My Bradley GT II arrived today from Texas. Good thing too because the snow started again right after the truck left. My wife got into the car to steer it into the garage and thought the gull wing door was going to hit her in the head - this is a common complaint. (I ordered the 3 inch lift kit which should solve that problem tonight.) After scrapping 2,300 miles of crud off the car, it looked pretty good. The first order of business was to inspect and check things out. The rear end looked funny and the tires were curved in due to the lack of the motor weight. The trunk was inoperative. After crawling underneath, I saw the switch, which looked like it had been cut some time ago and opened the door. The tranny was there but no battery. It also looks like someone added a “butt sag” bar to the frame. Most Bradleys have a problem with the rear not being supported and the end will often sag. This could possibly cause a problem with adding a sub frame in the future. Around to the front and I figured out how to open the tiny hood. This is primarily used to gas up the car.
This lead to finding the little screw on the bottom of the tank underneath the car. Since I needed to drain the tank anyway….I unscrewed and placed a bucket underneath - little did I know that there was going to be 5 gallons of gas coming out. I hollered for my wife while I played little Dutch Boy with my finger in the dike and we managed to fill up the bucket and several empty coffee cans before it finally stopped. I opened the garage to let some air in and poured all the gas into an empty turkey frying kettle I have. All containers were placed outside in the snow so the garage could air out.
After about 30 minutes I got restless. I looked at the GTE conversion manual and thought about cutting out the hood. Someone on Bradley GT.com told me it is a lot easier to remove the tank with the hood cut out. I looked at several of the GTEs on EV Album to see what they had. I wanted mine to look a little different, after all, theirs were made that way - all electric, mine is a conversion. I decided I would cut above the Bradley logo plate and retain the shape of the front edge - slightly rectangular. The top of the hood would have to be the same since there is a wall underneath if you go any higher on the hood area. I taped the area where I was going to cut and marked it with a sharpie pen. This keeps the paint and clear coat from cracking. I grabbed my power tool and very carefully went to work. Lots of fiberglass dust everywhere and I had just washed the car! Ugh!!
The corners were done with a jig saw or regular miter saw. I had to also cut around the bar that lifts the headlights since it goes through the fiberglass shell. Another concern was removing the thin bar that allows the original gas hood to swing open. A closer look and I saw I couldn’t just pull it out. I ended up cutting it out. (I love power tools!) There’s a switch of some type that probably aids in moving the headlights that had to be removed from the fiberglass shell as well, it only came out after I had finished cutting the hood.
Viola! The hood is out and what do you see….one ugly gas tank, just ready for the taking. I looked at the straps that hold it down and after you bend them down there’s two bolts that look pretty easy to take it out. But this will wait until tomorrow night.
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