To refresh your memory, HID headlights only have one filament that is on all the time, high or low beam. During normal low beam operation a little metal shield in front of the bulb drops down and blocks the top 25% of the light. This is the "knife edge" blinding effect some of you may have experienced from other cars coming at you on the road. My shields were on the bottom, I rotated the light assemblies 180* so that they are now at the top.

Now I can knife edge other drivers!


:banana:
 
#1,845 · (Edited)
Actually, I now make a point of NOT having music playing when I post a video on YouTube. It turns out that Norbert in Germany can't view them if there is copyrighted music in a video. Otherwise, I would gladly have all sorts of stuff playing in the background.

I've seen Johnny Winter in concert about 15 times. Maybe in his honor I'll make a vid with his music playing(sorry Norbert!).



I finished the "enhancement" of my car's rear storage area with brown gator skin. I can't permanently fasten upholstery/carpet/whatever back there because I need whatever covering of the wood I do to be easily removable in case I need to take things apart for some sort of repair or mod. So, I made "cover panels" with the gator stuff on them:

Floor Wood Flooring Plywood


I'm not 100% sure I dig having that much brown coloring back there, so it's good that the two panels above are removable/redoable. I've got the seats forward and the camera makes the panels look browner than they actually look, so with the seats leaned back that area still has the black GT interior dungeonesque look back there. Another reason I wanted to redo the rear was because the fuzzy JCWhitney carpet I covered it all with was a dust/dirt/leaves/etc. magnet that was really hard to keep clean. The vinyl will enable me to keep things much more tidy in the back and the grippiness of the vinyl might help discourage stuff from sliding around.:

Games Vehicle Car Technology Electronic device


:veryhappy
 
#1,848 ·
I went for a two hour drive today.

Aaaaggghhh!

There's nothing wrong with my car!

It ran and performed like a brand new car!

Aaaaggghhh!

Now what am I going to do?

Here in southern New Jersey, we've been in a weird "weather pocket" all year. All the storms last year hit South, West, and North of us. Technically, we were in a state of drought all year. This pattern persisted until a couple of weeks ago. They said we were going to have a hard, cold, snowy Winter. It sure seemed to start out that way with plenty of cold. The early snows and ice storms hit everywhere but here. We've had one weird snow storm that moved in from the ocean, instead of the usual ones from the West and South. My house only got 4", whereas points east of me got 6"-8". They've only brined the roads for that one storm. The past week or two it's rained almost everyday. We'd have had 3 feet of snow, but the temps have been in the 50's, so, nuthin'.

So I had a great ride! Few potholes and nice clean roads. The rubber A-arm bushings make the turning creamy smooth, I don't feel like I'm steering an F1 car, as I have for the past 25 years. Yet, the stiffened A-arms make the front end feel noticably more solid and planted. Steering? Better than I've ever experienced in a GT. It was 40* during my 2 hour drive and the aftermarket heater kept me cozy warm.

All was going well, I was 10 miles from home, then I got brined.

Aaarrgghh!

They had just laid it down within the previous 1/2 hour on a stretch of highway with no side streets to turn off onto. It was still wet enough that minimal throttle sent my rear end sideways a little as I accelerated from a red light stop. Then I saw the salt trucks coming towards me brining the other side of the road. Billowing clouds of seafood seasoning spewing out their asses. I almost went off road to avoid their salt spamming.

Why the brine?

Chance of flurries tomorrow morning.

Aaarrgghh!

:veryhappy
 
#1,850 · (Edited)
I went for a two hour drive today.

<SNIP> Here in southern New Jersey, we've been in a weird "weather pocket" all year. All the storms last year hit South, West, and North of us. Technically, we were in a state of drought all year. This pattern persisted until a couple of weeks ago. They said we were going to have a hard, cold, snowy Winter.

blah, blah, blah...Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it! Well, check the attached photo from Mt Rose Summit in NV (in case you are wondering, that is the Reno Ski Basin area). This was taken on Jan 11, 2017. We now return you to somebody talking about the weather. Ho hum!

So I had a great ride! Few potholes and nice clean roads. The rubber A-arm bushings make the turning creamy smooth, I don't feel like I'm steering an F1 car, as I have for the past 25 years. Yet, the stiffened A-arms make the front end feel noticably more solid and planted. Steering? Better than I've ever experienced in a GT. It was 40* during my 2 hour drive and the aftermarket heater kept me cozy warm.

All was going well, I was 10 miles from home, then I got brined.

Aaarrgghh!

They had just laid it down within the previous 1/2 hour on a stretch of highway with no side streets to turn off onto. It was still wet enough that minimal throttle sent my rear end sideways a little as I accelerated from a red light stop. Then I saw the salt trucks coming towards me brining the other side of the road. Billowing clouds of seafood seasoning spewing out their asses. I almost went off road to avoid their salt spamming.

Why the brine?

Chance of flurries tomorrow morning.

Aaarrgghh!

:veryhappy

Hope everybody is happy now! -- Doug

PS - The date on the picture is when I modified it for smaller size.
 

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#1,849 ·
Better give her a good hosing down right away. Our weather up here just north of Toronto has been about the same. But that doesn't stop them from dumping salt on a whim of snow. I think they have to burn their budget so next year they get more. Going back to your reply about Johnny Winter and music in your video's, I went and saw him once at maple leaf gardens back in the day. He was awwsome. I saw one of your video's with rock and roll hoochie koo playing and it brought back memories of me cruising in my opel years ago. What ever happened to good bands like that?
 
#1,851 ·
Better give her a good hosing down right away. Our weather up here just north of Toronto has been about the same. But that doesn't stop them from dumping salt on a whim of snow. I think they have to burn their budget so next year they get more.
That salt is coming from my town, he he. Goderich salt mine is the largest in the world.
East Gwillimbury CameraGirl: Sifto Salt Mine/ My World
 
#1,852 ·
This story is exactly why my GT stays put for the entire winter no matter how much I want to take it out. The earliest it will see blacktop is March if it rains early enough but usually not until April.
 
#1,855 ·
The End of the Thread

This thread has gotten so large that the site is having trouble with it. The car is basically done, so I've started a new thread called "Gordo's GTX Index", where I'll work on developing a guide to the various stuff I did to the car. I'll endeavor to place all future projects and general discussion in the new thread.

http://www.opelgt.com/forums/member-projects/93466-gordos-gtx-index.html

:veryhappy
 
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