Resurrecting the Rambler

[Alan Nyhus]

Take a look in the Classifieds here. Dated 7/24/15, Mike Meier has a Spirit roller for sale. -Al

[Dan Fahey]

This is an interesting Stocker Build.

The AMX straight 6 Engine is still popular with the Jeep crowd.
Golen Engine hops them up with Stroker kits and ported upgraded heads.

Good luck.

Dan

[Pinballer]

You're right there, Dan, the Jeep crowd is the one experimenting more than any other group with this engine. A lot of their efforts can translate over to what I'm pursuing, so they were pretty helpful. The main thing they know is that revving this engine much about 5000 rpm doesn't help anything. The power curve falls flat on its face and parts attrition goes way up. That told me that the ET I need must all be developed in the 1/8th mile because there won't be much gain after that. It's all about torque on this one, not raw HP made by wringing the guts out of it.

Back to the build:
At this point (early Oct as I catch you up), I'm looking at a rusted out piece of junk I'll have to part out. A new body is needed, and I still preferred to go with the Spirit platform rather than switch to something that classes differently, so looked around at what I had in my own stable of cars and saw this 'jewel' that had been sitting in front of the pinball shop since 1993. It's a weather-worn 1982 Spirit GT that was originally a 151 4 cyl 4 speed car, no engine or trans, that had a straight good body, that I had bought back then with the idea of throwing a V8 and an automatic in it and bracket racing it eventually. There was some initial work I did to it right after hauling it home back then, the best part of which was installing an 8 3/4 Chrysler rear end that has the same width as the original tiny AMC rear. The pinball business was getting going good about that time for me, so I shelved the project due to building the business and let the car sit where you see it in the picture. It was still there in the same spot as of October 2015. Man, where do the years go??
Now then: is it rotten underneath like the '80 Spirit was too? Going to have to pull this one out and take a full assessment.
On to Plan B!

[Ed Fernandez]

Originally Posted by Pinballer

You're right there, Dan, the Jeep crowd is the one experimenting more than any other group with this engine. A lot of their efforts can translate over to what I'm pursuing, so they were pretty helpful. The main thing they know is that revving this engine much about 5000 rpm doesn't help anything. The power curve falls flat on its face and parts attrition goes way up. That told me that the ET I need must all be developed in the 1/8th mile because there won't be much gain after that. It's all about torque on this one, not raw HP made by wringing the guts out of it.

Back to the build:
At this point (early Oct as I catch you up), I'm looking at a rusted out piece of junk I'll have to part out. A new body is needed, and I still preferred to go with the Spirit platform rather than switch to something that classes differently, so looked around at what I had in my own stable of cars and saw this 'jewel' that had been sitting in front of the pinball shop since 1993. It's a weather-worn 1982 Spirit GT that was originally a 151 4 cyl 4 speed car, no engine or trans, that had a straight good body, that I had bought back then with the idea of throwing a V8 and an automatic in it and bracket racing it eventually. There was some initial work I did to it right after hauling it home back then, the best part of which was installing an 8 3/4 Chrysler rear end that has the same width as the original tiny AMC rear. The pinball business was getting going good about that time for me, so I shelved the project due to building the business and let the car sit where you see it in the picture. It was still there in the same spot as of October 2015. Man, where do the years go??
Now then: is it rotten underneath like the '80 Spirit was too? Going to have to pull this one out and take a full assessment.
On to Plan B!

FYI If you go with the Spirit that came with the 151 engine you'll need the disc brake rotors and pads specific to that engine, they're different than the 6 cylinder cars.

[Pinballer]

(Early October now)
So we clear out the jungle brush and half a ton of assorted junk that got piled up behind this 82 car, and try to avoid ticking off the inhabitants of a nearby hornet nest, ( how fitting is that? Hornets at an AMC collectors house?) . Aired up the rotted tires, hooked up a chain to the resident 4wd Dakota and yanked her out from around the shade tree.

And her she is in all her leaf-encrusted moldy glory. The remains of a dud 350 Chevy engine is parked in the engine bay underneath the plastic.
Time to jack this one up and take a look underneath at everything. Hopefully not a repeat of Plan A.

[mike britt]

It's a diamond in the rough. Love that spoiler.

[Pinballer]

First bath in probably 25 years, what a change! Outside now looking much better, got to get underneath and peck on a few places next.

[Mike Meier]

Originally Posted by Alan Nyhus

Take a look in the Classifieds here. Dated 7/24/15, Mike Meier has a Spirit roller for sale. -Al

Thanks Alan

Brian......My Spirit is still for sale as a roller w/ a disassembled 304 - 2bbl. I have less time to deal with racing since changing jobs in August. I don't recall if you were someone that already contacted me but feel free to shoot me an email at mmeier1167@yahoo.com.

[Pinballer]

(Catching up to late October)
Got underneath the red Spirit and initially things look pretty solid other than a place in the floor right behind the driver seat. Wonder if the mangy possum nest I found there had anything to do with that?
Loaded her up on the trailer and took it into the auto shop for a real good going-over. Very solid underneath as it turns out, so the Ziebart people did well on this one. Found their sticker on the driver door jamb.

Now we've got something very suitable to work with. This car is an original manual steering manual brake stick car, so its a great platform to use. There will have to be one important piece changed right at the beginning, and it's a monumental headache. I know this because I've done one before. On AMC cars you have to have the proper engine cross member in place for the type of engine you're wanting or the engine mounts won't line up. The 4 cyl one will have to come out and be replaced with the 6 cyl one out of the blue 80 car. The nasty part of this is that the lower control arms bolt into this cross member, and to remove those means removing almost everything else suspension related first. And I'll get to do this TWICE! Get out the breaker bars...
The blue 80 car now gets parted out so I can use a lot of things off it. And here we go. You'll notice that when the dirty work was done it was just a little bit hard to steer due to an "alignment problem". Getting the hulk back up on the trailer took a while!

[Charlie A]

One of the coolest looking factory rims from "back in the day" on the blue one.