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I've gotten the go ahead of my friend to start this thread, because while he is the one who purchased the vehicle and will be working on it, he really just does not have time to monitor or maintain a thread in AI. However he is one of my closest friends and I shall be taking an active part in the ongoing work and documentation of this project, and figured AI would rather be able to watch such a neat old car this way than to not have it at all. Here's the background. Dude can't drive. He doesnt even have a license. He's managed to make it like 30 years without even needing a license, but due to changing work requirements and the desire to be able to move in the coming months he knew it was finally time to pick up his first car. We are currently working on getting him officially licensed, but when the right car happened to come around we needed to jump on it and just loving buy the thing. That car was this: a 1978 AMC Gremlin with the 4.2L carbureted inline six and automatic transmission rated at a healthy 112hp/210 foot pounds of torque.  With whispered promises of working 8 track players and seats straight out of a Crayola factory, we had to go look.  Right away we knew we had something really special. Yeah, its got its dents and dings and rust and problems but this car was cared for with love. The paint was lovingly rubbed up to a presentable gloss, even though parts of it are gone with evidence of old filler underneath. The body does have some through rust, and some concerning rust in the cowl but the underside is solid and dry and free of fatal problems.  The rippling behind the stripe in this picture is not damage or bad paint, its actually reflecting off the surroundings and was most definitely better than I expected to find.  The seats have been redone in bubblegum and turquoise, and the carpets are Crown Royal purple even though it looks a little different in the pictures.  The exhaust was done at some point in the past and remounted crooked, this will be adressed at some point in the future.  Body rot on the rear fender with possible crust under the chrome trim.  Crust and through rust on the drivers door.  The most amazing interior I have ever seen.  Dash is in great shape, with the previously mentioned working 8 track player. What was a pleasant surprise was a professionally installed decent quality radio deck mounted in an under dash location to not ruin the lines, with wires cleanly routed and an aux in/ipod connectivity kit already installed in the glove box.  Missing grill, evidence of filler and badly fading touch up paint suggests a minor front end impact but no further evidence of bent or damaged radiator core support or anything else. Could not find further damage at all.  We noticed the coolant was low so off to the Oreillys around the corner for some various sundries including valve cover gasket, new headlight to replace the one that is burned out, coolant, oil and filter, found the water pump pulley had a moderate but not terrifying amount of play so ordered the water pump and a handfull of other odds and ends. At Oreillys we had someone notice our cars and pull in to check things out and it was like our own miniature car show!    Engine bay looked great aside from the leaking valve cover gasket, a lot of new tuneup parts. Did I mention the air conditioning was converted to R134 already and actually blows cold?  GO ON A DIET FATTY  On the drive home we got a lot of attention. Heads turning left and right for the Gremlin. It's not often I feel jealously upstaged in my Civic but this thing seriously looked amazing rolling in the sun with its bright orange-red paint and hockey stick stripes. We even had an NSX join our convoy for a little while before he broke away from us for his exit.  Maybe not the best day to wear my sleeveless "I <3 BUTT DRUGS" shirt because my arm got cooked pretty loving bad.  With the Gremlin home safe we were amazed that with the exception of the rear hatch popping open unexpectedly on the freeway, it just blasted down the road without a care in the world. There are minor issues though, but its mostly upkeep and maintenance related. Some people may think $3000 sounds high for a Gremlin, but aside from the minor rust and maintenance needs, this car just sat for 2 years and then cruised home almost 2 hours in stop and go and freeway traffic blasting the air conditioning and jamming to tunes. I think he did just fine. As far as this thread goes, I'm more than happy to relay questions and comments and answer anything I can, and look forward to being able to help tinker with this beast.
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Aug 4, 2014 04:11
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So are you going to grab a 360 from a Wagoneer, or just swap the head over from an EFI Jeep?
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Aug 4, 2014 04:31
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Great car, great poster, greatest thread title. My mom owned a Levi's edition Gremlin before I was born and she often talks about how excellent it was, I look forward to the progression of this thread.
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Aug 4, 2014 04:43
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Part of the selling point of the Gremlin was not only was it his first car, it would logically stand to reason that his mechanical abilities are rather limited right now and with how simple the running gear is, its an excellent chance for him to get his hands dirty and learn the basics from the ground up by actual hands on experience. Cant beat a carbureted inline pushrod motor for simplicity, and as he becomes more competent with tinkering I have no doubts he'll wind up doing some crazy poo poo to it at some poit.
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Aug 4, 2014 04:45
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This is awesome, can't wait to see more! Some combination of 4.2 and 4.0 parts somehow makes 4.5L, then turbo it!
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Aug 4, 2014 04:50
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This is awesome. What else did the seller have? I see a Type 2 in the garage...
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Aug 4, 2014 04:58
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Seat Safety Switch posted:This is awesome. What else did the seller have? I see a Type 2 in the garage... Type 2 is the son's project, the gremlin was his daughter's and was being sold to make room for the baby on the way. Dad had a blaze orange Mercury Comet Cyclone convertible with a black top and interior parked around the side of the house.
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Aug 4, 2014 05:44
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I forgot to tell you guys the best part yrsterday in my excitement. The horn has been swapped with the most obnoxious sounding AWOOOOOOOGA horn ever. Parts ordered today: found the missing brake pedal rubber pad NOS on ebay for like ten bucks, ordered the AMC shop manual, and found some NOS AMC logoed key blanks for spares for like 14 dollars for two pairs of ignition and door keys. Finding that the wiper switch is pretty much NLA but discovered the early 70s Ford F100 switch is the same minus overall shaft length so if we swap the shaft from the gremlin it should bolt direct in. Found a pricy website carrying all sorts of "up poo poo creek" available parts such as a 78 specific temperature gauge for the dash cluster to fix the bouncing erratic needle of that winds up being the cause of that issue.
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Aug 4, 2014 20:08
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This thing is awesome and I look forward to spotting it rolling around town.
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Aug 6, 2014 02:26
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Let me know when I am putting together a 4.5L stroker and an EFI harness for this thing, and if you want OBD1 or OBD2  Seriously though, drat that is a pretty clean one. e: My mom drove an AMC Pacer in college and early adult life. She had to turn the air conditioning off to maintain speed going uphill on the interstate and the gearshift knob was missing so my grandfather replaced it with an egg-shaped pepper shaker he found at a garage sale. That's all I've ever heard about it. I'm guessing it had the 232 and a badly tuned carb or something because with a 258 it should have moved pretty nicely. kastein fucked around with this message at 02:50 on Aug 6, 2014 |
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Aug 6, 2014 02:40
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The sheet metal on that thing is nice and thick. It should be easy to weld in patch panels.
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Aug 6, 2014 02:40
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Awesome. My first car back in ~1995 was a 73 banana yellow Gremlin. Had to bondo the poo poo out of it and my mom had stitched together a decent approximation of the Levi's interior on the original seats. The stereo was worth significantly more than the car. Always makes me smile seeing one still kicking.
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Aug 6, 2014 02:47
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This is amazing! I had thought it was the Gremlin that was asymmetrical but I guess not; was that the Pacer or some other little penalty box of the era?
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Aug 6, 2014 20:33
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It was the Pacer that the passenger door was 4 inches longer. Love the term penalty box though and shall be working it into th vocabulary whenever possible!
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Aug 6, 2014 20:55
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The handful of times I met my biological father, he was driving a Gremlin, so I've always had a soft spot for them. Good luck on this one, it looks amazing and a good candidate for cleaning up! Also My favourite was the slogan for the Pacer: "you can't ride like a Pacer if you're not wide like a Pacer". (It was the widest car made at the time of it's debut, one of my childhood friends' morbidly obese mom drove one because it was one of the few cars she could fit in.)
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Aug 6, 2014 21:37
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HotCanadianChick posted:The handful of times I met my biological father, he was driving a Gremlin, so I've always had a soft spot for them. Good luck on this one, it looks amazing and a good candidate for cleaning up! Whenever I think of fat people driving small cars, I think back to this incredibly cruel news segment they had in Edmonton where a rotund lady was complaining to the local news because her Kia Rio kept pulling to the left while she was sitting in it. After a few trips to the dealership, she hit her limit when the dealership guys asked her to sit in the car to preload the suspension as they aligned it, which she took as an offensive suggestion and went to the news. The result is that a semi-local car forum made a copy of the news report and then dubbed over the entire thing with scraping sounds.
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Aug 6, 2014 21:54
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Seat Safety Switch posted:Whenever I think of fat people driving small cars, I think back to this incredibly cruel news segment they had in Edmonton where a rotund lady was complaining to the local news because her Kia Rio kept pulling to the left while she was sitting in it. I was just telling a friend about that earlier today. That poo poo was hilarious. Great thread, 13". Car looks awesome. I wish we got some larger engined RWD hatches over here 
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Aug 6, 2014 23:00
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OK Seriously wtf we have to hang out soon.
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Aug 7, 2014 00:16
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Seat Safety Switch posted:Whenever I think of fat people driving small cars, I think back to this incredibly cruel news segment they had in Edmonton where a rotund lady was complaining to the local news because her Kia Rio kept pulling to the left while she was sitting in it. After a few trips to the dealership, she hit her limit when the dealership guys asked her to sit in the car to preload the suspension as they aligned it, which she took as an offensive suggestion and went to the news. When I was at sears, one of the salesmen told me a story once of a very large couple who brought their smartcar in for shocks, complaining that it scraped going over bumps and around turns. Techs took it out, couldn't reproduce the problem, and couldn't find any issues with it (the car was a few months old). They looked up the specs online and found out its payload capacity (GVR-curb weight) was only 460 pounds. So when they returned to pick it up, he had to very delicately ask the man how much he and his wife each weighed (over 300 each), and then inform them that their bodies exceeded the maximum design weight of the car, and nothing the shop could do would fix it. Shockingly, they were supposedly very gracious about it, and came back a few weeks later in a new Civic, which could actually handle the load.
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Aug 7, 2014 00:24
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Seat Safety Switch posted:The result is that a semi-local car forum made a copy of the news report and then dubbed over the entire thing with scraping sounds.
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Aug 7, 2014 04:39
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SlimManFat posted:I need a link to that. It sounds loving hilarious. I think I heard about the original story but I would kill to see the video.
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Aug 7, 2014 04:42
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Rhyno posted:I think I heard about the original story but I would kill to see the video. As someone who was there for the first, real, live broadcast of whistletips - its never as good the second time.
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Aug 7, 2014 04:50
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Both the original story, and video edit have been seemingly wiped from the internet. Here is a close visual approximation of the event.
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Aug 7, 2014 04:56
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Viggen posted:As someone who was there for the first, real, live broadcast of whistletips - its never as good the second time. Bub Rub will always hold a special place in my heart. They sell clip-in whistle tips at Spencer's now, I keep meaning to buy a few to prank my friends.
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Aug 7, 2014 04:57
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When I worked for Ford, we had a lady (she could have made 4 ladies imo) come in with an F150 because her electric seat controls weren't working (broke it with her walrus rear end). Anyways, having this working was necessary for her as she had to move the seat forward and backwards to get in and out of the truck. She used to get in her truck in the mornings, only eat things that have drive-thrus, only get gas at full-service stations, etc. She'd basically live in the truck all day. But anyways, as I found when I took the seat out, she had a big thing for chicken wings and would throw the bones/sticky ends of the wings under the seat when done. Almost threw up when I had to pick it all out. Could have constructed multiple skeletons with number of loving bones I took out of that truck. Half of them were stuck in the carpet from being covered in wing sauce and left there so long. But that's my rant about fat ladies and garages.
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Aug 7, 2014 05:07
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SlimManFat posted:I need a link to that. It sounds loving hilarious. Unfortunately, the channel did a copyright claim to get it pulled from everywhere I could find it. Here's an image I saved from the thread though:  edit: Here we go. I wonder how to mirror this. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8cskk_global-tv-parody_news I misremembered it as scraping but it's actually a full on narration job. I feel bad for her, because she has to drive a poo poo car with a bad alignment and now it's on the internet.
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Aug 7, 2014 14:20
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Rhyno posted:Great car, great poster, greatest thread title. Seconded on all counts, even the parent's fondly-remembered one -- my dad had one (that I only just realized he must have bought new, or nearly so*), his brother sold it while Dad was in Vietnam (in '70-'71. No wonder he's so annoyed about it, he only had it for like a year at most). (*Well, he would've bought a new car as soon as he'd been promoted to E-5 with jump pay at age 19/20, wouldn't he have?)
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Aug 8, 2014 01:56
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Bad Angus! Bad!
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In Gremlin news, the paperwork is finally finalized and while my friend does not have his license yet, everything else is sorted and Im taking him on the innaugural cruise to a show tonight!
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Aug 17, 2014 00:31
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 8 track works like a charm.  E: maiden voyage. Steering is vague at best and the unassisted 4 wheel drums took some getting used to. It stalled out twice and the headlights randomly cut out. gently caress. Yes. 
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Aug 17, 2014 06:41
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So what would it take for me to "rent" it for a few years?
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Aug 17, 2014 08:58
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OFFICER 13 INCH posted:
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Aug 17, 2014 18:29
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Back from the dead, got some big progress updates once I get home. Bumping to find this thread easier, watch this space!
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Oct 12, 2014 22:53
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There is someone that daily drives a red Gremmy wagon (with the porthole) in West Seattle, every time I see it I have to stare. I'm glad there'll be another Gremlin driving around the city  It looks just like this: Mat_Drinks fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Oct 13, 2014 |
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Oct 13, 2014 00:04
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C'mon 13 inch, you can't blueball us like that.
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Oct 13, 2014 01:36
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Mat_Drinks posted:There is someone the daily drives a red Gremmy wagon (with the porthole) in West Seattle, every time I see it I have to stare. I'm glad there'll be another Gremlin driving around the city Oh my god I had no idea they made a lwb Gremlin. I need this. VVV gently caress it, I still want one. Terrible Robot fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Oct 13, 2014 |
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Oct 13, 2014 01:47
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That's a Pinto.
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Oct 13, 2014 01:49
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Terrible Robot posted:Oh my god I had no idea they made a lwb Gremlin. I need this. poo poo, you have not lived until you've seen a 2.3l turbo pinto blasting through an autox course.  A guy that raced with the local group in San Antonio years a go had a thing for the ford 2.3 turbo power plant. It was as glorious as you could imagine.
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Oct 13, 2014 03:00
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Bucephalus posted:That's a Pinto. gently caress me you're right. In fact this is what the red one I keep seeing looks like: http://www.curbsideclassic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/pinto-cruising-wagon.jpg
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Oct 13, 2014 05:10
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Those things were only 2300lbs. It's screaming for a
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Oct 13, 2014 05:13
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Mat_Drinks posted:There is someone that daily drives a red Gremmy wagon (with the porthole) in West Seattle, every time I see it I have to stare. I'm glad there'll be another Gremlin driving around the city Everything about this particular car is making 8yr old me very excited.
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Oct 13, 2014 11:31
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