Perkiomen Project Pics

[captspillane]

This topic will be pictures from my current AMC projects. In my garage right now is an AMC Spirit GT, a white SX4, and a red SX4. These three cars are my main daily drivers. These are pictures taken a few days ago, in October or September of 2011. It will take me a week or so to load all my pictures and to catch up on describing what I'm doing right now. Internet access is limited while I'm at sea.

In a seperate garage I have the Kammback that will be complete after these three are done. I will have these four back together by the end of the summer.

[captspillane]

My Red SX4 was purchased in 2001 when I was 15 years old. I personally have driven this car about 170K miles. It was my main car until I graduated college in Jan 2009. I maintained and ran four Eagles through high school, but this one was my first and always my favorite. It will be put back together by December as a 4.5 multi-port fuel injected NSG370 6 speed. This is a current picture of the engine sitting in front of the car.



A few weeks before graduating I purchased the Spirit GT. It had less than 200 miles on a professionally remanufactured 4.5 engine and rebuilt T5 transmission. I drove this car as my daily driver after dismantling the Red Eagle's rear suspension. That engine has a new RV camshaft and a brand new 4.0 head with welded water jackets now and is being installed in the Red Eagle. The Spirit will be converted into a 3.3L SD33T Turbodiesel SX4 next year, but is currently receiving a rebuilt 4.2 motor with the lightly used 4.0 head it originally came with. It will be my daily driver until the Red SX4 is finished this December.



I bought the white SX4 in December of 2010 and it was my daily driver until being dismantled in June. It is pristine. The low mileage motor it came with is the one I just rebuilt for the temporary Spirit engine. I just bought a 401 motor for this Eagle. It will be a NV3550 five speed 401 V8 with Dana 44 rear axle and rear disc brakes. I already have the V8 conversion mounts, motor, transmission, bellhousing adaptor, Dana44 with limited slip, and most of the other hardware to assemble this. I will definately finish this as my finest Eagle by the end of the summer.

[shaggimo]

I thought I had a lot of irons going  , very cool ideas, build threads are a must on these! lol

[eagleman]

What are ya gonna do in your spare time?

[captspillane]

This is a picture of the NSG370 6 speed transmission I bought from a wrecked 2006 Jeep with less than 200 miles on it. It is on the far left. Next to it is the NV3550 Five Speed from a 2004 Jeep with less than 2000 miles on it. That one will be seperated from its bellhousing and attached to a T5 bellhousing using an Advanced Adaptors kit. That allows me to install it behind my 401's externally balanced flywheel. There are two T5 transmission sitting to the right of that. The NSG370 is rated at 272 ftlbs and the NV3550 is rated at 300 ftlbs, which is considerably stronger than the T5.



In these two photos you can see the difference between the crank sensor holes. The flywheel notches are identical, but they are rotated in relation to the crank because the sensor is on the side instead of the top. The engine will not run if you try to use a 5 speed flywheel in the 6 speed. I heard a rumor that the 6 speed sensor uses a different input voltage than the 5 speed, but I have not confirmed this. I might have to use the hesco kit to install it behind my 4.5.

NSG370


NV3550 (same as TF999, AW4, and AX15 transmissions)

[captspillane]

This is a picture of the shift lever from a YJ with an AX5. I bought an Advanced Adaptors plate that uses the lever, hinge bolt, and detent plate from this lever to adapt a NV3550 to a NP231. The plan is to use this as my transfer case low range lever. If I make slight modifications, I believe it will work with all of my transmissions. The lever will come up through the floor to the immediate left of the shift lever. I bought a CV boot awhile back to replace a broken one on an Eagle half shaft. After seeing how hard and messy it is to dissassemble CV shafts I started buying split boots and never used the solid one. I am going to use that to cover the hole in the floor board.

[captspillane]

All of my engines will get the Fel Pro Permadry gaskets. They are proof that the lord loves me. Its also proof that the old rubber and cork valve cover and oil pan gaskets are instruments of Satan. They are well worth the extra cost. On the oil pan you use a drop of RTV at the corners, but otherwise you don't need any RTV on these gaskets. That means its totally reuseable and there is never any scraping necessary. I RTV one side to the oil pan and the valve cover just to keep it in place, the other side stays dry.

[captspillane]

Check out my sexy new radiator. The next one I get will have more cores and intergrated electric fans. They are listed on the evil bay for CJ7s, but they fit perfectly into an Eagle. Stock radiators have the holes for both Eagles and Jeeps, so the aluminum ones copied the same height to the installation bracket. That is why there is metal there to drill in the hole for the Eagle bolt, even tho it did not come pre-drilled. The second picture shows the Jeep hole across from the Eagle hole. The third picture shows the radiator installed too high in my SX4 because I didn't drill the new holes yet. That picture still shows how nicely it fits into the recess.

[captspillane]

Before I took my Red Eagle off the road, I jumped it off a hump at 75 mph. I got several seconds of air time. Upon landing the rear leaf springs drove themselves through my rear floor. I spent a few months rebuilding the rear end on that car, so its already ready to go. When I rebuilt it I also installed a reciever hitch tied into the frame with bolts that go straight through to my new floor plates. The bolts are currently stainless steel, but I will replace them with grade 8 bolts soon because I don't trust the brittle Stainless bolts for any degree of load.









I love how snug and subtle the Jeep Cherokee hitch fit under my bumper, but I did run into trouble in putting a cotter pin in and out. I had to notch the back panel. The notches are visible in this picture.



I used greaseable shackles intended to lift a CJ7 1.5 inches. The new spring perches sit on the floor board plates I installed, instead of on a half inch pedestal that used to be in the sheet metal. I also measured my CJ7 shackles and found that they were about an inch shorter than the stock Eagle shackles. The 1.5 lift CJ7 shackles ended up being the perfect length to return the Eagle to stock height. Notice the web stiffener on the heavy duty shackle eyes I used. Those are available as extreme duty upgrades for a CJ7.

[vangremlin]

Check out my sexy new radiator.

Captspillane, thanks for giving me one more thing to add to my Eagle wish list.  That thing is sweeeeeeeet! And I can never have too many things on my list lol.

[rollguy]

I will be following this thread.  Looks like a lot of interesting fab work you are doing/need to do.  Keep up the good work!

[captspillane]

One of the biggest nightmares I've ever faced was the removal of the rear leaf springs. The bolt rusted itself to the metal sleeve, which refused to spin because it was bonded to the rubber. You can't cut the bolt without the rubber burning up or without damaging the critical sections of steel that make up the bolt eye. I used this setup to pull it off. The C clamp is putting pressure on the bolt while I spin it. I'm able to spin the bolt while still putting clamp pressure on it because I used the adaptor from a steering wheel puller set to go over and around the ratchet head. Its vital to switch leaf springs on SX4s because the top leaf isn't supported fully by the second leaf. I correct this by using the leaf pack from a Jeep Cherokee, which has a longer second leaf that protects the Eagle top leaf from fatiguing or failing prematurely. The Spirit and the Red SX4 have already received new leaf springs but the white Eagle still needs them installed.

[captspillane]

On my red Eagle I am going to try to remove the hump. This will allow me to use the awesome armrest from a Spirit. The floor plan forward of the seam is the same between an Eagle and a Spirit, but in a Spirit it contiues straight back at that height. The first picture shows how an Eagle floor plan humps up almost two inches. The biggest reason for this hump is to make room for an automatic shift lever, but my manual transmissions don't need this space. My Automatics won't either if I use a Lokar cable shifter.

[mick]

I have a lot of luck removing those spring bolts by cutting the spring at the bushing, removing the the 2 spring eye halves, cutting the rubber and remove from sleeve, then using a air hammer with a chisel point to open the seam in the sleeve.  All cutting is done with an angle grinder and wheels of assorted diameters.  Any way you do it it's not alot fun. 

Nice projects!

[carguy87]

Just curious, what size fuel injectors do you have on the 4.5's?