Resurrecting the Rambler

[Dwight Southerland]

Great job!

[Charlie A]

Bigger is better:

[Pinballer]

Thanks Charlie!

After the usual race reports from the "retired racer's breakfast club" that meets on Monday mornings at the local pub, and the normal running around paying bills sessions that always follow, the rest of today was spent prepping the right side of the car for the main striping. Managed to get two of the three stripes laid down and cleared before running out of tape late in the day. Hope to finish up that side next weekend and then move on to the flares, hood, and rest of the car and turning it all into an even shade of red. Painting has got to get done before it turns into humid 90 degree days.

Was going through a shoebox that I started putting old track and race decals and stickers into clear back in the early 80's, and happened upon a couple that I remembered being included inside the box with a new Hurst Ram-Rod shifter I bought for my '68 Camaro back then. These little red and white stickers will have to become a fixture someplace on this AMX.
They read:
"For your safety, tighten all nuts and bolts securely. Recheck periodically."
Good advice.

Another one I found interesting was a long bright orange one that we used to get from our NAPA warehouse when they would return our old stock we would try to send back to them every so often. Just reads: "Obsolete."
That one might need to go on my helmet.

[Pinballer]

Some more test painting efforts, apparently my red paint I mixed up matches reasonably well. The rest of the car will eventually follow as time allows. Can't wait!

[Dave Muller]

Big improvement, lookin' good!

[Pinballer]

Still painting and making some more cosmetic improvements while the good weather is holding out here. Rear bumper, hatch borders, and both rear quarters got the color and/or clear treatment over the weekend. So the entire back end of the car is now all done. Moving to the front end next, doors will be last because they may need to be removed and some body work done to those first.

The factory striping on these late AMX cars goes on forever....and there's still more stripes to paint on the front spoiler if I want to make it totally right. Sometimes I wish I'd bought the $400 decal package, it would have saved me about three weeks of time! The money savings from -not- doing so, however, can be spent on the fuel system pieces before much longer. Gotta keep the big picture in mind here.

Even though my initial intention was to be reasonably thrifty about this build and see where it takes me, when I finally get this car wearing paint all over, it's occurring to me that at least I won't have to be too ashamed of it's looks. Turning out much better than I expected for a one-panel-at-a-time driveway job so far. No runs yet!

[Pinballer]

Finally, on to the hood of the car. This has been a long time coming. I needed a calm wind day and low humidity to pull this off. My limited time crude-but-effective driveway paint job is coming along fine though...it's only this shiny because it's wet!

Most of the center rise of the hood will be covered with a factory "flaming AMX" decal. Kind of like the 70's Trans Am's had only worse.

[Tom keedle]

Originally Posted by Pinballer

Finally, on to the hood of the car. This has been a long time coming. I needed a calm wind day and low humidity to pull this off. My limited time crude-but-effective driveway paint job is coming along fine though...it's only this shiny because it's wet!

Most of the center rise of the hood will be covered with a factory "flaming AMX" decal. Kind of like the 70's Trans Am's had only worse.

looks better than the "flaming" bird on the t/a's..

[Pinballer]

Yeah Tom, I guess it's the curvature of the letters inside that graphic that bugs me the most. It's like they had to squeeze them in there after the fact or something. The flames are well...flames which I'm not normally a fan of, and they're not really all that well done. Looks like a burning bush! Wish the letters inside looked more like the large block ones on the doors as is pictured on this other red car.
Maybe if AMC had gone with something more like the old Dusters had, (pictured), putting the very large engine numbers across the hood but instead of those maybe use the door-style AMX letters and put them inside a flat-blacked out rise of the hood, that would have been more appealing to my personal taste. But they didn't, so I'll go with what they had. It's the garish nature of the late '70's, gotta go with it man!

[Pinballer]

After putting in my usual 46 hours at NAPA, a mighty busy weekend was spent on the car here, luckily the weather stayed good throughout which sure helped. Arms are now sore as all get out.

Finished painting the roof on try #2, didn't like try #1 at all, so that wasted most of Saturday evening and Sunday morning. Gun dripped a couple times while holding it horizontal and it had overspray patterns running through everything. Turned up the wick on the gun on try #2 just a little more and the paint laid down a lot better.
I'm not a painter by any means, but I sure like doing it. The immediate visual changes once it's done right are very rewarding. Wouldn't want to do it for anybody else or for a living, but I can stand my own work just fine.

Once the roof was reshot to my satisfaction and appeared to be turning out good, I rolled the car into the sun so it could dry and turned my attention to the next area to renew--the worst one of all--the driver door. This had a large and long deep dent in it which you can easily see in most of the pictures on previous posts and also had several door dings across the middle. There's also some screw holes down low from the Spirit GT trim that came off and those needed to be filled.

Door came off with minimal trouble, thank goodness for Gear Wrenches to get the almost inaccessable inner hinge bolts loose quickly, and it went onto the cart for bodywork. After removing the inner door panel and pushing that big old gouge back out to where it was close to flush again, then there was lots of sanding on the dents first, and then the filler, both with machine and by hand. Aah, you guys know what it's like... pretty dirty work. I looked like George Washington in one of those colonial powered wigs when I finally came in the house to clean up.
Once this driver door is done, I think I can do the passenger door while still attached to the car, there's only a few minor dings on it and the trim holes along the bottom to ping in and fill. Should be on that door by the 4th of July I hope. That would leave only the window trim blackout on the windshield and rear hatch and the paint will be all done. My goal when I started to paint was to be done by the 1st of July before the super hot weather hit town, so I'll be close.