Howdy From Texas

[Wildhorse]

Howdy everyone!

Hope y'all don't mind, but I don't have an Eagle. Had a chance to buy a fully loaded Eagle wagon a few years ago but someone beat me to it.

What I do have is 2 AMC Spirit GT's. One is just a regular GT while the other is a Rally Edition. Both are 1983 model years. Attempting to restore both of them. And no, I'm not going to do that sacrilegious LS swap to either of them!

Funny stories behind both of them.

The first Spirit I acquired in 2010. it's Ghost Gray and the Rally Edition. I had transferred to an auto parts store that was across the street from a tire shop where one of the guys there owned it at the time. It was his daily driver at the time, and I talked to him about it over 5 years. Something bad had happened to it before he got it as the interior was mismatched in color pieces, the headliner and arm rest was covered in dark blue outdoor porch carpeting. He told me he had to be careful driving it because it was deceptively wicked fast and he kept getting tickets in it!

Year 6, I quit that auto parts store and got another job at a different auto parts company in another town. So I didn't see that car for a year. Well it didn't matter because that was the year that (let's call him Joe) took it off the road to fix the severely leaking rear main seal. But it sat the whole year because he never got around to it. Well Joe's wife pitched a hissy fit and told him that car was going to be fixed THAT DAY or he was going to sell it THAT DAY!! So Joe gets mad, FLIES to the salvage yard in it and sells it to them.

Later that day, my dad shows up to that salvage yard looking for parts for his 1967 Mustang convertible (with all the options). Sees that Spirit and texts me asking about it. I'm at work and I texted back with what I knew of those cars. That they were tough, reliable, and that the fit and finish was never that great, but if taken care of properly, would last forever. So he makes me come there the next day when I was off.

So I get there and I immediately recognized the car and whose it used to be. I looked it over, under, through it, sideways, etc. and couldn't find any reason for it to be in a salvage yard. So I go in and buy it, drive it home. The next day I took it to Joe to show him I bought it and he was glad that it went to someone who would appreciate it like he did and take care of it.

Well, it needed things, and I brought it up and did my level best to fix it and upgrade it to where it was a reliable daily driver. People LOVE seeing it. And they always think I'm speeding in it whether I am or not! LOL. Got the rear main seal replaced since it was throwing oil all over the place, soaking the clutch, keeping the underside from rusting, and oil slicking any tailgaters!! It went through 5 quarts every 100 miles. Was going to replace the T4 with a T5 because the T4 was cantankerous finicky beast. But the T5 was an exact fit except the shifter was set 4 inches further back than the T4 which meant cutting the floor. So we didn't do it. Instead we cleaned out the T4, put in synthetic gear oil, and it became a wonderful smooth transmission!!

Fast forward to last November. After I got back home from the SEMA show, Out of all the rare and collectible vehicles I own, I found the gray Spirit was missing!! For some strange reason they stole THE most conspicuous car I have that EVERYONE in 2 counties know whose car it is. The passed over the 1986 Dodge Power Ram 4X4, the extremely rare 1984 Mustang SVO, the 1988 Ford Thunderbird Turbo Coupe, the 1999 Honda Prelude (not SH). Any of those they could have easily made disappear because there are still so many of them out there. Those idiot thieves took the Spirit!!

Well me and the police (whom I knew) went looking for it. One found it on the back of a trailer behind a black F150. The officer turned his Tahoe around, his wheel caught the trailer it was on, and that trailer ripped the wheel off the Tahoe. Literally. The car got away. A few weeks later, (and fortunately for me) They were driving my car down the road when the ground wire in the distributor broke, (which is a flaw on the 258 straight 6) and fried the control module, stopping the car. They didn't even pull it over, just abandoned it in the lane on the road. Earlier that morning, they tried to paint it black with a paint brush and not enough paint. On top of that, while the paint was still wet, the morons left really, excellent fingerprints in the wet paint!! And they had gotten a new control module and distributor for it, never installed it, but left them in the front seat. But they took the battery for some obscure reason. I didn't mind that too much as the battery had bad cells in it and was way past replacement time! LOL. So now it sits at home waiting for warmer weather for me to fix it all.


For Spirit #2. This one is just a regular GT, red and black. I acquired it a year ago and it had been living (or dying) only a 1/2 mile from where I live for the last 13 years and I never knew it. Just before I left my auto parts job, I had driven my gray Spirit to work. Well the nice older couple that owned the red and black one had came in and we talked AMC. They had mentioned they wanted to sell theirs as it was just languishing in their field. I thought if nothing else, I would have all the spare parts I needed for my gray Spirit.

Well the reason it ended up in their field was because of their son. The couple bought it new, drove it for a while and went through all the fixing that Spirits needed like the rear wheel bearing since AMC tightened the passenger side to newton-meters and the driver side to ft-lbs. So of course the passenger side bearing would eventually fail on all Spirits. Anyway, it had been a good car and he eventually gave it to their son to drive 13 years ago. UNTIL he successfully outran the policemen in that car. But not before they got the plate number. The parents were understandably and took the car away from the son, drove it out to the field where it stayed until I came along. If I had known that one was only 1/2 mile down my road years, ago, I would have rescued it then.

I think the red and black spirit will run, but haven't had time to really mess with it what with all the bad weather and trying to recover my stolen Spirit. I can't even get the hood open on the thing! Anyone got any ideas?

Well I hope you enjoyed the backstory on my cars and don't think of me as the Eagle-wannabe guy! LOL. I would just like to see as many AMC's rescued as possible. Looking forward to interacting with you guys.

[89 MJ]

Welcome! Those are a couple of cool stories with those cars. It's great to hear that you are saving them.

[EagleSX4_5Speed]

The best way to open a stuck hood is to remove the grille to access the latch mechanism. However there are 2 screws holding the grille in place that are covered by the hood and not accessible without opening the hood. You will need to break/cut those 2 tabs to get the grille out of the way. When I had to do this on my dad's Eagle it was easy because those tabs were already broken.

[maddog]

I have successfully opened a hood I couldn't open with the pool handle on a spirit by climbing under the front of the car with a long screwdriver and popping the latch mechanism part that the cable itself would normally pull on, I also had to do this on my 86 Eagle when it backfired through the carburetor and caught the underhood insulation on fire.

[AMC of Houston]

Welcome to the Den.  Whereabouts in TX are you?  I'm kinda right in the middle (Wimberley).  You hooked up with any of the TX AMC Clubs yet?

[Wildhorse]

Hey everyone!

@EagleSX4_5speed: I know the screws you're talking about and I would rather not break those mounts if I can keep from it. But I may just have to.

@maddog: I will try that trick. Problem is getting my butt up under a low slung car even if it's jacked up!

@AMC of Houston: I was in Kirbyville, Tx., 20 miles south of Jasper, Tx. Now I live about 1 1/12 hours north east of Austin. No, I haven't hooked up with any AMC clubs yet. A friend of mine who owns several *NICE* AMC's (and other mopar classics) invited me to the 25th annual AMC meet in Lufkin, Tx. So I went and took my gray Spirit as it would be the only Spirit there. It was lots of fun. Got to see original gremlins with the 70's color schemes and hubcaps, lots of Kaisers, Javelins (of course!) and all kinds of AMC Jeeps except the J series pickups. (of which I had a '79 Honcho once upon a time)
The friend that invited me also entered me into one of the contests without my knowledge. LOL. My Spirit won "best rolling project under construction" and I got a cool AMC themed T-shirt out of it and have worn it to the SEMA show every year since. (Seems even the old-timers have forgotten all about AMC's   )

Tomorrow I'm going to see about uploading pics of the 2 cars.