Resurrecting the Rambler

[Pinballer]

Thank you all, gentlemen, I feel like I'm *almost* a part of the S/SS club now that I have a running car. Much refinement will have to happen though, and I didn't waste much time---an order went into Jegs last night for some more parts!
I will admit to a couple of things: Yes, I did get a great wave of satisfaction when I started it up and gingerly drove the car out onto the open road to check out the running gear, knowing that even though it has been a lot of hard sweaty work for almost a solid year essentially making three cars into one, it was going to be worth it to me whether this race car ever bombs the index or not. And I will also admit that my wife asked me what the big ****-eating grin on my face was all about when I got back into the house after the maiden voyage.

Bringing things back from the dead seems to be the nature of my whole life. Clear back in '73 when I was 17 years old and in my senior year of high school I started reviving a thoroughly vandalized '67 Corvette convertible I had bought for $800 with my burger flipping money, then later on I got into all sorts of other muscle cars that were usually down and out, then pinballs, and at times various other assorted "treasures" that other people had long given up on. Even our house qualifies for that terminology, it was a mess when we bought it.
And I'm not so naive that I don't realize that a ton more work is on the horizon for this AMX to make it any good. In fact, the vast majority and most costly of the work will begin right now.

[Greg Reimer 7376]

Originally Posted by Greg Reimer 7376

Now, howl is that. The greatest achievement is that you did it yourself.Nothing like giving life to something like that.

Oops! That was supposed to read How Cool is that! I hate it when the computer corrects me and gets it wrong.

[GarysZ24]

Nice car....have you figured what class in Stock Eliminator to run it in (that is if you're going to do such, which would be very cool), because I like to see against the norm race cars, like yours and Norman Warling's '62 Catalina!

[Pinballer]

Gary, this one was specifically built to be a Class car, and the initial thinking was to run it in T/SA, but we'll have to see where the test data leads us. The additional weight I'm forced to put in to make T might kill it so bad I'll have to leave the weight out and move up a class.Too early to predict whether it will end up in R, T or U at this point.

[Ed Fernandez]

Originally Posted by Pinballer

Gary, this one was specifically built to be a Class car, and the initial thinking was to run it in T/SA, but we'll have to see where the test data leads us. The additional weight I'm forced to put in to make T might kill it so bad I'll have to leave the weight out and move up a class.Too early to predict whether it will end up in R, T or U at this point.

The car used to be Q,R, and T. It was a natural R car.

[Pinballer]

Just to clarify for some, at the present time the 79 Spirit 258 2 bbl 6 cylinder car does fall into R naturally. (18.56). As we all know, you can adjust up and down one class.
The 79 AMX model with the same 258 6 cylinder and 2 bbl, based off the same car with the addition of that option package, comes in as a natural T car. (19.38)

[Ed Fernandez]

Originally Posted by Pinballer

Just to clarify for some, at the present time the 79 Spirit 258 2 bbl 6 cylinder car does fall into R naturally. (18.56). As we all know, you can adjust up and down one class.
The 79 AMX model with the same 258 6 cylinder and 2 bbl, based off the same car with the addition of that option package, comes in as a natural T car. (19.38)

What's the shipping weight on the two combos? I'm guessing it's at least a 150 lb. difference.

[Pinballer]

1979 Base Spirit 6 cyl auto 2731 lbs

1979 AMX 6 cyl auto 2980 lbs

Difference of 249 lbs. These were the weights quoted on the automobile catalog shipping weight site.

[Dwight Southerland]

NHRA says 2784 for the base model, 2907 for the AMX.

[Pinballer]

Maybe not part of this build just yet but somewhat related to the cause: a junkyard 10 miles away from me, and by junkyard I'm talking a really "out in the boondocks" rural salvage yard operation with even some 50's cars still out in the back sitting quietly in the weeds, hauls in of all things--a black and gold 1978 AMX V8 car that is not wrecked, but rusted down bad and kind of generally torn up. The '78 model was based on the Concord hatchback car, not the Spirit I'm running, but most of the pieces interchange. I don't know where this car has been sitting at for all these years, because I thought I knew them all around these parts, but at least I found out about it getting to the junkyard from my vast network of spies who alert me to such things.

Being the last living guy in our whole area who would care anything about it, of course I have to go and pick it clean of any useful AMX stuff it still has on it before some other vulture gets to it. This has yielded up amongst other rare goodies, a whole complete set of much nicer fender flares for a later repaint and installation on the race car. A couple of the flares currently on the race car are extremely brittle from sun torture and weathering, one had to be fiberglassed back together even, so this was an important score for me.

The latest work on the race car has been to figure out why the neutral safety switch won't work, and that was solved when I took the top panel off the shifter and saw where a wire had fallen off a switch lug. I recently buttoned up the driveshaft loop and put some new tubes and a used set of 28" slicks on the car, along with checking out the line-loc operation. All appears well there. I've also got a non-computer Carter BBD carburetor off a 1975 258 engine soaking in cleaner to rebuild. Only a couple more minor things to do getting the car ready for testing, hopefully this weekend if the weather stays good.
Session #1's goal will just be a few easy passes to check out all systems. Towards the final run or two, I'll mainly be looking to see what 60' and 330' times it will be doing at full throttle if the computer carb doesn't act up too bad. Not expecting too much on the other end just yet because everything in the motor/trans is OEM bone stock right now. I do however, have some old time slips back from 2002 of the blue 80 Spirit in full factory trim I can compare to to see what the weight changing and 4.56 gearing differences have done for it so far. Baby steps...