Saturday, May 30, 2009

North Texas Sights .....Opel GT Derelicts

I had all good intentions today to tear into my R100S engine and see the condition of the rusty cylinders. Walking outside into cloudless skies and nearly 80 degrees ( at 9:00AM) I decided that a little motorcycle ride would be a more fitting way to spend the day. Darian is in the Seattle area for a week so I'm on my own. I weighed that decision for about 60 seconds and decided to get the bike ready. I have a newly recovered 1000 mile solo seat so I attempted to mount it to the bike for a trial run. The mounting brackets don't like up too well because of the large sized Heinrich Fuel Tank. So I'll just save the seat for the R100S bike...On the road by about 10:30 and headed north towards Stinnet Texas. I had a route in mind to go north then turn eastward. Entering Stinnet I spyed a couple of old Opel GT's along side the road. I used to have one and bought 7 or 8 other ones for parts. They looked pretty complete from the distance.....




The blue one even has some custom wheels. They appear to be 1969 to 1972 models. The tail lights changed in 1973. They were fun cars to play with but due to parts shortages / difficulties, I started buying up all the junk ones I could find and parted them out. The guy who owns them has a warning sign posted: "STOP UNLESS YOU WANT DOG BIT OR SHOT" I guess that gets the point across! I didn't see any dogs.......so I guess getting shot was the thing today....

A mile or so up the road I spotted two more Opel GT's in another lot...these were marked "for sale". An Opel Manta is keeping them company. The guy had an ATV salvage thing going too. There must have been a hundred ATV's in various states of disrepair. Funny that all these Opel GT's ended up here. I saw about 4 more during our trip last weekend. Lots of Opel's must have come to Texas to die......
Below is my old Opel GT project. I had it looking pretty good at one point. It lived in the garage and we only drove it in mostly good weather. We took it all the way to Texas/Arizona one winter. The German "poor vette" never let us down. These cars had a few poorly engineered items (electrical wiring & headlight mechanisms) but as a mechanic I had things under control all the time. We really liked our little GT. I was sad to see it sold...

When I had this car painted I picked what I thought was sort of a corvette gold color. Picked the color from one of those tiny little chips in a book. When the car came out of the paint shop I nearly fainted.....It was what I would call, kind of a "metallic mustard". After I assembled the car, wheels etc. the color actually was real pretty. It was a Dupont Imron color and in the sun it was beautiful...(in my opinion).
Another junky looking yard in Stinnet. This guy is using an old Honda for slope protection.(?) Stinnet has kind of a third world flavor...a lot of old cars, trucks, buses, rusting things adorning many peoples yards.....I stopped for a beverage and this Harley Guy pulled up. He tried to talk with me about the BMW Sidehack rig but his phone kept ringing......he said his Hog has 100,000 miles on it. I had to figure out an angle for a photo because the chrome kept glaring in the photo.




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Gila Mtns.

Gila Mtns.