• The site migration is complete! Hopefully everything transferred properly from the multiple decades old software we were using before. If you notice any issues please let me know, thanks! Also, I'm still working on things like chatbox, etc so hopefully those will be working in the next week or two.

Luke's GTP

Bit of an update. Ordering the rocker panels from TABCO turned out being a PITA. Placed my order and paid, then > Received conf. email > Never received tracking # though. Ok, no problem. Gave them 3 days to deliver, website said 2 days. Never got anything. Called them and got the run-around. Turns out they only had 1 in stock, website said that two panels were "In-Stock". Guy on the phone told me that they need to "get them" and then they will ship to me. That was confusing cuz everything they say leads you to believe they make these panels on-site. He said nope, that those pieces, they get them "from a place down the street". Okayyyy... It took some extensive questioning before the guy agreed to the call the place "down the street" and get an ETA on delivery. Throughout that conversation the guy keeps telling me to just go ahead and order somewhere else cuz he doesn't know and blah blah blah... They already took my money though, roughly $103 with shipping. Well here we are, Friday 11-17-2017. Still no rockers. No update from TABCO. I was able to cancel my order and get my money back. Placed a new order with RayBuck. Saved some dough too, $78 with shipping. For some reason I just didn't want to order from RockAuto. I convinced myself that their sheet metal was going to be sub-par. I don't know why... Anyway, all this put me like 1.5 weeks behind. Car is still with welder. Coming home for Christmas I hope!
 




Welp. Glad this site is back up! Bit of an update.


The GTP is still with the welder. When I dropped it off, He was in the middle of building a 3 car garage on his property so he could work in it. Opposed to the garage connected to his house. That has taken longer than he thought, and the car is just now really, really getting looked at. I miss that GTP every day. Shytt, by the time I get it back it will be Refund Season and he might as well keep it for a paint job.


In the meantime, been getting our Corolla up-to-par for a roadtrip from here to Orlando. Kids and wife flew a week ago...Dad drives, Don't Ya Know? Anyway, it got some fresh oil, new oil filter, air filter, and spark plugs. Except, Ohhh Noz. Oil in the spark plug wells. Research tells me it's the valve cover gasket. Goes bad on these things. Easy job. Will be done after we get back. The valve cover gaskets on these are so wayyy different than a 3800 VC gasket, made me LOL.
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Ya know buddy you sent me a PM that this GPF thang was back on this site which I knew absofcklutely nothing about until I saw mummbo jumbo on W-body.

Thanks. Can we say **** now or just titties?


nope cant say fvck. This feels like GPONA
 
Haha. I emailed a bunch of guys from here. I was thinking that since the emails for password reset were working, maybe you would get an email saying "CHI2000GTP sent you an email from GPF.com...." blah blah blah. And you would be like what??!! HOW THE HELL?! That's not possible! LOL, but looks like that didn't happen. Glad you made it over tho!


Last night, like 8pm I figured out through Facebook that the .com GPF version was up and running. I made a post about GPF's resurrection on w-body but the admins took it down. They didn't like me advertising a different forum.
 


Road trip went well. 65 and sunny out here. Versus the forecast in Chicago. Holy icicles Batman. On my way down I thought it would be cool to drive through Deals Gap, aka Tail of the Dragon. Right on the TN and NC and GA borders. Something like 311 turns in 10 miles. I'm sure many of you have heard about it. It's more popular with motocycles. Wish I had better than a Corolla for the drive, at least its the "S" version. I just recently came across an article about this place. Got there early. Had to wait for the sun to come over to the Smokey's. Surprisingly, it wasn't over hyped. So many turns could make you nauseous.

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The spot where I pulled over was overlooking a dam of some sort:

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Driving out to Fox River Grove today to talk with my welder and check out what’s been done to the GTP. Pretty psyched about it! Haven’t seen the car since Oct. 20th, 2017. Passenger rear strut tower is done and drivers side is almost done. The rockers are real bad he said (LOL) and there are a couple of different solutions, with pricing being the main variable. I will have some decisions to make knowing that this car is going to succumb to the rust cancer anyway…

Hoping I’ll have the chance to take some photos of the progress. I’ll definitely do a follow up post and upload the pictures.
 
Progress was made. Didn't take any photos unfortunately. Welder dude was able to salvage most of the rear strut towers and had to really elbow grease the rockers. It's not pretty under there. Rust has done some serious damage to this car. Sad stuff man. SMH...

Some finishing touches and I get it back on Saturday. I will take some photos then.

Total cost, for anyone wondering = $1,200
For both rear towers, and both rockers
 


Geez you must really shmoozed that guy. 12 hundos seems more then fair.

Not rushing him and letting him do it at his pace prolly helped alot.

Sent from my SM-N910V using Tapatalk
 
I don't know what a good price is for the kinda work. Sounds like a lot of money on the surface... A lot of places would never even touch strut tower repair so I'm lucky that he even wanted to do it. And it's bad under there. Not rushing him and not being a pain in the ass customer definitely helped with the price I'm sure. He did feel somewhat bad for keeping my car for 3 months now. I was told 2 weeks... So that played into the price as well. Asked him about getting it painted. I don't wanna do all this work just to have a shytty looking car. It needs to look decently minty. For a stage 1 paint job, or level 1, or whatever he quoted me $1,800. Once Uncle Sam pays me back the money he took I might be able to swing that in a few months.

I'm trying to calculate how many years I can get out of this thing. Hard calculation to make:

[(CurrentRust x Time ( - Time(x2)) + FreshRepairs] - CityLivingandDriving - MyLeadFoot - ChicagoRoadSalt - NoGarage = Hopefully 5 years..?

I'll just have to get another one in 5 years... hahaha
Should be cheap as hell. Or maybe GTP's will have collectors status and worth thousands upon thousands by then, like some GP drivers think. LOL
 
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