[Young Gt Lover]

Gosh! Thanks for the "Seal"!!! I'm honored.
The car has served it's purpose of giving me a challenging project to keep me busy in the early stages of retirement and Covid.





Thank you for the accolades! I can't imagine making Carlisle in it this year, I'd have to work my ass off........and I'm purposely trying not to work my ass off. Only when it's a fun thing to do that day. I'm actually very much looking forward to driving my GTX car this year. It's finally working perfectly and I want to enjoy it. The custom fuel injection system the banana will get will no doubt take weeks and months to sort out.........or not. We'll see.





A little truism is starting to develope between me and a few guys: All GT's that have been repainted were originally yellow. It's surprising how often this turns out to be true. All 4 of the GT's I've had since 1985 were originally yellow. My 18 years 225K mile GT was originally yellow and I repainted it yellow like 5 times. My Red Baron car was originally yellow, but came to me painted red. My originally yellow GTX came to me as an unfinished project car in primer, but I painted it red. My Gullwing/Banana car came to me in black, but it also was yellow originally.

That is funny. Only one of my gts are originally yellow. And I am going to repaint it yellow. But 2 of my cars were fireglow orange. And they have both been repainted. I have seen a lot of originally orange cars that have been repainted like red on facebook.

 

[The Scifi Guy]

I had to resolve an issue with my Charles Goin, custom, ultra minimal, low profile, multi-thermo sensor, thermostat housing. In his design, he left the hole where you normally would have the heater hose attached un-tapped so that you could put whatever fitting you wanted to put there. He sold all of his thermostats, but I was able to buy one from Keith Lundholm, who had bought it with a bunch of parts that a guy who threw in the towel on his Opel project and who had already modded the 'stat. All I had was the thermo housing and the one black fitting that was screwed into it. I would have preferred a simple hose barb sticking out there or maybe some sort of right angle fitting or the rest of the AN fitting that would fit a standard 5/8" heater hose.

Charlie helped on the phone a bit. Then I called Keith and found that he had no clue and the PO had tapped it to an unknown thread. Keith suggested that I go to a local hydraulics place. It turned out that the fitting was a 10AN and the threaded hole was some sort of British thread. The hydraulics place didn't have that size and sent me to the local Ben Pilla Speed Shop. Pilla conjured up the set up in the pics. He didn't have an AN fitting big enough for the 5/8" ID hose to fit into the nut, but the threaded shaft of the smaller AN end was just right to push the heater hose onto. So, I'll put some sealer or thread dope on the threads, push on a hose, and hose clamp it. Should be good enough, onto the next problem.

 

[The Scifi Guy]

Thermo housing issues resolved and it's ready for install. I started a side thread about a helicoil issue in one of the holes, here's a link to that:

Helicoil Extraction

I bought one of Charlie's low profile thermo housings from Keith Lundholm, who had bought it from a guy who bagged his Opel project and sold him all his parts. The guy had modded the sensor and heater outlets for his needs. I already resolved a heater outlet issue in a post in my build thread...

www.opelgt.com

 

[The Scifi Guy]

I didn't get much stuff done that was good to photograph over the past few days, but I did get a bunch of stuff done. Mainly, torquing all the various engine mounting and oil pan bolts. I also hooked up my tranny cooler and drilled a slot in my auto's bell housing to route a big hose clamp to hold my braided fuel lines and the kick down cable. The next job was to install the 3-core copper radiator and do some minor modding to make it fit. The 3-core radiators have to have the oem side metal plates, that have the grabbers for the rubber vibration isolators, flattened out because of the extra cooling fan width. This causes them to hit the window in the radiator wall and you can't slide the radiator in. On my other car I beat and bent over those straightened side plates, but it was difficult and high risk, so this time I trimmed 3/16" off of the side plates that were sticking out and hitting the radiator wall window, then painted the cut off areas. I thought I could then slide it in, but I had already noticed that the bottom center bracket and rubber mount was missing. Another dang part that was missing from this car when I got it. So I had to order some stuff from OGTS and wait for it to come.

The part arrived really late today, so I only had enough time to mount the radiator:

The weather was excellent and I didn't want to waste it, so I set about doing the big job of removing the dead tree in the center of my front yard. One of my prize plants needs that spot this year. I could have chopped it down last Fall, but I wanted to give the squirrels one last chance to spend the Winter in my squirrel house and make some more baby squirrels. They appear to have done so and now I need that tree to come down NOW and some of the bigger roots dug up. So I spent the last 2 days nuking my front yard to get those roots out. Next, I'll have to serve the squirrels the eviction notice. I don't think they'll be happy and they'll refuse to leave. Oh well, then I guess they'll go down with the ship. I moved all the plants out of the sunroom today, some of which are 200lbs. It's gonna rain for the next 3 days, so I'm not gonna get much done in the yard or the garage.

 

[Timbo]

Are you pulling that out with your Opel? The squirrels are just going to move into your attic.

 

[SpringGT]

Nothing that two sticks of dynamite won't cure!

 

[The Scifi Guy]

I don't have a chainsaw and have been doing this with a sawzall and some loppers to cut off the small stuff, I'm down to the big stuff now. It's a mimosa tree, so it's pretty light, useless, wood. The lantern fly invasion killed it. Living in a neighborhood of row homes with small yards, not too many people have need for a chain saw, but there's a few folks on the block who have one. The guy across the street mows lawns for side money and he gave me one that won't sustain running. That's why I've dug out the roots, to provide clearance to use a chainsaw and not dull the teeth of a borrowed saw. I don't have much experience with small engines like that, so I've handed the saw off to my next door neighbor who likes to try to get stuff like that running. We'll see how that goes. If no luck, there's a guy with a good one farther up the street. Gotta get those squirrels to move out.......

I was or am toying with the idea of pulling it down with my SUV and a 25 foot tow strap. The tree is about 12-15 feet tall. At it's thickest at it's base it's about 12" round, but it's mostly about about 10" in diameter.

 

[Young Gt Lover]

I don't have a chainsaw and have been doing this with a sawzall and some loppers to cut off the small stuff, I'm down to the big stuff now. It's a mimosa tree, so it's pretty light, useless, wood. The lantern fly invasion killed it. Living in a neighborhood of row homes with small yards, not too many people have need for a chain saw, but there's a few folks on the block who have one. The guy across the street mows lawns for side money and he gave me one that won't sustain running. That's why I've dug out the roots, to provide clearance to use a chainsaw and not dull the teeth of a borrowed saw. I don't have much experience with small engines like that, so I've handed the saw off to my next door neighbor who likes to try to get stuff like that running. We'll see how that goes. If no luck, there's a guy with a good one farther up the street. Gotta get those squirrels to move out.......

I was or am toying with the idea of pulling it down with my SUV and a 25 foot tow strap. The tree is about 12-15 feet tall. At it's thickest at it's base it's about 12" round, but it's mostly about about 10" in diameter.

We need a video of you pulling it out with an opel! Now that would be awesome!

 

[The Scifi Guy]

Well, I DO have a tow hitch on my red GT........

🤪