Resurrecting the Rambler

[nickh]

I have a anodized 258 amc purple valve cover that would look nice on your motor it should be worth .0001 improvement. I will donate it to you, let me know. I have photos can send to you.

Nick

[Pinballer]

Yep, it's the cold and nasty season here in central IL, I've been a little sick and hacking like everybody else around here, but thankfully I haven't had to shovel any snow yet. Snow and winter in general: I hate that stuff with a passion. While waiting this all out for spring, I'm trying to find some race-related projects to busy myself with that may pay off later as far as the stocker is concerned. As it was last year, the business I work on the car at is pretty busy so I haven't had use of their lifts in recent weekends.
About all that's taken place on the race car lately was to hump a 133 lb foot wide chunk of 1" thick flat steel into the back hatch area and bolt it down so I can make proper weight for T class. I still have room for the fuel cell.

The pictures I'll post are some new goodies and pieces of the correct intake manifold all painted up nice along with the correct numbered head, and also those of a secondary 258 engine build and some test fitting of the induction and headers before I attempt to hang those onto the AMX which for convenience's sake still is wearing the wrong numbered factory type intake and exhaust manifolds. The main purpose of this spare engine is to use it for some testing, because as it sits right now, the part numbers I built it out of are not NHRA legal, although as far as function and type of parts is concerned, it's a very close match to what would be legal. Most likely it will go into a 1970 2 door Hornet I have out back with a sour engine in it right now. I can street drive this one anytime I'd want and gather some data all year long rather than have to keep waiting for the track to be open to take the real race car to, plus I get another neat old street ride to tool around in! The car I'm writing about has a picture posted way back in the beginning of this thread where the red back end of the Hornet can be seen resting between two trees. I used to drive this car to work and back some several years ago, and my younger brother used to borrow it for some local bracket racing when he felt the need. It's totally stock and is an automatic. The weight of this car should closely match that of the '79 AMX stocker, so maybe I can get some seat of the pants info when I drive it around. It should be easy to tune things like carburetors and ignition systems and change other parts around on too since the engine bay is uncluttered with much of anything. If something I try works well, I'll transfer it over to the stocker.

Right now I'm trying to engineer some header bushings to "bolt" the headers down with. AMC used the exhaust manifold casting as part of the mounting system of both the intake and exhaust together when they're in place, and when you take the exhaust manifold out of the picture and replace it with a header, it takes away 50% of your mounting hardware surfaces. The mounting bolts use a large concave washer to press on both factory pieces when you install them. Bushings will have to be fabricated to take the place of the missing surfaces that allow the bolts to butt up against the header flanges. So in effect, the header is half bolted down through a few typical holes in the flange, and half "smashed" into place on 6 others.
One of the pictures I'm posting is that of a torn up and sawed off Clifford header that I located which I can build my own headers out of. Nobody makes a car header for AMC's that will do what I need, so it's build your own time. All I really needed was the flange and the beginnings of the tubes, and this sad looking thing fit the bill for cheap. I'm sure I was the only man in America who gave a crap about this thing when it hit the sale ads. It will probably be next winter for the header building project though. I'm thinking a 'two banks of three" design.

I'll resize a few pics of the engine pieces and post them later.

[Pinballer]

And the pics...

[Pinballer]

And one more picture.

[Pinballer]

Let's try that again...

[Ed Fernandez]

Brian, i'm a bit confused. What headers are in the pictures with the head?
Also if you're going to mount the cell in the back of the car you'll need some sort of a bulkhead to isolate the cell from the interior compartment. My cell was mounted under the rear floor area where the old gas tank was located. I had a metal trap door to reach the filler cap. The vent had a short 90 degree bend to keep it out of the interior of the car.
Hope this helps.

[Ed Fernandez]

This is what you'll have to fabricate to install the headers with the stock intake. Not the best illustration but I guess you'll get an idea of what's needed.

[Pinballer]

Thanks for the drawing Ed, that's really close to what I envisioned trying to make to cinch down the headers. Appreciate that greatly, as now I know it should work OK.
The fuel cell--I also intended to mount it where the original tank was, because that's about the only way I could do it within the rules. I was looking at trying to find a way to access it from the license plate area somehow, it would make filling it up a lot easier, but that may go by the wayside. I reserved space to make a trap door on the right side of the hatchback floor area just in case I had to go that way, and if it does that would match your build on the Gremlin. The complication of that for me is to find a spot in the back to park a weight box where I may need to add 30-50 lbs depending on track scales. I'm already keeping the space-saver spare tire, the jack, and the tire tool for weight and they're all on the left side. Real estate is pretty precious in a small car!

The header pictures: the one where everything is assembled onto the correct head destined to go onto the car soon--that one is not the "ideal" header to use, it's an off the shelf Hedman, but it's all I have right now that will fit into the car. Got to be better than the factory exhaust manifold.
The picture showing the header that's all cut up is going to be the start of a custom built set that will clear everything easily, sweep back across the engine as needed, and use a "3 tubes into one collector--times two idea". A lot of the Hedman Jeep headers are using that same set-up, they have two collectors on them-- the three into two design, but Jeep headers will in no way shape or form fit a car.

[Ed Fernandez]

Why not cut the Hedmans down a way from the collectors and fabricate a dual collector header? My old car now has a step header one collector setup in it. You said you already
put a 110# bar in and the space saver tire, how light are you now for T ?
Call me when you get a chance. (732) 991-7570

[Pinballer]

I'll call you Ed.