Another Opel GT Rescued

[kwilford]

Once upon a time, there were a couple of Opel GT owners in Calgary Alberta Canada. They heard about a '75 Ascona SportWagon that was being held ransom due to storage charges at a U-Wrench-It shop in nasty old Edmonton Alberta (sorry for the shot at Edmonchuk, just a long standing rivalry, don't you know). If the car wasn't paid for and picked up within the week, it was off to the crusher! Four hundred miles and a couple hundred dollars later, the SportWagon was rescued. Anyway, that story was told here about three years ago, and it was how Kat McCoy's beloved SportWagon came to live at my house. And my assistant rescuer was John Warga, aka "ftl" here on OGT.com, who supplied his Jeep Grand Cherokee and the Vintage Sports Car Club of Calgary car dolley for the mission.

Flash forward to a couple of weeks ago, when a fellow VSCCC member told John about an acquaintance who had a 1971 Opel GT, stored for the past 30 years or so. It was stored in a garage (for all but the first three years apparently) that had been sold and was being torn down at the end of the month. Like in two weeks. John already has his hands full with a very nice GT that is in the middle of a 1.9 to 2.4 conversion, and a MASSIVE re-wiring job (John can write a story about that himself someday). About the last thing he needed was another derelict, albeit delightfully so, GT stored at his house..

Anyway, he finally got in touch with the fellow who is clearing out the garage, including the GT. It turns out the owner is in poor health, and bed-ridden in his house. This is some distance from the garage where the GT was stored, which is attached to a small apartment block the fellow owned right in the downtown core of a VERY busy oil-patch Calgary. I don't even want to GUESS what THAT piece of real estate was sold for. OK, several MILLION might be conservative!

Last Sunday, John and I went to view the GT, and ultimately he bought it and we trailered it back to his house the same day. I have attached a few photos below, as it is quite an interesting find. A true "Garage Find" in the urbane legend sense. One surrounded by downtown Calgary office towers.

Vince had bought the GT from the original owner in 1974 or 1975. After driving it for about a year, he decided to take a road trip through the mountains to Vancouver to see the fall colours. On the way into Revelstoke, at the end of a very steep mountain pass road after a typical autumn snow storm, he encountered an on-coming semi-trailer stuck on the way up the hill, and the car ahead had skidded into the ditch, leaving its tail in the downhill lane. Vince ALMOST made it between them, but the GT slid sideways and buried its nose into the semi's rear wheels. Vince was uninjured, but the GT didn't fare so well.

He and his good friend Howie, the same friend who was enlisted to clear out the garage and apartment block some thirty years later, trailered the car back to Calgary to a body man they knew who moonlighted after hours from the Buick dealership where he worked. Three years later, with brand new GM-sourced body parts (a driver's fender, the centre nose piece, inner fenders and belly pan, all still in the original GM primer black), the car was rescued from the City impound, towed there from the bodyman's former house, where he had left it when he disappeared one night, probably due to a stack of unpaid bills and unfinished work.

Amazingly, the GT was stored in a heated garage all this time. The three years outside and the first few years in a salty Montreal where the car was from had left it with a bit of rust, but remarkably very little. The interior was pretty much perfect as was the glass, and it only has 28,300 ORIGINAL miles. Yep, it was driven a bit for the first four years, but then NOTHING for the past thirty. It has a few dings and dents, and some poorly finished body repairs that have rusted where the joining welds have corroded. For some reason, the bodyman chose to spot-braze the panels in place rather than weld, and hadn't painted the inner joints, so they are a bit rusty. The primer over the repaired dents in the door also has allowed some rust. The battery box is intact, still with the original clamp in place. The battery had been removed back then, and the coolant had also been drained. But the brake fluid was still clear and full in the MC, and aside from a slightly seized rear drum, the brakes still functioned! We didn't start the engine, but with only 28,300 miles in a dry heated garage and a crankcase full of very clean oil, it might be fine. The gas tank may be another story, as the key had been misplaced for the cap, and it was locked. Vince "thinks" he knows where to find the key, and he also has a brand new front bumper, as well as the missing marker light and some "new" tail-lights.

The car is now safely, although not as comfortably, stored in John's back yard. It certainly won't store as well outside as in the dry heated garage it has lived these past three decades. But John is quite motivated to take the best parts for his GT in the next few months, and the remains are sure to provide the basis for a very decent GT restoration or at least provide needed parts for me and other local GT owners.

Here are some photos of our adventure. The garage was FULL of various toys, trinkets and such that Vince had collected over the years. Two boats, including an old hydroplane in the rafters, and some kind of fiberglassed wooden inboard boat with absolutely beautiful mahogany decking and a flathead Ford V8. Oh, and a spare flathead that apparently had been "rodded" back in the '60's, waiting to be installed in the boat. Howie had already taken three truckloads to the dump just to uncover the GT. I hate to say it, but I suspect that the same will have to be done with MY garage in thirty years....

[kwilford]

Here are a few more photos:

[kwilford]

And finally....

[newman27]

That's a cool story - quite an adventure rescuing that GT!

[jpiper]

Great story Keith. You and John will be able to start your own Opel Used Car dealership soon.....

[kwilford]

Originally Posted by jpiper Great story Keith. You and John will be able to start your own Opel Used Car dealership soon.....

Myrna would like that. So long as we SOLD Opels rather than buying them But you know what they say: "To have one unique car makes a person an "owner"; to have two or more, makes them a "COLLECTOR". John is now a "collector". Somewhat to his chagrin, as I suspect that he would sooner have one running Opel as two "in restoration".

Speaking of which, after depositing John's new Opel in his back yard, I brought his trailer home. And then loaded my GT on to it, and called my favourite media blaster. I spent the day with him today, and the following photos show some of the results. I suspect that I will create a photo-editorial when I am further along, but here is a flavour. We made a change from the hood and headlights buckets that he did for me this spring. I wanted the rustier parts sand blasted rather than soda blasted, to allow me to better determine where I needed to weld more repair panels in, and to have a cleaner surface than soda would provide (soda won't remove rust, only paint, and simply won't touch body filler or seam sealer) . As he finished that, he suggested that we try his fine sand (#1 grit) at a bit lower pressure and from a bit further away on the rest of the panels. It left a rougher finish than the soda (which was essentially as smooth as clean metal with no sand blast etch effect), but was much faster than soda, and should leave a "grippier" surface for the self-etching epoxy primer to adhere to.

Anyway, here's how I spent my day. Oh, and you ask how I managed to take the day off work today? Well, as of September 1, I terminated my contract with Grand Banks Energy to become "between contracts". Unemployed in other words. To work on my cars and house, and to have a REAL vacation without some damn drilling rig calling me at all hours of the night. Next Wednesday, September 26 2007, Myrna, Rachel (our 11 year old) and I depart for Brisbane Australia, with connections to Cairns, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, for a month long tour. We won't be back in Calgary until October 27. Then I guess I will have to look for work, to pay off the Visa bills and such. Hmm, or to finally get the darn GT off to the painter

[tomking]

Keith, my wife went with her sister and husband to Brisbane for a month this summer. I stayed home and watered her plants! The Aussies love us and were great hosts. Enjoy the time there. Good Opeling!

[jpiper]

Keith;
I must say that the Opel looks a heck of a lot different then the last time I saw it, I believe it was yellow. Great to see that it has reached another stage of rebuild. That is a nice stand you have there for the car. Do you have any other standalone pics of the stand?
I may be travelling out to Sidney, BC in Nov for a week on work related issues. My thoughts are to go out a few days earlier and stop over in Calgary to see my sister. If the trip goes through for this time period, I will drop you a line and maybe drop by with a coffee. It has been awhile.

[kwilford]

Originally Posted by jpiper Keith; I must say that the Opel looks a heck of a lot different then the last time I saw it, I believe it was yellow. Great to see that it has reached another stage of rebuild. That is a nice stand you have there for the car. Do you have any other standalone pics of the stand? I may be travelling out to Sidney, BC in Nov for a week on work related issues. My thoughts are to go out a few days earlier and stop over in Calgary to see my sister. If the trip goes through for this time period, I will drop you a line and maybe drop by with a coffee. It has been awhile.

Indeed it WAS yellow, as it was painted with a urethane 2-pack primer over the original Opel paint, as well as some primer and acrylic paint that was laid down in its first "restoration" back in 1980. But I decided that if I was going to do a "proper" job, it needed to be taken down to bare metal and "properly" restored. And of course it revealed a significant amount of previously hidden rust, as well as some repairs that I had done years ago that REALLY needs to be re-done. It should only add ten to twenty years to the process
The rotisserie build is photo-documented at
http://www.opelgt.com/forums/2d-body...otisserie.html
and the body dolley at
http://www.opelgt.com/forums/2d-body...ody-dolly.html
By all means, drop on by! The Esso at the corner is also a Tim Horton's, and we all know how much you Maritimers love your Tim's!