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10th Annual Gold Rush to Gil's Drive

9K views 86 replies 16 participants last post by  OGTS-Team 
#1 ·
Okay lads and ladies, looks like Saturday April 23rd is the date for this year's upcoming Grand and Glorious event known as Gold "Rush to Gil's.

Looks like the team roster consists of Mike, Alan, Terry, and Alan's two sons.

Let's meet, again, at the Starbucks located at:
392 Elm St just off Interstate 80 in Auburn.

Leave at 8 am with an arrival time estimate between 11 am and 11:30.
So show up 15 to 20 minutes early, fueled up. There's a Shell gas station a half block east on Elm.

I'd like to infringe on Terry's time to establish the route again this year. Perhaps this year participants would enjoy the return trip together. Let me know.
 
#62 ·
More Memories and Ramblings

Here are some pics at OGTS from 2013.
Some of you may remember my friend Richard Walsh. He rode to Gil's at least
one time with me, and also to Rohnert Park Aug 2015 on Friday for OMC 35th.
He was a car guy, although his car of choice was a '69 Dodge Charger (He had 2),
and was well along in restoring a '69 Dart. He was always on for a car show and a
good tasty beer, the best kind of friend. Richard died suddenly in November 2015.
2 pics are at Hofbrauhous Las Vegas, after MOPAR event at the track March 2015.
 

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#64 ·
Today is Nor Cal Fun Run Adam. What? Well if tomorrow is Fun Run Eve, then what came before Eve? --- ADAM.

Have tomorrow off to prep the car, make the potato salad and buy last minute necessities. I hope all of you are prepping as well. The weather tomorrow is showers but it is supposed to be partly sunny and dry on Saturday. Highs in the low 70's. Looking forward to a great day.

See everyone bright and early at the Auburn StarBucks.

Terry
 
#68 ·
Up early getting ready to pack up and head to Auburn. The roads are wet here in the foothills since we had heavy rain yesterday. Not complaining we need the rain. They reported snow to 5000' but we are not going that high so I do not expect to see any plus the roads were all warm so it would melt immediately. Drive carefully everyone.

FUN is the watch word for the day.

Terry
 
#69 ·
Thanks T-Ray for organizing this, leading the run, and getting us all there in one piece and at the same time.

Only two road side rescues. Not bad. The first was a loose nut holding the Petronix in place. I'll let Alex tell you about the second one.

And thanks Gil, for hosting this and putting on a great feed.

Mike
 
#70 ·
Roadside Assistance

Special thanks to Mike from Team TinyVette. Just as Alex and I followed Alan onto highway 99 North on our way home, the clutch cable failed as we we're in third gear on the freeway onramp. Third gear of course would not be able to achieve and sustain a freeway speed. Alex and I pulled his GT to the side of the freeway to find the clutch cable had failed and was loose.

By 8:04 pm with only about 30 minutes of sunset light left, we put a call in for towing with AAA. Not 5 minutes later Mike pulls up behind us. He had taken a slightly different route home than Alex, Alan and I. Thank goodness he did because it put him behind us and had he not been, we would be waiting 90 mins for a tow truck in the dark on a dangerously busy freeway!

Mike and Alex worked together and found that 2 of the 3 E clips holding the clutch cable in place had popped off. Mike found one on the ground and they were able to reinstall 2 of the 3 E clips. Thank goodness we had more than just 1 E clip holding that cable in place!!!

Earlier in the day Paul had issues with major oil leakage and we stopped several times to check and fill. Patrick had trouble with his carburator flooding and a nut that fell off and jammed a moving part along with misfires. Both were corrected and afterward his car ran great.

All of these challenges were overcome because we work as a team. No Opeler Left Behind!
 

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#71 · (Edited)
Why get AAA when you can get Team Tinyvette?

Gather 'round kids! This is gonna be a long one!

So on the way back from Gil's, Neil and I were cruising along Highway 99 in my GT along with Alan in his GT. Neil was just about to shift into 4th, when he could not find the clutch pedal, and stepped on the brake pedal a few times trying. I knew that something was wrong, and had caused the clutch pedal to fall to the floor. We pulled over, abandoned by Alan, and I discovered that the stirrup end of the clutch cable popped off of the pedal. After a little Opel Sutra I put the cable back on, but the pedal still remained on the floor. I thought either the cable had snapped, or the end had popped out of the clutch fork. After a little investigation, it turned out to be the latter.

Turns out that one of the E-clips holding the cable housing to the firewall had popped off, and the resulting slack caused the ball end of the cable to pop out of the clutch fork.

Not too long after we pulled over, Mike saw us stopped, turned around, and pulled over behind us. He got under the car, popped the cable end into place, then helped me reposition the two remaining E-clips to tighten up the cable. Meanwhile, Neil was in the car calling AAA, but we asked him to test the clutch out, and the car easily went into gear and moved under its' own power. Neil cancelled the AAA tow, and with Tinyvette hot on our heels, we headed back to Sacramento, splitting up with Mike after a while.

Many thanks to Mike for the free roadside assistance, to Gil for hosting at his lovely home (and for the free parts!), to Terry for organising the trip, and Neil for chauffeuring me to and from Gil's.
Not a bad ending to an excellent day.
 
#75 ·
Argh!! Too bad that E clip didn't let go before getting on the freeway. I would have noticed that and circled back to at least console you two as I was not carry any clips with me. However, I have since included a couple in my carry along tool kit.

So, when you tried to pass me on my right as we entered the ramp, were you trying to get ahead of me to hail me over? I naturally interpreted it as an invitation to a drag race and responded accordingly. Sorry about that!!

Thank you, Gil and Patricia, for being wonderful hosts. It was great meeting several new open friends and catching up with the usual suspects.

Alan
 
#82 ·
Nor Cal Fun Run Goes Interstate

We had cars from Las Vegas and Washington besides San Jose and the Sacramento area. Tales of being snow bound in the Sierra, oil leaks, and road side repairs. Saw a V6 Cosworth GT that would make a good Lemons car. Had great food once again courtesy of Gil. Saw some great country and twisty roads that made our cars happy. And fine weather to go with it all. Begs for a repeat. We also ran into a 40 car Porsche rally. Our cars were more classic than the vast majority of theirs.
 

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#83 ·
I really wanted to tow the GT up there from AZ, but ended up having a date conflict with one of my 93 year-old dad's doctor appointments. Would liked to have rescheduled that, but we were lucky to get it when we did as they normally have a two month wait.

Oh well, I've had the GT since 1973, so unless I get hit by a bus there's always next year. I love that area and couldn't think of a better place for an Opel outing.
 
#84 ·
Thanks for the great time!

Previous to this outing I had only ever seen one GT other than mine. This trip I was able to 7x that! It was great putting faces to names. Thanks Gil and Terry for organizing and the great food.

As Mike said I had my nut holding down my Petronix come undone which cause erratic sparking. Things got worse because the nut jammed into the "advance" mechanism and thus made anything over 3k RPM impossible.

I write this all as if the explanation was soooooo obvious. In reality I had 3 hours of bad to worse engine performance before the engine fully flooded and left me dead at an intersection. The running hypothesis at the time was that the jetting was too rich and it looked like I was going to have to pack it in. Fortunately Alex was kind enough to pop in the drivers seat and hole the throttle open to air out the intake while I looked for any other potential causes. Since I was seeing some weird RPM spikes (but no engine audio to suggest reving) I decided to pop the distributor and see if anything looked out of place. Sure enough there was a tiny little nut jammed in the advance. Good news: found the problem. Bad news: i didn't have the right size socket (7mm). The Opel gods smiled upon me because Mike had all the socket I needed. I got it all together and it was smooth sailing from there on out!

Ironic that Neil and Alex lost their clutch. When we met in the morning Alex gave me a protip to install extra e-clips on my clutch line, in case of failure. I am glad his advice came in handy down the road!
 
#85 ·
I had my clutch fail after the one and only E clip on my clutch failed on one of my previous GTs. When Irealized how simple and cheap this was to fix, I made sure I bought extra E clips and installed them. I suggested Alex do this too. Good he did!

My guess is the primary E clip had already failed earlier in the day and with all the shifting on the winding roads this caused a lot of wiggle on cable, causing the other clips to pop off. Fortunately the last one left was the one Mike found on the ground, allowing he and Alex to fix the clutch and get us home.

Lesson...buy and install extra E clips!
 
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