Leigh's 1970 Opel GT

[leigh]

After looking at several shitters I took the plunge and bought this bad boy. Left home friday around 1130am for a flight to collect it and landed back in Dublin approx 630am Saturday after a cannonball run home with no tax across three countries!!

(Heading for the ferry home)

Obviously the adrenaline was still coursing through the veins by the looks of the shakey shots but get over it!

Took these few on the morning of my return before hitting the pit after 24 hours of travelling

Its got an Opel Manta 2.0 injection engine and corresonding 5speed gearbox. Few other manta bits in rear suspension plus a few snazzy chrome items here and there. Its does need an overhaul when I get around to it as its not really been moved more than 200miles in approximately 15years!! It just covered around 400miles and only problem was I didnt check the water level when starting up this morning.

Exhaust is too loud though ( I know, I know bring on the hate mail) so I have to remedy that with another silencer somewhere in there. Don't get me wrong, it sounds great and all but I cant hear a thing.

Interior has had white dials fitted. Terrible. The calibration is all over the place and the dials are not marked correctly. According to the speedo it is currently doing ten miles and hour as there is no zero!! Plus, fuel gauge is bust and a few other niggles but all in its in grand shape.

Needs a damn good clear out inside and after a bit of a servicing I intend to remedy some of the shite mods and possibly polish those lips and black out the centres??? Do I really want to start polishing more wheels?? I've offered up my polished Compomotives and they look pretty cool plus they're a bit wider on the rear too.

And I think it could benefit from a bit of a drop but i'm not going as low as my GT6 as this is gonna be a daily driver. Plus a tyre change up front cos it rubs on lock at the minute. Plus a spare wheel. Plus a, and a, as well as a .................................

;D

Dicussion Thread here: http://www.oldschool.co.nz/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=14927

[leigh]

Spent too long today trying to figure out where the stock location for the breather pipes for the fuel tank is. Plus - its small and cool (i think) but its a bastard to work at the fuel system seeing as there's no boot and you have to crawl up into its arse from the inside. After much sweating and swearing i got the new pipes extended and out so now i'm hoping the smell will begin to leave too.

I also painted up the front lights as they were black once you popped them which looked gack.

Now at this point i would like to introduce my Compomotives to the story so we're going from this:

To this:

And these are the side shots:

You need to squint a bit before you get it and in fairness i dont think the pictures do them justice. Thoughts/Opinions? They are having the lips polished, remember, and will feature gold centres. 13x6.5 fronts and 14x7 rears

[leigh]

Got some work done on the car over the last two days but still have niggly little bits to clear up. Got my clutch adjusted to a usable level but haven't quite got the brakes up to scratch. Problem is that one minute i have a really good pedal and then the next I could have next to nothing - not very reassuring at all! So still working on that one.

Also drove home from work some 100 odd miles in the very early hours on wednesday morning which gave me the opportunity to see how the car held up on twisty roads as well as the straights and to say it was an interesting experience is an understatement. The tyres were squealing, the body was rolling, understeering, tramlining, front tyres scrubbing the inner arches on anywhere near lock.................so today i got the 70profiles replaced with some 60's which have made a vast improvement and look much better to boot.

A go on the alignment lasers also improved matters as it was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay off. While up on the lift i found some kinked hard brake lines that need to be replaced but generally it all seems ok underneath. Found a few leaky fuel hoses fromthe pump and fixed those and i have eradicated the fuel smell from the cockpit now so im happy out and i dont hear Obi Wan Kenobi telling me to drive using "The Force" as much!!

Also looked at a few wheel alternatives:

The stretch on these from above:

Thought i took a photo of these alleycats too but cant find it now so here's the car they were on:

I leave it to your own opinion but i'm sticking with the revo's still but haven't gotten around to polishing/painting them yet.

The next thing on the list was the exhaust. As cool as it is having a loud car, its not appreciated by my neighbours/housemates/girlfriend/Jesus/police/wildlife/etc at 5am so i had to remedy it. Brought it to the local exhaust manufacturer and it started out looking like this:

And a lot of cutting and swearing and pushing later i had gone from a single very small (and apparently empty) middle box to a front resonator and better rear section. But my wallet did take a bit of a pounding i must admit. Sound is still cool but its more bearable now and i can have a conversation in the car now too

Next on the list was the windscreen rubber as it was leaking like a pensioners pants and everything inside was getting severely ruined by the ingress of the lakes at home. Its now been sealed and hopefully that'll cure that problem.

Also acquired a normal sounding horn as the Awoogaa one was just embarrassing, fitted a new wheel bearing and hunted the cause of my lack of fuel gauge reading (still evading me!) but overall a good bit of work done. I'll be a bit happier driving it back in the morning anyway

[leigh]

Made a little hay while the sun shone today.

Got my door fixed so I can now open it from the inside again instead of the embarrassing drama of winding the window down to let myself out (thought I was gonna have to Dukes of Hazzard it a few times!) .

Also got my horn on

ALRIIIIGHT

Yeah, its only a minor difference but somebody had fitted one of those Ahooooooga horns so it had to go. The shame of hitting the button beforehand

And then I started spraying the wheel centres black. Before and after shots coming up but excuse the after shots - the neighbour had pulled in and I couldnt have been ar5ed moving the car for a better angle - 3 hours sleep and up since 5am will do that to you.

to this:

[leigh]

Drove home from Dublin night before last to some amazing tunes - all courtesy of my gearbox! Its been on a bit of a decline for the last few days and i threw it up on a mate's lift this evening to look closer. I figured from the sound of it that the idler bearing was dead and buried and on top of that the box was almost completely dry so i'm running ep-90 gear oil now and hoping i can scrape by for another few days before it completely disintegrates......dont get me wrong, im partial to a bit of metalflake paint but not metalflake oil. Now the task of locating a decent Manta gearbox...........

[leigh]

Some dick did this to my car, i've already dug a hole for him.

[leigh]

Started making a few brake upgrades. I started with the original GT skinny discs and baby calipers as below:

Then a fella off noskooljustcool juiced me up with hub adapters and redrilled Brembo disks which now give me these vented,wider, larger diameter disks:

I got some SRi Cavalier calipers today and tried them. All the mounts are perfect so with a little trimming of the backing plate they fit and look perfect. It was very late when i was doing this so i have one caliper to fit and one disk to fit, neither on the same side!!

Cleaning up for painting:

And it looks like this in place

They're a massive difference to what was there originally so here's an original and an SRi comparison with a pound coin used for scale:

(Yes that is a mousetrap being used to keep pads apart)

[leigh]

Haven't updated this in a while. Got the car all buttoned up last year and drove to the Retro-rides show in England - starter was acting up for the whole trip (my legend of a girlfriend push-starting it in high heels and my 16stone sitting inside the car!) plus the car had a fuel leak at a union in the tank so we had lovely fumes for a couple hundred miles.

Then when I got home the radiator started leaking in the bottom tank and the starter finally gave up the ghost so the car was off the road again awaiting cash/time/parts

Then the wiring was acting the mickey and I was getting nowhere for a long time so I went back to playing with the Magnum. However, I've since fitted a new driver's window (the one that was smashed when they tried to steal it - only took 14months for the GT club to post the feckin thing!), got the starter and alternator overhauled and refitted, a couple of niggly bits finished up and got the rad fixed and finally got the car running. Kinda. The oil light must be shorting somewhere as it comes on when the ignition is on and goes off when the car is running Took it out to stretch its legs last week

And it was whilst taking the above picture that the radiator shat its guts out through a different hole. Should be pulling that out on Friday morning to get it recored and then trying to trace the oil light problem - be nice if the car ran for more than a fortnight