I've been a big fan of station wagons for the last few years. My last 2 cars have been wagon. I had been hearing about these 4-wheel drive station wagons from the 80's, and it really piqued my interests. About a year ago I saw 3 of 'em at the junkyards down here in San Diego. They didn't even put 'em out to have parts taken, just lined up for the crusher, but I sat in one and fell in love. I knew I had to buy one!
Fast forward to December, I had just been browsing Craigslist, and for shits-n-giggles I looked for an Eagle. One popped up for $1500! I called the guy up, and he said it has 85k on it, a rebuilt head, and new tires and brakes. In the heat of them moment, I posted my perfectly reliable Saturn wagon that I've completely refurbished on CL to fund the purchasing of this Eagle. Two days later, I had the cash and met with the guy with the Eagle. He was a slick auto-auctioneer with a compound of junky cars out where all the junkyards are it. He kept saying that it was his dad's car, and he used it down in Baja California and he was dying of brain cancer or something. Gave it a look-over and it was a beat up 1985 Eagle with a 5sp, a few dents, front right corner had been pushed in a bit, the usual wear of a 26 year old car, and the tag on the license plate had expired 6 months prior. All of it not a big deal because it was an Eagle! I took the car out for a test drive and it only drove in 4wd mode. I figgered I was gonna put an XJ rear-end in it anyways, and offered him $1200 for it. Once I had bought the car and was ready to drive away, the slick douche tells me "oh, knowing my dad that 2011 tag probably isn't for this car." I peeled off the tag and it was over a 2005 tag. I had to pay $627 just to get this thing registered! Next time I'll use the VIN # to find out how much it'll cost to register a vehicle! I've since looked through the lien papers, and noticed that this car had only been driven 3000 miles since 1998, and had just been bouncing from one auto storage place to another.
Now that this thing is mine, I haven't really driven it in the 6 weeks I've owned it. My dad has a stock XJ with a D35, 3.54's with a really tight limited slip in it. I bought him a Dana 44, that he fixed up, to swap for the D35. He did the swap. With the lower gearing, bigger tires were needed. I moved from 205/75r15's to 30x9.5r15's and don't want to lift it. So my current project is to hack away or hammer in anything in the way. The next thing I have to do it rebuild the carb, and then pray it passes CA smog! Either way, here's some pics.
Here it is with the 30's and no cutting. I had maybe 5 degrees of turning radius!
With the fenders off, gettin' ready to remove some rocker panel.
The offending rocker panel.
After some moments with a 4.5" cut off wheel, but it looks like I'm gonna have to bash in the firewall with the sledge to guarantee clearance at full-stuff and turned wheel.
Topic: The story of my 85 wagon so far. (Read 2363 times)