1972 Opel Kadett wagon

Love it! Here's a beautifully restored example I saw at Carlisle a few years back....had a special optional intake as you can see.

Some pictures of the freshened up engine bay and interior:

ALL of the top row of switches now work and look stock. The bottom row aren't actually functional but look cleaner than the cut up blank plate that was there. It's also got a MPH speedo in there now and all the gauges and lights work properly. The choke works properly now. I found an air filter that fit the (European unique??? Maybe not stock???) air filter housing. The housing was blasted in the neighbor's blast cabinet, what a cool tool! Oh yeah, and I finally put the license plates on it.

I haven't driven it much yet, been super busy. Jessica started detailing the interior and it's really cleaning up nicely.

Bryce

I've seen this car close-up... and it is as nice (nicer) in person then it is in the pictures.

Not often desire a wagon... but this one is just so...........

I haven't worked on the wagon at all for a while, been out of town, sick, and extremely busy the rest of the time. I am about to get back into the swing of things, though, and was looking around online for some info when I stumbled on this:

http://bringatrailer.com/2012/10/05/1972-opel-kadett-2-door-wagon/

I didn't know it had been on BaT. Seems the owner had taken a deposit not once, but twice, before I finally got it! Must have been my lucky day.

Bryce

Nashco wrote:

I know what the VW is, but what is in front of the Opel? Maserati? Bond Villan Attack vehicle?

Per his signature, I'm guessing that's the 2007 Saturn Sky.

Saturn Sky Redline. Strange coincidence, it was also sold as an Opel in Europe!

Bryce

The Kadett might be its grandpap. Great score. The perfect commute-o-tool.

I've been away from the shop entirely too much lately, but this weekend I finally had a great combination of time, space, and motivation that convinced me to fix the floors in the Opel. My buddy Aaron brought over some of his tools since we were both doing a bunch of rust repair at the same time, me on the Opel and him on his Model A, so I even had access to a plasma cutter and bead roller that made things go a lot smoother. I definitely need to get a plasma cutter, really handy tool!

So I knew the floors needed some repairs, but as with most rust repair projects I didn't really know what I was getting into until I was knee deep in it. The car is in absolutely amazing condition with respect to rust, except for two spots in the front of each floor pan, and I just couldn't understand it. After a little rust archeology, I'm pretty sure I understand what happened now.

I'm guessing in Italy they have safety inspections where any rust hole won't pass, OR this was a shady fix when somebody was selling it. It looks like somebody did a REALLY quick and dirty job of tack welding some very thin (22 gage?) steel in on top and on bottom of the floor pans and covered that up with some sticky rubber sheet, seam sealer, and undercoating. At first glance for an inspection, it would look like the floors were repaired...and they are, for a while. Unfortunately, you can imagine what happens when you sandwich a slightly rusty floor with two bare steel sheets...you get a rust sandwich!

So, I ended up with a lot more work than I was expecting because there were SIX floor panels I needed to remove...four half-assed sheets and then the original floors. I removed the four panels first to figure out where I might be able to minimize the amount of material removed. Fortunately, the horizontal sections were the only really bad spots, so I salvaged the more complex areas that transition to the center tunnel, sills, and front wall. The original rust really wasn't that bad, too bad they didn't do a slightly better repair job in the past instead of making the problem worse!

Here's a kind of before/after...both sides looked like the driver's side before, the passenger side shows what remains when the crummy cover up panels are removed.

Here's a better look at the passenger side, which was the worst side. You can clearly see how much worse the rust gets where the unpainted steel panel was installed and eventually did more harm than help. It's hard to tell in the pictures, but it looks like the rust on both sides started at the "drain hole" edges once upon a time. Let this be a lesson...bare steel WILL NOT survive in daily driver automotive applications. A decent coating of paint would have made a drastic difference here.

Unfortunately for me, there aren't any repair panels available for the floor of the Kadett, so I get to make them from scratch. Here's the old floors and their successor! I'm using 20 gage, which ended up being thicker than the original floors so should be plenty sturdy, but was a bit tricky to work with. I probably would have used 22 gage if I was doing it all over again.

I hope to have the floors finished some evening this week. I've got the passenger side nearly done, driver side still needs welded in. I'm biased, but I think they're looking pretty good so far. Once the job is done, I'm expecting this will probably be the most rust free (unrestored) Kadett in the US! Feels pretty satisfying getting rid of that crummy repair and giving this otherwise rust free Kadett a proper repair!

Bryce

Well, the floors are welded and I went through the tedious process of prepping and painting last night. Here's the floors before I started painting:

After that, I used the flapper to knock down any burrs or weld slag, wire wheel to clean the metal really well one last time, and the three step POR 15 process with Marine Clean, Prep and Ready, and POR 15 gloss black. Definitely not fun work, but I expect this floor will now last the life of the vehicle!

The paint should be plenty dry by this evening. Next is seam sealer, then some undercoat, and I can finally be done with the floors. I have just a little bit of cleanup I want to do where the battery tray is, then the car should be pretty fit. I've learned that it needs swaybar bushings for the rear, but that shouldn't be too tough (knock on wood!).

Bryce

My mother's car back in the 80's when we lived in Germany.

Steady improvement continues...here's a then and now comparison of the engine bay, which isn't done but is getting there:

Of course, the floors are all finished up, but I guess the best compliment to a job like this is that nobody would ever notice the work was done! I also managed to track down a pair of matching window winders, so the both the driver's and passenger's doors are complete and reassembled.

Jessica and I spent Saturday buffing, polishing, and waxing the paint as well as cleaning up the chrome. Man, the paint is NICE!

I ordered a handful of parts that should go on this week. Shift boot, rear swaybar bushings, sun visor hinges, and speedometer cable seal should all make noticeable improvements. The car gets looks everywhere I go, it really is a sharp little car. Oh yeah, and I filled the fuel tank to confirm it doesn't have any leaks and the gas gauge works. All the electrical stuff works, not bad for a 40 year old German car!!!

Bryce

Looks like it's coming along nicely - love those little 3-door wagons!

In reply to Nashco:

I love it!!! Keep up the great work!!!

Slow, but steady progress continues. Tonight Jessica helped me in the shop for a few hours. A few projects are still work in progress, but we did finish up a few things. The rear sway bar made a bunch of racket, turns out this must be a common problem because urethane replacement parts were readily available from Opel GT Source along with the rest of these parts we installed today. Very convenient! Here's what was left of FOUR bushings...well, there's your problem!

We replaced the nasty old shifter boot with one that was supposed to be for a Manta (?) but seemed to work just fine for the Kadett.

The car now features sunvisors as well! The plastic pivot pins aren't a very robust design, and all of the originals were broken. Jessica cleaned them up and installed the fresh pivot pins. Combined with the new shift boot, from the driver's perspective the car finally looks as sharp as it does on the outside.

I replaced the speedo cable seal, hopefully that solves the only leak the car has. It's been driving me nuts having just a single spot that it marks, so close to perfection but not quite! I also shortened two of the spark plug wires, which were probably some generic fit and were too close to the exhaust manifold for my liking. The old hack and whack heater core was removed, and I started cleaning up the surface rust on the battery tray. Like I said, slow but steady progress. I'm getting kind of addicted to making this car as close to original as possible without making it look like it's been restored, just a really clean survivor. Easier said than done!

Bryce

It's amazing how many parts interchange between Kadettes, Mantas, 1900 (Asconas) and GTs. Opel GT Source is a great company to deal with, very helpfull. I deal with them regularly with my GT. I buy parts from them even when I know I can get a better deal someplace else and their customer service is one of the reasons I do that. I see they are expanding their parts line to include more Manta and Kadette parts. Which is good. Love to see more as it's done.

What a great vehicle for the drive in, on a warn Saturday night, some wine and cheese...I'm getting all misty over here.

this thread kicks ass...theres not much more that can be said.

Nashco wrote: I'm kind of addicted to making this car as close to original as possible without making it look like it's been restored, just a really clean survivor

^That is a really awesome mission statement. Kudos to you sir!

The car is basically done with "restoration" after this weekend. I use restoration loosely, because like I said earlier, I'm not trying to make it look like new, rather I'm trying to make it look like it would look with 40 years of very good care.

The speedo seal fixed the remaining oil leak, so the car no longer marks its territory. Pretty impressive on a car this age that was competing against air cooled VWs!

Jessica and I took a shot at repairing the seats this weekend and we're really happy with how it turned out, especially for being our first time doing this kind of work.

First, I replaced the cables that go between the seat tilt lever (on the side of the seat) and floor latch. Interesting trivia, the Italian wagon seats apparently have a completely different lower latch and tilt mechanism than the American donor car used (not sure if it's a 2 door or 4 door donor car at this point). I bought some used parts from a really helpful guy in the Northeast with a Kadett parts car and after some pictures back and forth I realized the cables were slightly longer on the American cars because of the different designs. Anyway, now the seats tilt up and latch down just like they would have originally...sounds simple, but it took quite a hunt to find good used cables!

Secondly, the driver's seat cover had a few holes in it. You can see the worst one in the photo a few posts back, near the corner seam closest to the door. Two holes were very small tears and we used small iron-on patches with pretty good success. Had to be careful to get enough heat to activate the adhesive without melting the vinyl, but it seemed to work well. The seam where the stitch had disappeared over about a 4" length was more tricky. Jessica put some light stitching between the two sides so they would mate at the proper fold again. Then I used the iron-on patch material to provide some backing material and hold everything together temporarily while I did the stitching. Finally, I stitched it up the same way it had been stitched originally, tracing the original holes in the vinyl. It took a while, but I'm pretty proud of how it turned out considering what we had to start with, and it should last many more years. I should have taken more pictures of the process for others trying the same repair, but I was kind of figuring it out as I went and didn't think about it!

After putting everything back together with good quality zip ties to replace the old hog rings and testing it out in the car, it is all working great. Here's a picture of the new stitching...hard to get decent lighting, but you get the idea. Big improvement compared to the original!

The other very noticeable improvement was finalizing the engine bay clean up. I used a metal cleaner, rust converter, and repainted the area beneath the battery. The previous owner put a non-spillable gel cell battery in, so I'm guessing the majority of damage was done a long time ago with a leaky battery. I also acquired a stock heater core and heater core cover. Some more interesting trivia, the Italian car had a smaller heater core and cover than the American car! The parts I got from the American car were a few inches wider, probably about 25% more heater core area exposure...very interesting and surprising difference! I cleaned up a bit of minor surface rust in the engine bay, re-routed the cooling hoses like they should have been, and with the improvements I mentioned above and a bunch of little ones that I didn't, the engine bay looks awesome. About all that is left in the engine bay is an oil change, points adjustment, nicer looking overflow bottle, and replacing the temperature sensor with one that has the proper calibration. I'm strangely pleased at how clean the engine bay looks now. Here's an updated before and current comparison:

If you're ever wondering if you have enough light in the shop, try taking pictures...it becomes obvious pretty quick (I need more light!).

We also did a bunch of other little stuff. We glued the side windows to the hinges so they won't fall out when you pivot them open. Installed the rear hatch cardboard interior panel with original plastic pins. Installed an interior light cover. Tested the temp sensor gauge and discovered it has the wrong sender in it as mentioned above. Oh, and I started cleaning up a set of 13" BMW 2002 alloy wheels that I'm going to try on the car because I want to try the 12" wheels and tires on my N600.

Jessica is starting to get frustrated with my obsession over spiffing up this car, since I have so many other projects that are behind (what's new?!?). I don't know why, somehow I got hooked on this Opel...but I think her comments are starting to sink in. I've got a Vanagon with an SVX swap that needs finished pronto and is really close to done, an N600 that needs a new suspension, Chump car that needs prepped for the 36 hour race, etc. etc. etc., so I expect I will be doing less tinkering updates and more driving with this project soon.

Bryce

So, I'm assuming the car can do 0-60 in one afternoon?

Or is that being optimistic?

Seriously, though, do you intend to leave the engine stock?

Very cool.

jstein77 wrote: Seriously, though, do you intend to leave the engine stock?

Yeah, it seems to run pretty good and while it's not a speed demon, it does just fine for an about-town cruiser. It's only a 1.1L engine, but it's also only like 1900 pounds or something like that. I'm guessing 0-60 mph is something like 15 seconds...performance is probably about on par with the Geo Metro.

Bryce

Looks great! That's interesting about the different heater sizes. The '67 Kadette wagon I used to own had a terrible heater...actually, the heater core itself worked okay but the heater fan would stop working when the temperature dropped below about 25 degrees F. I wore a warm coat that year.

I tried out a different set of wheels last night to see how they fit. I've been told these came off a BMW 2002, no idea on the vintage or what they might have been called...if anybody knows, you'd be doing me a favor. I didn't installed the centercaps as I'm missing one and I want to find some "Opel" stickers to replace the BMW ones. They also have some peeling paint so I started sandblasting them with intentions to repsray them, probably with silver, but I might also leave them bare...not sure yet. Anyway, here's what it looks like now (note that the front one is sandblasted and the rear isn't yet):

I'm pretty pleased with these wheels and I think they'll stay with the car. They definitely seem more appropriate than the 14" bottle caps that I tested out before. As a bonus, these slightly taller tires also make the MPH speedometer I put in a little more accurate...it's within a few percent accuracy now.

I also ditched the Gatorade bottle coolant reservoir that the previous owner had installed. I scoured the picknpull the other day for a small coolant reservoir that seemed appropriate and this was the best fit:

I'm happy with how the reservoir ended up fitting. I think it came from an old Toyota pickup or something like that, but it looks right at home in the Opel. I'm guessing this car didn't come with a reservoir originally, but like the previous owner I hate dripping coolant on the ground and the reservoir is an easy improvement.

Bryce

The wheels look like ronal r8 to me (on my small phone screen).