1986 AMC Eagle Wagon cheap rehab

[zeebo76]

Been a little while but there are some more developments on the way, mostly visual ones.

I have an interior + exterior detail scheduled for October 11th, and so I decided that it would be a good idea to give the detailers a more thorough way to do their job - I took all the plastic exterior trim off!  Flares, bumper caps, and the one that runs below the doors.  I’m painting them now.  In addition, since the eagle is going to be down until sometime after the 11th, I decided to also tackle the leaky valve cover.  Was a PITA to remove (as usual) but I got it without disconnecting anything, and only broke two of the hard vacuum lines in the process!   

Here are some pictures.  Hopefully they’ll show up properly, because I’m posting this from my phone right now.



Naked eagle.  I wasn’t surprised that the flares had dirt trapped underneath them - however, I WAS surprised by the sheer amount of it.  I shook everything out and had a massive pile at my feet...  I ended up really loving how the eagle looks without it’s plastic flares, but the flares are much easier to paint to end up with the two-tone look I want that they’re going back on.  Plus...  I like how wide it makes it.



So I rattlecanned all the trim, but I did it with great care so it looks excellent considering the previous condition of the trim.  Chips, dents, dings, scrapes...  I can’t hide it all, but I got about half of it.

Sanded them flat, washed them, wiped with alcohol, wipe dry, two coats of primer, sand primer down, wipe with alcohol, one more coat of primer, final primer sand and another alcohol wipe.  I’m up to 10 cans of Ford Toreador Red Metallic duplicolor paint at this point.  Not the cheapest, but it looks excellent.  Three or four coats of base coat, then sand the remaining imperfections and do a few more coats.  Mostly flat - good enough for government work, as a few of my friends might say.  I’m not looking for this eagle to be showroom material, it’s going to be a daily driver, but I do want two-tone.



This is where I’m at on the paint right now.  Just got done applying the last clear coat layer to the bumper caps, tomorrow will be sanding and polishing them, removing the masking tape, then going through the same song and dance with all the other trim pieces.  They look really beautiful...



Here’s a test fitting I did of a rear bumper cap earlier today.  Now, for another essential tidbit of information...  Those wheels and tires are going as soon as the detail is done and the car is finished painting.  They’ll be replaced with these...



15x7 black steelies that will stick out further than the original 15x6 steelies,



Wrapped in a brand new set of 215/75R15 BFGoodrich A/T KO2’s with white letters.

The rear axle will also have 1” spacers mounted on it to bring the rear tires even in width with the fronts.  It’s gonna look amazing.  Clean white paint, clean red trim, and new wheels and rubber...

Yeah.

Anyway, I also mentioned removing the valve cover, well I decided to re-paint that too.



Perfect tool (sarcasm) for removing the rear valve cover bolt.



Here’s the painted valve cover.  Cherry red.  Shortly after that photo was taken I went along the top very carefully with a razor blade and scraped the paint away - all the raised areas (like the 4.2 logo) are now down to the base aluminum, shining silver.  I’ll be giving the front and rear diff covers the same treatment here in a few days, when I flush and refill them.

I’ve also been wondering about 3D printing a ram air funnel, and cutting into the power bulge as follows.  It’s a pipe dream, and since my mother (who owns the car, and will be driving it after I’m done with it) doesn’t like the idea it’s pretty much never going to happen.  But a man can always dream, right?



Anyway, that’s what’s been going on.  Lots and lots of painting.  It’s my first real paint job and I’ve learned a few tricks - what to do, what not to do, et cetera.

[rmick]

Couldn't resist.

[zeebo76]

Got the painting done!  Got a set of new tires on her and had the stock steel wheels powder coated gloss black.  She sure looks sharp.



I also removed and re-sealed the rear hatch glass.  Took the window trim off and found out it was only attached on one of four sides...  no more leak now, though!

Only a few things left on the to-do list for now.  She’s sagging pretty badly, and today we drove her into town with four people and a full tank of gas...  Bottomed out a lot.  Have a set of stock-height springs on the way.

I’ve got a new BBD stepper motor on the way as well, the one that’s on the car currently is completely nonfunctional.  She runs, but still has that hesitation issue . I suspect it’s because of the lack of a functional stepper motor.

[zeebo76]

So I'm plugging here for my mother's post (in the wanted section) requesting a factory (or NOS reproduction) center console for an automatic shifter Eagle.  If anyone has any tips on how to find one, or if anyone knows someone who would be willing to let one go, PLEASE let me know.

[zeebo76]

Update time!  I took a few days off working on the eagle, but as of yesterday I’m back at it.

The major project I’m working on at the moment is making a new harness for the headlights.  Two relays activated by the headlight/hi-low switch like normal, both with individual fuses.  The load bearing wires for the headlights are going to be 16 gauge, and I’m changing the ground location for each side.  As of right now I have the high beam harness completed along with both left and right side grounds, and the high and low wires to activate the relays have been re-routed, extended, and slipped into a preexisting wire harness under the hood.



Pulled the front fascia off last night, and unbundled the wrapping of the factory harness all along the bottom.  I went ahead and bought a new set of headlights, but I will be keeping the old ones too as they still work - always good to have spares handy.



The ends of the high beam harness and the ground wires are laid out of each headlight bucket so I don’t lose track of them.  Every joint is soldered and wrapped in heat shrink as needed.



That’s the relay/fuse block I cobbled together.  It will sit right beside the battery/ignition computer in the engine compartment, and both positive and negative leads will be attached to the power and ground leads on the solenoid beside the battery.  Yes, that is RTV.

My secondary project is a little less common, but I think it’s more interesting.  I’ve talked about this some on AMCForum, but what I’m going to do is make a diagnostic display that will sit on the dash, and hook into the diagnostic ports under the hood in as unobtrusive a fashion as I can manage.  I’ll explain more in a sec.



There’s my project box for the whole thing. 

I have some general guidelines for what I want out of this diagnostic box.  It will be relatively small (7 inches wide, 4 inches deep, 2 inches tall), it will be easily removable, (it has ports for both the 15 pin and the 6 pin Molex connectors on the side, as visible in the image) it will be fully switchable at will, and it will be easy to disassemble for repair/troubleshooting.  I have all the components I need to make it, and I will start putting it together once I’m done with the headlight relay.  I could potentially do a write up if it works well enough, but I’m not sure how many of you would be willing to spend the money on the parts.  It wasn’t exactly cheap, mostly because of the whole “switchable” thing.  Lots of tiny 25mA relays in it - one for each LED, and some other components. It will also display the O2 sensor reading, which will be useful for comparing the AO and BO (stepper motor) signals against

Anyway, those are the major things, but there are also some smaller developments.

I received a bunch of great packages in the mail over the last several days.  White letters for my BFG’s, a set of 3 fender covers, wider spacers,  a set of four soft rubber mud flaps, and a roll of gold pinstriping.  White letters are installed, 2/3 fender covers are already in use, pinstriping has already been applied to missing areas on the driver’s side (passenger side was perfect)  and the mud flaps and spacers will happen at roughly the same time sometime next week.



The fender covers are all the same size and brand.  They are the smallest size of “Fender Gripper” (brand name” fender cover, and so far they have stuck to the fender wonderfully, are just about the right size, and have both a nice weight and feel to them.  I do think I might go buy a few magnets, however, because if I want to pull the covers far enough out that they don’t pass over the crevice where fender and hood meet, they do want to slide off from time to time.

Also visible in the image is what the white lettering kit looks like on the tires!

Alright, time to wrap this up.  I have two questions for everyone.

1:  Does anyone know of a place that sells mesh/wire covered headlight buckets (the metal buckets that hold the sealed beam bulbs into the adjustable/aimable bracket)?  I’m going for a sort of rally/muscle kind of look and I think that a set of those with some added protection would both be a good investment AND look great.  I know that there are sets of rock guards for Jeep YJ headlights, I just don’t know if they would work on an Eagle.

2:  What is this connector?  It is coming out of the small harness that comes up on the driver’s side.  It is NOT a wire for the headlights, even though it is the same shade of green as one of them is.  I pulled the green headlight wire out of the loom and the connector in the image is still there, attached to a separate, identically-colored wire.





Thanks for any light anyone might be able to shed on this.

[Mitch]

This may help...

http://amceaglesden.com/guide/1988_Large_Electrical_Schematics_-_Much_applicable_to_other_years.

[Taylor]

This should cover everything under the hood.

[zeebo76]

Thanks, you two - I found out that that plug is for the factory fog light harness.  Since the eagle doesn't have factory fog lights, it never had anything plugged into it.

ANOTHER question - I finally confirmed that I'm missing most of the parts for my upstream pulse air system.  No control valve, no check/diverter valve, the hose coming from the carb air cleaner is plugged and the line coming from the exhaust is also plugged.

I can't find a replacement for the control valve (the valve with 1 big + 1 small inlet, and 1 small outlet) anywhere.  Would anyone happen to have a spare they would be willing to sell?

[zeebo76]

SCORE!!!



Found a 1982 Eagle Sport on Facebook three days ago.







It’s got a ton of great spares.  Interior hood lever (the black plastic thingy that always breaks), both hatch hinges, doorjamb protectors, headlight bezels, taillights, marker housings, window trim, bumpers, door handles, carburetor, and more.  It’s basically a complete car, the issue with it is that it’s just got too many small little issues.  It’s missing the plastic cladding, a door panel, two doors don’t close, the hood is bent, the roof rack has a missing section, the car was uncovered for a while, tires are shot, it’s got no exhaust...

BUT.



It’s a stick shift.  It’s got everything I’ll need to do the manual swap I want to do in my eagle with the exception of the actual transmission - the parts car has an SR4 in it, and if I’m doing a manual swap on my eagle there’s no way I’m putting that piece of junk in there.  I’ll be doing an AX15 conversion.

But, yeah!  It’s got the clutch and brake pedal, crossmember, master cylinder, it’s got a center console with the gauge package in it, and it’s got a tachometer!

Last but not least, it’s got a freshly rebuilt motor, only about 7k miles on it.  I trust the girl who sold it to me - she just about cried when I took it away.  She had it stored at her brother’s place and she was pregnant with her second kid, so the eagle couldn’t be worked on and it just needed to go.  $850 (maybe a little steep, but I don’t really care haha) and it’s now mine.