My Project GTO

[Esselstrom]

Here is a link to my facebook album with some of the photos I took during my project, the wife and I spent many a long night and weekend in the garage and it was a lot of fun.

http://www.facebook....48044090&type=3

70 GTO resto.

Finally got the album on Photobucket...

http://photobucket.com/leesgoat

[havoc1482]

Holy crap that is alot of work. I wish I had the money, time and knowledge to do something like that to my Phoenix

[Ghost]

pics?

[Esselstrom]

pics?

The link is to an album of them.

[Jedi3]

the link works fine for me!

Great job on her and I love the color!

[Esselstrom]

Thanks Jedi, the car was originally burgandy and I wanted to be close to it, but I wanted to liven it up a bit. The color was called firemist maroon.

I am also uploading all of the pics from my resto project to photobucket, it's slow but working. I'll post a link here when it's done, 176 pics... lol

[Ringo64]

pics?

Ghost doesn't have Facebook so I think he wanted you to post them here lol

[Ghost]

well at least one pic. and ya, no FB.

[Esselstrom]

Heres a pic of it ghost. Its still uploading the album to photobucket and when it is done I will post the link here.

[Ghost]

thanks. and thats very nice. i still prefer a '67.

[havoc1482]

why does the hood look lifted near the windshield?

[Esselstrom]

why does the hood look lifted near the windshield?

Because the hinges are crap and I have yet to buy a good set

[Esselstrom]

I updated the first post with the link to the photobucket album.

[Sam Lewis]

checked the Facebook album. Nice job! Lots of work and looks good

[Esselstrom]

Thanks Sam, it was a lot of work but well worth the effort.

[Rykxus]

Just looked through your album, and nice work! Must have been a ton of fun restoring it. Hopefully I can get my 64 restored soon.

[Esselstrom]

Thanks Rykxus,

It was a fun project, I do have to thank my lovely wife who helped me through the whole thing. She was my extra pair of hands, she also did a lot of sanding and painting of POR 15 on the underside of the body, frame and suspension.

We started in December by stripping my 2 parts cars, a rusted badly 68 gto and a smashed 72 Lemans sport, I used some of the parts and the rest went on Ebay. I made enough selling parts to finance the parts I bought for it. We started in december spending almost every waking moment in the garage and I took her for a ride on the 4th of July.

The car isn't perfect, and never will be because I drive it whenever I can, but it is one hell of a driver and a good time was had by all.

[notallthere]

Man that is getting me motivated to hit the shop again.

Mice work and great colour.

[Frosty]

Congratulations on a job well done. Personally I love the '68 to '72 GTOs / A-bodys over the 66-67, 64, or 65s. That's just my preference really. I an especially fond of the 70 and 71 GTO grills. I think they make the car look very aggressive.

Havoc - Esselstrom did this in a matter of months, which I personally applaud him and his wife for. This is very atypical timeframe to restoore/resto-mod a car like this. The average Joe takes 3-5 years to do work like this, assuming he does most of the work himself. As notallthere knows, we have a mutual buddy who has been working on building a street rod out of an original '35 Ford. I have worked on that car for 3 years on and off. All that is left is to finish the body work and paint on the running boards, hood, and fenders. Right now, it is a fenderless driver and it is cool. So do to put this GTO togeter in 6-8 months is quite an accomplishment.

The other thing I applaud is he was able to sell his two parts cars to offset his costs in used or OER parts. Typically a restoration like this could cost $20-60k, not including your labor, depending on the quality of the car at the beginning, availability of parts, and the amount of work you can do yourself. Clearly, if you have to farm out a lot of stuff, the more it will cost you.

[Esselstrom]

Thanks Frosty, you are obviously someone that has done some work on cars before and can appreciate the amount of time and sweat it takes.

The only thing that I did not do myself was the engine machining, boiling the block, checking it, honing the cylinders, installing the cam bearings, resizing the rod ends and pressing on/fitting the hyperutectic pistons. I also had the machine shop freshen up the heads and put in new springs and such. $1200 for the work and the parts to assemble the motor (bearings, rings, gaskets, ect) I assembled the motor myself and as you can tell from the pics I did all of the rest of it.

One thing I did that really payed off was cutting out the top of the frame rails and welding in the 2x3 inch tube. Stiffened the car up nicely and really made a difference in launching and cornering. I also rewelded all of the factory seams. I have no idea how many hours are actually in it and I don't think I really want to know. When you do a car like this it is for yourself and you time really isn't counted toward the cost of the resto.

[Jedi3]

Hey not nitpicking just asking but why in some of the pics does the exhaust look so out of place and funny looking? Is it just a temporary one that you made? I could of swarn on those GTO the exhaust was tucked up and couldn't really see it except for the tips that hooked down from the bumper.

[Esselstrom]

The exhaust is 3" mandrel bent and the tail pipes just didn't fit well, I have since done a bit of cutting and welding and got them tucked up in a bit better.

[[ChaosweaveR]]

Needs a nice set of tips.

[JUSTA6]

Congrat's on a great build.

[Esselstrom]

Congrat's on a great build.

Thank you.