REBEL/M-XRV8

Watching this with interest, we have a racing class in Australia known as Sports Sedans, which are basically very heavily modified road course cars. Back in their heyday, mid mounted engines were fairly common, very quick and spectacular to watch. Quite a bit of interest in them from a historic racing perspective these days, bit like your historic Trans Am series.

Found a one year only '69 Rebel rear bumper and bought it from 'gonethang' seller on eBay (good price and EXCELLENT fast shipping -got the bumper four days later)

-had to buy another left rear tail light lens (mine had busted out holes in it) thanks to that eBay seller too

Fabricated my own light weight rear bumper brackets (took me about four hours) and dummied the rear of the car together.

Pics, viewing car from the rear:





-Noticed the recessed area between the taillights on the '69 models matches the recessed areas below, on the bumper.

(A '69 Plymouth Satellite has a similar recessed area between the tail lights, but I think AM's Rebel looks better...)

The 'bright metal' Rebel SST trim that would occupy the recessed area hearkens to what many other US car makers decorated the rear of their cars with throughout the mid sixties... like a '64 Chevelle Malibu, SS Nova or Ford Fairlane.



Edited by amcenthusiast - Jan/02/2019 at 6:09am

'Plan B' for this car is to make the engine cover (future task) completely hide the engine from view, to give the car a better chance of becoming street legal (make it appear to be more tame/less insane)

To do that, it'll need a less tall induction system... which is great excuse to see if I can tune this '77 800 cfm Carter Thermo-Quad on the custom fabbed spread bore intake manifold I made during the XRV8 Gremlin project.











Thanks AMC Forum for letting us share our pics and info here with other AMCers.


Edited by amcenthusiast - Sep/27/2018 at 10:37pm

And yes I'm planning to see if I can tune the secondary air plates using the stock internal spring first (somewhat like the Carter AVS) ~if the spring seems not up to the task, I plan to try adding counterweights to the secondary air valve plates (to help the spring) like a Carter AFB.

Only if all else fails, I have the complete choke and vacuum pulloff in order to put the secondary air valve back into it's original configuration... and this is the only reason I've left the choke horn intact, otherwise, I look forward to removing the air horn and radiusing the entrances to the throttle bores where possible.

Thermo-Quads are famous for their gutsy four barrel sound when one stomps on the gas pedal.


Edited by amcenthusiast - Aug/31/2018 at 9:14pm

Thank you for the really-nice positive comment.

Since the current lifter gallery/valley cover on the 327 has a cut down oil filler pipe to look much better alongside the tall intake runners, I'm pretty sure the oil filler/crankcase breather cap will be 'in the way' when I try to install the dual plane spread bore intake manifold.

So the dual plane manifold needs it's own lifter gallery cover to go along with the installation.

This particular used lifter gallery cover came with the '64 2bbl 327 I bought from John's Auto Salvage in Seguin, Tx.

It's bent oil filler pipe demanded repair and it's always a good idea to clean a used Rambler V8 valley cover because there may be hidden crud inside the baffle cavity.