Bringing This Eagle Back to Soar Again! A 1983 SX/4 Restoration PICTURE HEAVY

[Zebo]

So to start this off, I just wanted to say that I’ve been crazy about AMC Eagles ever since I was about 5. My dad has had a few nice ones throughout my childhood, my favorite was a maroon station wagon with a nutmeg interior and plush leather seats. I loved that thing! I was quite upset when my dad traded it for a loaded Buick wood grain SW. So ever since I’ve been on the hunt to obtain an Eag of my own, and I’ve finally got one! I was wicked excited when I saw this
on C-list so close to where I lived, it seemed too good to pass up so I picked it up. It’s a 1983 Base Model AMC Eagle SX/4 Blue on Blue, over all its quite complete.
 





 It was missing the radio when I bought it and the ignition key had been broken off inside the ignition but still started so that’s a plus. It has been off the road since 2010 or that’s when the inspection ran out at least. I ended up paying a bit more than I would like to have spent but oh well. I got it home I rubbed it down with some wax to remove some of the oxidation on the paint, It actually shined up pretty nice.
 

I then immediately went through it and started tearing the trim off to see what rust might have been hiding behind it. Overall it wasn’t terrible; the driver’s side has the worst of it. The front frame rail within the engine bay is rusted out in many places along through where it makes contact with the driver’s side floor. The front driver’s side fender is rusted along the edge and in front under the bumper corner. The rocker panel is rusted out on both ends on the driver’s side as well. The passenger side isn’t as bad at all it has a few holes but is solid overall.
 With my very limited mechanical experience and not much money for I had just moved back to Maine when I bought the car I wasn’t making much progress on it for a couple months. I used that time to repair cracks on the interior pieces by plastic welding with some zip ties.



My dad had a few left over goodies from his Eagle that I dug up that I plan to put on mine when the time comes.



My dad and I installed the non-feedback carb I had bought from jim and attempted to tune the car. It runs OK but has a vacuum leak that still needs to be addressed. After the couple months of tinkering with it I finally had a truck come and give it a ride down to the garage where I could get it on the lift and allow me to get all of the rust repair and general restoration done.

   
The first time I had it up on the lift I had our family mechanic look it over and give me an estimate of the time it would take him to repair all of the rust issues. He looked it over thoroughly and said it would take him about 24 hours total to have it all buttoned up. Since I’ve had the car at the shop I’ve only been able to make it over there on the weekend so the progress so far has been slow. In the meantime I’ve been acquiring a few parts for the ol’ bird. I bought this
leather jeep steering wheel on the Bay for $20, I cleaned it up and painted it along with adding a new horn badge, what do you think?


I also bought a Spoiler that I intend on installing on the Sx/4,
as well as a shifter pod I bought off demonicdragon that I cleaned and painted alongside a package tray
that I picked up at a scrapyard where I also got a pair of clear turn signals, a hubcap to replace the one that is broken and lastly a nice set of headlight bezels. I also bought two center caps from GreatcarSX4 to replace the ones missing on the driver’s side.


I also bought a gauge cluster with a clock from BenM that I swapped with my gauge cluster with the delete. About 3 weeks ago I had my first attempt ever at welding, I cut out some rust on the passenger front frame and welded a patch back in. It’s quite ugly but at least it’s solid! Last weekend I had it on the lift and stripped all the trim off of the outside sides of the car and pulled the carpet out and chucked it because it had started dissolving on the driver’s side. I also pulled all the interior trim out to be sanded and painted. I have noticed a leak letting water leak through the hatch somewhere that I’ll have to address shortly. But for now the car is ready to start tackling all the rust work. I’ll be trying to make some progress on it this weekend. More pics to come!

[vangremlin]

Looks like a great restoration project!  Thanks for keeping it on the road.

[Amc1320]

Great job, thanks for sharing the progress!

Really like the idea for the horn button very cool

You'll have to give us some details on how you welded the plastic parts with zip ties sometime

And those Marchal fog lights are super hard to find I think

Keep us posted on the progress!

[Baskinator]

Sweet SX/4 man! Looks like it shined up real nice, and it appears nearly complete from the outside. You should post some pics of the rust, as that's usually the killer. It's cool to see the metal work that people go through to fix these, that can be the most challenging part of Eagle ownership(or at least a close third lol). I'm sure you'll get lots of compliments, mine has horrible paint and I still receive many positive comments.

Definitely look into ignition upgrades, 4.0 head swap, and new means of fuel delivery if you're not doing an all-original type resto (almost not worth it on an Eagle unless it will never ever be driven). A t-case upgrade and limited slip differential(s) are a good idea for on-road driving in snow/mud, since the viscous coupling in your NP129 is more than likely toast.

Good luck with the project, I'll be watching!

[trout]

Very nice!

what did you use to paint the interior piece?

[Zebo]

Very nice!

what did you use to paint the interior piece?

I've been using http://thepaintersfriend.com/sem-15213-bluemist.html My dad had a can lying around from a previous job so I checked the color and it's a close to perfect match for my interior so I’ve been painting all my interior trim with the stuff. I'm very pleased with how it looks on the pieces.

[Zebo]

So now comes the ugly pictures of the car, I have taken picture of the serious rust problems that need to be addressed. I guess I’ll start with the worst side first these are pictures of the driver’s side rust back to front.  Judging by the slight tweak in the frame rail above the rear wheel the car may have been rear-ended or had backed into something.

and moving on up one the worst places on the car is the rear drivers side outer rocker panel/wheel well corner. It’s rusted right through nicely here which is going to require a good deal of fabrication to tack it all together again


After pounding it with a hammer  here is what came out!
There is also a hole in the rear of the DS rail.
The front end of the outer rocker is rusted out as well.
The floor has the usual rust right behind the pedals where the body meets that frame rail.
 
The front DS bend on the rail is where it starts getting a bit nasty

I wasn’t able to get good pictures of all the rust there at this time due to other parts getting in the way, but that is where most of the time will be spent welding that so it’ll be solid. The passenger side isn’t nearly as bad, there is a hole in the gas line right above the rear passenger wheel which I plan to replace this weekend.
The outer rockers are quite solid. There is slight flaking on both ends but nothing too serious. The floors again have the usual rust
[ url] along with one hole toward the back of the floorboard. [url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/89962834@N06/8680965136/]
  The front frame rail again has rust that needs some serious attention. The worst place had been covered up by a small patch held up by two bolts on the other side of the brake control unit that I pulled off and this is what I found…
  There is also some rust on the front side of the rail that will need to be patched.
The inside of that rail there was a bit of weak metal that was cut out
 

then came the patch
which was welded in but I forgot to take any pictures, which is fine since it my first welding job and boy it aint pretty.

[greymarooneightytwo]

This, what a good looking bird... and that half dollar is BRILLIANT, way to go!

[MudPuppy]

Nice looking Eagle! 
I think we need some how-to's on a few things, like the half-dollar horn button and welding with zip ties.
Good job! Hope she's back on the road fairly soon.

[Baskinator]

Boy, that is some serious rust. Your patch looks really nice though. I'm anxious to see how this turns out, good luck!

[85AmCfreak]

Yeah great job for your first time welding. I love that half dollar idea

[Zebo]

Not a whole lot of progress to report, I spent all last Saturday welding the spot in front of the passenger shock tower which I’ll have to upload photos of later. While welding everything back together I noticed that someone must’ve jumped the car at some point and bent  the passenger lower control arm, so I’ll have to be on the lookout for one of those :-/. I got a picture of its new temporary spot in the shop

[vangremlin]

Replacement outer rocker panels are available for the SX/4 and Kammback.  I got mine from Rock Auto.

[Zebo]

Well last weekend I was able to get some shop time in to tackle some more of the rust on my car. I started where I had left off at the section under the passenger coil spring. I had patched some rust spots just in front of the front pass wheel that I got a picture of completed.
 
 Then I got started on the section below the spring, I went ahead and cut and pulled the metal that was in the way of the patch that I needed to weld in.
 

I then went ahead and made my patch to fill in what had rusted away.
 
And here it is all tacked in place.

From there I also went ahead and filled some weld in where there was no structural support toward the inner corner near the brake control unit. I pulled the steel back into place tacked it in and went ahead planning the patch for the worst section here on the passenger side.
  


I used the plasma cutter to try to make some neatish cuts.. as you can also see when I had the grinder in there I clipped the brake line so I will need to replace that this weekend. I then traced out my patch template and cut it out.

And here it is once I welded it into place  




My welding skills are still lacking but getting better with time. It looks fairly decent once it’s covered with some under coating

[Amc1320]

Looks great!

I had to patch mine in the same place, problem I had was there was some patching I had to do from the other side too, so had to pull the engne out to make the repairs, that was a pain