1974 Levi's Gremlin X in the PNW

This car was a single-owner Gremlin X that's been garage stored for the last 20 years. Owner just wasn't going to have time for it. He had the seats reupholstered and has a new carpet/insulation ready to go for the interior. He'd removed all of the trim in the hopes of painting it, but lost interest before it could be done, so that's also all included. 

First things first: the gas cap lock won't budge, any ideas there? Also, looking for a good guide for installing the carpet. 

The car came with several boxes worth of interior pieces, and a tidy, but ultimately unhelpful box of bagged and unlabeled screws/bolts. Those have been "fun" to figure out. Seeing it out in the light of day for the first time was a treat!

First step was to thoroughly clean the inside with Simple Green to get all of the crud off the floors. That and the ShopVac took a lot of time, but it darn near sparkled when we were done.

I connected with another Gremlin owner in the Corvallis area who was pulling his running, low mileage 258 from his 76 and happily took it off his hands. At the end of last winter, I enlisted a host of folks to help swap the engine with the 232 in mine. It was COLD. But ultimately, the engine made it in, and we even hooked up a few things!

Later that summer, was able to get the drive shaft installed as well. Took us way too long to figure out why it wasn't rolling free all of a sudden. Back to neutral, back in business.

Rear window, roof rack, and air deflector installed. Still searching for the plastic rub strip pieces, if anyone has some, I'm interested!

Me and my little helper started the Kilmat process.

Happy with how it turned out!  

All of my mechanic help dried up, so next steps is getting someone out to finish the last steps from the engine swap, then I'm hoping we're close to in business. I laid out the new carpet before I hibernated the car last fall, so it's nice and flat, and ready for the reupholstered seats. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks!

I had pulled the car out into the driveway in the late spring to get some breathing room in the garage. I happened to be walking across the street when a neighbor stopped me to ask, "Hey, is that your Gremlin?!" We proceeded to have a lovely chat (their family had a couple of Javelins that are still going today), and he mentioned that his son had an 83 Eagle, and wouldn't you know, he also runs a business working on classic cars from their barn a couple of streets over. A lot of my engine help has dried up, so I was enthusiastic to make the connection!

He came out to the house last week to have a gander and put a few things together. At the end of the day, we realized there was enough there to hook up the battery and see if the radio worked. And we have light!

Very exciting! First sign of life I've seen from it since I got it a couple of years ago. The radio, so far, not so much. Windshield wipers were turning! 

One thing we were seeing: I put in a lower-mileage 258 from a 76 Gremlin to replace the 232 in my 74. When we are attempting to attach the throttle cable to the engine, it's putting the cable about 6 inches out of position with the engine/carb (I think that's where it connects, I could be wrong). He seemed to think there was a different bracket for that connection between the one barrel and two barrel carbs. In the Facebook AMC Gremlins group, a very knowledgeable guy there said he looked at his cars and said the bracket was the same in both cars/engines. Any guidance?