I am finally posting some progress for my SX4, but I wanted to give a little background on me.
I am Louis. I am in my early 20s going to school for business and within the next 5 years, will be opening up a shop of my own to do customs, overhauls... you get the picture.
My father was the one that got me hooked on AMC, and the eventually the SX4.
I had an '87 Jeep Grand Wagoneer (which was one of the last AMC built Jeep's) as my first vehicle, but soon got my hands on a
'85 Eagle Wagon [Limited].
But being a naive 18-year-old, I thought it'd be a fun, easy task of taking the AMC 360cid 5.9L V8 and putting it in my Wagon. Looking back, I had no idea what I was getting myself into, nor what I would have started. Long story short (and for another post) my dad and I got it finished 10 months later (I had other stuff going on) and it worked great.
Within the first week of having it done, I busted the CV axle on the driver side going over a small dip, and about a year later, the engine started sounding off a little. Turns out I had worked down a lobe on the cam and about ate through a lifter. (During this time I bought another Jeep Grand Wagoner with another AMC 360.)
But that's where this SX4 project begins.
I had already been looking for something more. My younger brother and I were always looking online for Eagles. He happened to find one from a buddy of his and I found one on craigs.
The one I found was only in need of a slave cylinder for the clutch, some new tires, and a little TLC
Its a '81 4speed, 258cid 6cylinder, full-time 4x4.
I drove it for a little while, but realized that the frame on it was rusting out at a very rapid rate and was either going to be needing a lot of work, or parked and work on something else.
Being that my brother had another SX4, I talked him into selling it to me. Yes, my own brother made a profit off of me on a car he got for free haha. But it was the best investment I've made.
It is a '81 "Montana Blue" Eagle SX4 Sport. It also has a 4speed. Transfer-case is the stock all the time 4x4. It had a stock sunroof, but I broke it. It has a working rear wiper and has the spoiler too. The car is also an air-conditioned model. Interior color was blue and had split rear folding seats. The speedometer went up to 85, came with a tach which since the factory had broken. It came with a lower gauge cluster as the Sport model does, but the only ones that still work are the vacuum and the battery gauge.
This is where the car started for me:
This is
after I dug it out of a snow drift that was almost as tall as the car was. We had to dig it out with a friend's pay-loader because the drift behind it was
actually taller than it.
When my brother had gotten it, the owners at the time at gotten a different bell-housing and had swapped out the 4cylinder for a beefed up Chevy 350. He pulled the engine for himself and I got the rest.
Since then I have changed all the interior over to the black interior from the white one. Seats included. The dash however, got taken out and got replaced with the one from the wagon. I cleaned and then painted the then brown dash piece black to match the interior. I replaced the speedometer with one from my second Jeep, which reads the same actually. (Somehow its off by 5mph right now, but I'm getting to it) I cut a piece of aluminum in the same shape as the tach panel and replaced it with a VDO x100 style gauge.
I took apart the 360, originally just to clean and replace the cam, but found the start of cracks in two pistons, and ring-grooving in the cylinders. SO I decided to overhaul. It now has a long list of upgrades.
Bored out to 4.14in (.060 over)
Bigger Keith-Black pistons
Edelbrock AMC Torker-II intake 4-bbl
Edelbrock 1406 4-bbl carb 600cfm
crank was turned
COMP Cam replacement
http://www.summitracing.com/parts/CCA-10-216-5/new lifters
new black-oxidized pushrods
new gaskets
new springs on the heads
reseated the valves
new fuel pump
modified the manifolds to flow better
etc
Overall the engine is now displacing 370cid (6.06L), has a compression ratio of 8.95-9:1, and has an estimated HP of 330 to 390.
On the fuel side of things, I changed out the gas tank for one I got on eBay for a concord. Bought new fuel line, put 2 filters on it (one just after the tank and the other just after the pump).
The interior was also taken care of. I replaced the gas shocks on the hatch (I have the exact Strong Arm number needed for an SX4 if anyone needs help). The stereo has also been changed out for a newer one (what can I say, to us new-generation, music has a lot to do with the finished car). To fix the sun roof issue, for the time being at least, I took some plexi-glass and cut it to fit over the top of the old housing. Siliconed it down and it has leaked less than when the window was in it. I took apart the upper dash vents and made some blower-motor-resembling vent covers to add a little personality.
The exterior got some work done too. On areas where there was some surface rust, I sanded off the little paint left, got it back down to bare metal, and primed and painted.
There will be more to this post later, but here are the pictures of the finished project as of 3-14-12:
Topic: '81 Eagle SX/4 - Project (Read 4510 times)