"Turn Key" Is Not An Option

As the title suggests, it seems nothing I get, no matter how I obtain it, is ready to use. I know I've posted pics of my gf's AMC Eagle SX/4, but I don't think I ever showed what it started out as. I bought it back early 2009, paid $500 for it, started working on it around June 24. It was a very solid car, but it sat under a pine tree for 15 years untouched, so it had it's fair share of residents over the years, lol.







Much like the jeep, I gutted this car (but, minus driveline, dash board, and steering).





Fairly stright car minus a couple dents that were hiding under the plastic flares.









Floors were decent minus a spot on the drivers side.
Here we see the pile of Eagle :lol:




more on this to come.......

Thanks Bonnewagon!

Driven: The engine is a 258, the gremlin back ones, or kammback, are very rare (remebering the fact, most of these cars were used as winter rats and daily beaters), they only made them I believe for 2 years 81 and 82. Something around maybe 4500 total production?

Ringers: That sucks, but it's part of wheelin, lol, they don't like water too much.

Thanks pontiacgp, lol, I don't know about good as new, but I try. :lol:

Now, before I go any further, the original idea of this car was to be a year round driver for the gf, it was supposed to get the driveline from a jeep (4.0, auto trans, 2 speed transfer case, axle). The plan took a detour to say the least, the more I tore into this car, I started noticing, it was much nicer than I had originally anticipated, so the snowball effect took over, and instead of just throwing paint at it (what I did to the jeep this past year), I spent a lot of time on the body. Eventually I got sick of pushing this thing around (heavy b*st*rd, lol), one night after getting home from the bar, pickled would be an understatement (walked home btw), I got curious and decided to see the ole booger would run. I robbed the battery from the malibu, dumped a bit of gas down it's throat, hit the key, and it fired, I was impressed. Next day went out got a rebuild kit for the carb, threw a new fuel pump on, rigged up a jerry can, and low and behold, that thing ran better my injected jeep, haha, I was shocked to say the least.


cleaned up a little bit.

This discovery brought on a bunch of micro projects, valve cover leaked horribly, gas tank was shot, clutch pedal was broken, and slave cylinder was seized.


Addressing the pedal, the "arm" that hooks to the master is what was broken, I tried just welding it back on, well they used some type of cast, first time I stepped on the pedal (after new hydro compents of course), the arm snapped back off, I was pissed, so I made something virtually unbreakable for my second attempt.




Is it overkill? Absolutely, that's what happens when I get pissed, lol, it's been holding up just fine.

Gas tank........Yeah, nobody makes one for these cars, period. Plan X, it so happens, that I had an almost brand new gas tank I extracted from my 92 cherokee. Setting the tanks side by side, the dimensions were similar, got me thinking, lol.


I modified the cherokee tank to fit the eagle, as one can see, the cherokee tank has the filler on the side, as shown I moved it to the back (just like our g's ,lol).


fits rather nicely.

Then there was the jeep sending unit, had to modify that a little too, being the eagle one was thrashed, usless in the jeep tank anyway, I took out the electric pump made a spacer, had a new sender ready for install.


Yes I left the harness intact, maybe someday I'll go injected, all I'd have to do is put the pump back in, and plug it in, lol.

Ok so now we're up it can run, it can get gas, it has an operable clutch, should move on it's own right? Wrong....

Amc used 2 piece axles, the hub, fastens to the axle. The axle shaft was stripped of its splines.





After fixing this, I finally had a mobile eagle, time to continue the body work, lol.
Ok I lied,hahaha, there's a little more trickery going on, these have a motorcraft ignition box, I have heard nothing but sour stories about them, so I found a little article on how to fix the issue.

Enter GM HEI




Being that the stck ignition still worked, I still have it as a back up if needed, no wires were cut on the car so it's a simple plug and play operation.

Stay tuned for segment 3............

Oh absolutely, these cars were damn expensive in their day, not to mention, finicky, so many people hated them, lol.