I actually bought this car 10 years ago for $400 and I'm just now ready to start restoring it. I had hoped to start on it about a month ago but my boyfriend is building a trailer and I can't get my car in the garage until he's done. I originally bought what I had licensed as an 80 Eagle wagon however after being on the nest for a while I see the body style and plastic valve cover means it must have been an 81 or later. I really loved my Eagle wagon and as I recall got around 30 miles to the gallon with it (I've seen most people on the nest don't get near that so I wonder about my memory, but it seems pretty clear) and it had I thought surprisingly good power for a 6 with full time 4 wheel drive. I had a couple of front end accidents with it and the head gasket was leaking and when a wheel bearing went I parked it for good. I used to have a 47 acre parcel of land but I sold it to move into the city with my boyfriend and unfortunately the wagon stayed there as we have no room for it in the city. We pulled off CV joints, the trans a few trim pieces and engine accessories from it but it was a shame to leave so much behind.
I bought the 81 SX/4 with a leaking trans, head gasket but what looked to be a fairly good body. I towed it a 150 miles or so with the drive shafts hooked up so I figure its transmission is toast but I pulled the one out of my old wagon to put in it. I had the hood off of it for a couple of months while it was outside and it appears water got down the carb although I had plastic over it. When my boyfriend and I tried to turn over the motor with a strong arm on the crank it wouldn't budge so I'm planning on rebuilding a motor as well. I bought a spare motor from Shin-x which may be in better shape than the one currently in the car. I also have a clifford 4 barrel manifold and header for the 258 as well as 390 Holley, performance/economy cam and matching lifters and valve retainers. I don't remember the cam specs but it has around 10-15% more lift than stock with less duration and overlap than stock to retain higher cylinder pressures and give better performance and economy. I hope to boost the compression ratio by half a point or so by milling the head but I can't find any reliable specs on compression ratio's for the 81 258 - some sites say 8.0 to 1, some say 8.3 to 1 and others say something else. I don't want to go too high so I can still run it on regular gas.
The car is pretty basic with auto trans and no power options. It has a blue interior which needs some work as well. I only plan on driving it in the winter as I have a 1980 280ZX I am also restoring for a summer driver.
As you can see from the picture below I started some dismantling quite a few years back
This appears to be the worst of the rust on the car, the rest of it seems pretty solid although I have yet to get underneath it and haven't taken most of the plastic body cladding off to see. The 81(?) wagon I had was pretty solid underneath so I'm hoping this will be as well although I'm not really concerned if there are some problems as I've restored some quite rusty cars in the past although it did take me quite a while. I'm tempted to replace the driver's door as it has similar rust on the inside and I'm thinking by the time I sandblast it off it'll be full of pin-holes and fabricating the metal for the lower right hand corner will be a challenge as once the rust is cut away there'll be no reference points for how tall or wide to make the metal or how far in or out to put it to match the door opening. My boyfriend says no sweat though, we'll fix it anyway and he'll help, I'm a little less confident then him.
Topic: Priya's SX/4 project (Read 371768 times)