REBEL/M-XRV8

Hoping this'll help a fellow AMCer who needs windshield wipers to pass state inspection:

Not too difficult to adapt the $10 '89 Ford Mustang/Motorcraft wiper motor* to the stock original vacuum motor mounting plate -had to enlarge the center hole & drill the three holes to mount the electric motor. *It looks identical to the wiper motors AMC used on later Gremlins and Hornets.

I copied the stock vacuum motor arm length @ 2 inches (and the stock Mustang wiper arm was about 2" also) ~but~ with everything installed... oops! this was too much travel distance for the wiper blades!

So I had to shorten the wiper motor arm, down from 2" to 1 3/4", which now works 'perfect' and the wiper blades travel their correct distance across the windshield.

(it's not 'bling', but it sure is beautiful to me to see and know the wipers work now, as this is a required item to pass Tx state inspection -to make the car legal)







The center to center distance, between the red dot and wiper link arm pivot needs to be 1.75" for AMC Rebel converted from stock Trico vacuum motor to a common Motorcraft electric motor.

...so the car has good working windshield wipers now.



Edited by amcenthusiast - Sep/13/2019 at 9:24am

Nice work!

Thanks for your positive comments.

...sometimes I have some really good creative ideas, but many times not.

So (just between you and me) many times, when I don't have an excellent creative idea, what I do? is I just start working on it, whatever it is, and 'just let it come together'.

For example, some Rambler V8 people might say 'you can't put 2 1/4" pipes on Rambler V8 exhaust manifolds'.

What I did? I didn't really have any excellent creative idea but I just got started on it, to get the job done.

So by merely examining the various pieces, I found that a 2.25" tube matches the stock Rambler V8 exhaust manifold flange ...when it's inverted (turn the stamped steel flange upside down)

Here's what I ended up doing and it works. Now the car has 2.25" pipes on RV8 manifolds.



So here's a 2.25" tube fully welded onto a stock inverted Rambler V8 exhaust manifold flange.

No way a conventional '66-'91 AMV8 exhaust donut would fit in there; there's just not enough distance between the studs on the manifold.

The tube has to be dimpled, where the nuts go onto the studs, in order to thread on (not enough space left for the nuts to go on)

We can see a dimple, looking into the tube, in this next pic:



The 'exhaust donut' is the same old spacer from the stock sized pipes. I spent some time 'massaging' the part so it fits good and slips into the inverted flange 'just right'.



Kinda reminds me of an anti-reversionary header design. It 'necks down' a little bit, but hey -better than a 2" or 1 7/8" tube, like what came stock on most Rambler V8s.

I really like having stock exhaust manfolds because they're totally troublefree.

Now the car has a leak free quiet exhaust system to pass Tx state inspection!


Edited by amcenthusiast - Sep/13/2019 at 9:14am

...finally found a link to info pertaining to mid-engine car design, which is also related to the design of ships -where they should place the center of gravity within the ship.

Edited by amcenthusiast - Sep/30/2019 at 12:33pm

Here's looking under the back of the car to see the mufflers and tailpipes:



It's an understatement to simply say I really like the way the exhaust system turned out.
(I really like this a lot) It all fits 'just the way I wanted it to', and it sounds very good IMO; not too loud/not too quiet > medium loud -'a nice turbo muffler sound' with healthy bass tone at idle, but it's quiet enough to hear the 4bbl instead when you stomp on the gas pedal (this should sound great with fully tuned Thermoquad carb)

Notice the entire undercarriage is fully painted satin black -only engine, transmission and exhaust pipes are left alone (all silver tones) A lot of work done and it looks good under there IMO.