I you have read my other posts, you would know that my previous project was a Nash Metropolitan that did not work out. By the time I had the body cut up and stored up in the attic of the garage, I had already found my next project.
It was a 1980 AMC Spirit. The car had a 258 in it that supposedly ran. The car had transmission issues, possibly the wrong converter, but that didn't matter to me because I was going to put the 360 from the Matador in her. I pulled the 258 and tranny out of the Spirit and then took her and the 360 over to Bob's shop.
Bob figured out and fabricated the motor mounts for the motor and got it squeezed into the engine compartment. He moved the motor forward a few inches which allows me room to unbolt the tranny and just pull the motor. There are also about 1/4 of an inch on each side of the manifolds so it just barely fit in there. I did have an issue with hood clearance. The carb, with the smallest air cleaner that I could find, was 1/2 of an inch too tall so I ended up cutting a hole in the hood. I am currently building a hood scoop for it and am very pleased at how it looks so far.
The other problem I had with the car was one side of the rear end sagged. I figured that I had a broken leaf and that would be no big problem. Bob got to looking at it and determined that there was a bigger problem than just a broken leaf. This car had three leafs on each side and on the driver side, all three leafs were broken with the main leaf being broken in three places. Somebody had welded a box around the leafs on both sides and the driver side was totally trashed. The passenger side was not broken, but we replaced all the leaf springs so that I would not have any more problems.
Once the springs were taken care of, the car came back home and I began the work of putting things back together. My biggest problem is the wiring. I labeled everything as I disconnected it from the old 258, but when I took her down to the car wash and used degreaser on her beforing taking her to Bob's, the writing on the tape was washed off. So if you label your wires and plan on using a degreaser to clean up the engine compartment, don't use an ink pen.
I also received to front fenders from my dad that came off an old Concord. These fenders are in better shape than what came with the car so I will be removing the side marker light on both the front and rear fenders and filling in the holes. I have also found an AMX grill and an AMX rear spoiler. With the scoop I'm building, it should look pretty good. I will keep you updated on the progress, even though it is slow.
I was able to put some time into the car last week. I did manage to get her running which is a huge step, I did have a couple of issues. At first, all I could get to work was the lights and radio as she would not even crank over. After doing some test with a voltmeter, we were able to trace the problem to a bad selenoid. Once that was fixed, she cranked over and after pouring gas into the carb, she started up. We did find out that the neutral safety switch was bypassed because I can crank her in any gear. The next day, I ran the fuel line and put some gas in the tank and she started right up. I also determined that I do not even need a key to start the car which is a major issue that needs to be corrected before I start driving her.
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