Okay got that over with so here is the information. I bought a 1983 black SX4 way up and PA and brought it down to the south in North Carolina where it belongs. I actually bought it from the original owner's family since he passed away 2 years ago and the family was finally ready to give it up. It had been sitting since 1998 in the same place in their drive way and they trusted me (a 20 year old punk kid) to take it away from them! The car had 119,xxx miles on it and it wasn't running when we bought it. I brought it home, strapped a new starter on, put a battery in and it cranked right up. It ran for about 2 minutes and then BAM, started knocking. The oil pump was shot so I pulled the engine out and tore it apart because I figured it would be best to just throw a $500 rebuild kit into it and call it good. Strapped it back in after the rebuild and it runs like a beauty. Enough talk though and lets get to the pictures!
There she is after I first got home from Stroudsburg, PA. I took the hood off, it didn't come like that. I'm getting ready to take the engine out in this picture.
Engine is out. This is the kind of help I get.....haha that's not me in the picture. Now to look at the rust damage which was significantly worse than what I had anticipated.
There is the driver side. The whole inside of the frame behind the steering box was missing and the shock tower was completely separated from the frame. Passenger side wasn't much better.
Now for the fun part of repairing the rust with a 1/8 inch piece of sheet metal and crappy welding skills. Enjoy the pictures haha
Okay well I don't want to bore you with boring rust pictures. Let's get to the fun part which was rebuilding the engine!
Back from the machine shop. Decked, tanked and bored to .030 over
Pistons, crank and timing set on.
Okay and here's where it gets good. Quick story. I have my own gas can in our garage. I had it filled up with gas when I started the eagle before the engine rebuild so I ASSUMED it still had gas in it after the rebuild since I had never touched it. Well that bit me in the a** because apparently someone filled it up with diesel. Yes this is headed to where you think it's headed, I ran diesel through a brand new rebuild gas engine and then that lead to this.....
A brand new Weber conversion carburetor because I thought the original carter feedback piece of sh*t had pooped out and that's why it wasn't running. We eventually figured out it was diesel when the weber didn't work either and got it running fine.
Then I decided that I wanted to paint the car but didn't want to spend the time doing body work and spend the money on PPG or Sikens so I did what every redneck does, I went over to Home Depot and bought 12 cans of satin black spray paint. Here's the aftermath.
THEN, (I know I know the story never ends) my awesome amazing dad bought me some wheels and tires for my baby and that made the car POP. He got me 15" steelies with 235/75R15 BF Goodrich Mud Terrain KM2s and we found out the hard way that they were not going to come close to fitting with the fender flares on. So I ended up having to strip the flares off and cut the fenders a little but it was worth it.
And this meant it was time to go off for inspection!
Those are all the pictures I have on my computer right now but I have since done the following:
I replaced the T4 tranny with a brand new (not reman) NV3550 that I got off craiglist with a NP231 T-case for $700. So I also put the NP231 in and pulled a shifter handle off a 94 Cherokee in the junk yard. Now with the new bell housing for the NV3550, I couldn't use the eagle slave cylinder for the clutch (which I just bought brand new and now have no use for) so I went to the junk yard again and got a master and slave cylinder off of a 94 Cherokee which had an AX5 in it but still used the same slave cylinder. I took the push rod out of my brand new master cylinder and put it in the new master cylinder since it was longer and retrofitted the Cherokee clutch master cylinder to my firewall and had to change the geometry on the pedal a little. The system works beautifully. I also had to make a rear drive shaft and the front drive shaft I pulled out of a mid 80's chevy truck and it turned out to fit perfectly with the longer transmission I used. Then I went on to do fun stuff like replace all the hardware in the drum brakes, new brake lines, new rotors and pads and I also added a leaf to the spring packs and replaced one broken leaf. I had a 1966 donor mustang that I pulled the leafs out of to use for the eagle. Sits up better in the back now.
Now the only problem I have to fix is that my brakes keep gradually putting pressure on the front pads and dragging the brakes about every 5 miles. The only way I can fix it is if I unscrew the brake line from the master a little and relieve the pressure. I think the front rubber hoses are collapsing in on themselves so I will change those tomorrow hopefully. I'll let you know how it goes and I hope you enjoy my post. I have 180 pictures so far of this car and they can all be viewed here:
http://s1151.photobucket.com/user/Chazhill14/library/1983%20AMC%20Eagle%20SX4?sort=3&page=1
Topic: 1983 AMC Eagle SX4 (Read 12588 times)