AMC Eagle

[MadMan]

Originally Posted by Sandy G

The back seat area was a sick joke, you could only sit back there if you had NO legs.

That would've been ridiculous back in the day, but every new car nowadays is like that. AMC was really far ahead of the curve!

[Electronic M]

Originally Posted by MadMan

That would've been ridiculous back in the day, but every new car nowadays is like that. AMC was really far ahead of the curve!

Honda's are like that with the added bonus of seats as soft and plush as grannite... When I was a teen and the folks were between houses in FL and Wi we took many 2-3 day trips between the two, and let me tell ya if you want to see a kid get out of a car and walk like a half crippled octogenarian for 20 min give them 4+ hours in the back seat of a second gen CR-V!

Maybe I'm to harsh saying that you need to have no legs to sit in the back.... you could get leg room if the person in the seat in front of you had no legs/was really short and need the seat about as far forward as it would go to reach the peadals or rest their feet on the firewall.

[MIPS]

Re-hose complete. Vacuum, emission, cooling and fuel lines have all been replaced. Swapped in new fuel filters, PCV and new hose clamps all around.



The result is the engine has not been idling as rough at a warm stop anymore and the coolant flush and refill has burped the air from the heater core.



..and yes if you spotted it, I doubled the hose clamps on the core because I screwed up twisting the old hoses off and kinked the ports on the core.... They straightened out okay but leaked a little, so they were double clamped because screw pulling the entire goddamn dash out to swap a core that's not leaking in the air box.

Edited: Also new speakers!






I specifically hunted down speakers that would far better match the car than the aftermarket black Kickers in the front and a pair of trashed Audiovox cones in the back. These white 40W waterproof speakers were decently priced and had a grille that looked close to what one might expect. They were painted with a plastic bonding nutmeg spray paint.

[MIPS]

And today the vacuum reservoir for the Cruise Command finally arrived. It does not have an internal check valve (I'll have to buy one) but with this final piece installed I plugged the Yellow Control Box in and now have Cruise Control just in time for the summer.

[Sandy G]

She prolly would have, but the front seat wasn't very big, either, not enuf room for me & her both, dammittall... My Dad got it in Knoxville, it was bright Orange, w/a white hockey stick-like decal on the side-UT's colors. I found it rather revolting... The 2nd one, I gotta admit, even tho it was a total POS, I had a soft spot in my black heart for it.. In '76, I FINALLY got out of the Tinkertoy League, & talked my old man into a Olds Cutlass Supreme Brougham, which I kept thru college. In '79, I graduated, & my dad had Got Religion on Diesels, so he made mr trade the '76 on a '79 Cutlass 4.3 liter Diesel. But all that's another story for another time, & it DON'T end well...

[MIPS]

Folks. I have officially gone into stupid territory with this car.
Last three weeks consisted of the rear end of the drivetrain being rebuilt due to suspicions about its condition and the possibility that I might not get parts later. I am now over $7000CAD into repairs on just the radiator and drivetrain on this car. Nothing else. This is all stuff that I should REALLY be doing at home due to half of that being labour charges but I simply do not stock a garage with tools for pulling gears, seals and bearings due to cost. At least we're done with it now. Everything else is regular garage work.
Anyways it was found that both rear drum brakes had cracked shoes, the rear passenger side bearing was starting to get iffy and the differential pinion bearing and race were junk.



I also got persuaded by my parents to have the radiator reassessed after the discovery of that leak during the flush. As it turned out the radiator failed testing due to the top tank coming loose. That was something I did not detect but man, that could of been bad. A re-core was $750 but a *new* exact replacement was $550, so I went for that.
Now I'm here dismantling and cleaning the switches for the power seats. Initially I thought that just a flush with iso and compressed air would help but it made it worse, so now they need to be removed, dismantled, cleaned and rebuilt.

[MadMan]

Nice! The speakers look right at home.

[MIPS]

This weekend consisted of testing the new impact sockets and dropping the tank for maintenance and cleaning.





The mounting hardware is all in good enough shape to be reused and after the tank was drained and left int he sun to evaporate the last of the gas it was charged with carbon dioxide and then vacuumed out. The pickup sock looks like new.



The rollover check valve on the vapor line does not. Both stems have rusted off and it is not an easy to source a replacement, especially since the closest aftermarket valve is from Delorean. It had to be carefully dismantled, cleaned and new stems welded on before being sealed again.

[MadMan]

At least you're being cautious with the gas tank. It honestly doesn't matter how dry you get it, it can still catch fire easily.

[mr_rye89]

Rollover check valve? Does it keep the tank from pissing gas out the vapor line if you end up upside down?

This is starting to look like a restoration project. great job!

[MIPS]

Yep, that's all it does. For some reason however a liquid rollover check valve was not a thing for the 82 model Eagle at least, but was for the Concord.
This completes the refurbishment of the entire cooling, vacuum, fuel and vapor control systems. The tank and mounting hardware will be reinstalled tomorrow once the rust paint dries.

Originally Posted by MadMan

At least you're being cautious with the gas tank. It honestly doesn't matter how dry you get it, it can still catch fire easily.

At a previous job we used to charge chemical barrels with nitrogen during empty storage and transportation to both inhibit corrosion and prevent a combustible atmosphere.

[Titan1a]

Very fine work! When I was younger, before I got congestive heart failure, I wanted to do something like what you've done. I wound up doing vintage radios. I could only wish...

[MIPS]

New paint, new hoses and hey look, a rebuilt valve! Suddenly my tank pressure system works again.

[MIPS]

Carburetor rebuild is completed. It took about 11 hours and aside from a few instances where we had extra parts left over (for the NON-feedback model) there were no issues with the rebuild.





There WAS however problems found. The vacuum port for the PCV and canister purge was mostly plugged, the accelerator pump adjustment was incorrect, the choke pull-back actuator is leaking AND not adjusted correctly and to top it off, some beaner had the low and high idle screws installed in reverse. Once that was all set it was much happier.
Unfortunately the weekend fun ends there. With the vacuum, fuel and ignition systems now rebuilt it was safe to test the timing system and then reset the timing and THEN reset the idle speeds. There are two advance systems (distributor centrifugal and vacuum advance) and one retard system (computer operated). These were all tested separately with no issues found and then the timing was bumped down from the 22 degrees the previous owner set to 15 and as soon as we put in the low idle the missing stopped and the smell of gas left the tailpipe.

But it no longer revved or took a load without stalling or misfiring. IT seems that right when you are needing vacuum at the distributor vacuum advance, it falls off a cliff, so either there's a leak somewhere or worse......for some reason the timing is wrong.....somehow......It's been suggested the harmonic balancer has slipped.

Edited: Or it might just be a vacuum leak. The only thing between the distributor and the vacuum source is the Coolant Temperature Override switch (otherwise known as a Ported Vacuum switch. This dual-mode thingy disables the EGR when the engine is cold and runs the distributor off manifold vacuum for improved cold starting and driving. When the engine gets hot enough it activates the EGR and switches the vacuum advance to ported vacuum. While I don't know how entirely sealed it is supposed to be, something tells me if I plug all the ports and pull a vacuum on either the ported or manifold port I shouldn't lose my vacuum relatively quickly, else that's a vacuum that isn't reaching the distributor when the engine calls for it. I'll have to order a new one. Again, the CJ series used the same part so they are relatively inexpensive.

[MadMan]

Nice work. Some vacuum valve thingies are intentionally vented, however it's usually fairly obvious by looking at it, and it would only vent the thing getting vacuum (say, the EGR) and not the vacuum source. However, I don't think this one is vented, because it's switching the vacuum source (right?). Anyhow, you could simply bypass the valve - since you know the vacuum path and all the functions of it - in order to see if it fixes the problem you're having.