1982 AMC Concord: Project Sedate Sedan Sleeper

Sedate Sleeper  VS  Road Warrior

Having AMC Fun,

Ollie

Hey there. Thanks a lot. It's always going to be an ongoing project because I have a lot more planned for it. At least the lion's share of the work is done now.

Keep going with your Eagle. Don't give up.

I was dumbstruck at the rate of failure on all these different parts... And... I also forgot to include that I had a Wix oil filter fail on me too which started giving me fluctuating oil pressure readings. 

But the things that made me the most upset was the Redhead box and the Addco bar. Both were pretty pricey to have not work... I can handle the power steering pump or the bushing... But that Redhead box especially wasn't cheap! 

I tried to swap to the Addco front sway bar and it didn't fit. I could get the chassis sway bar bushings to sit on the bar but the bar was too wide at the ends to connect to the end links and be able to sit in between the tires. I called Addco... The would not refund me because I bought them from Jegs three years ago. They did tell me to send them my stock sway bar and they would re-bend on based in the OEM shape. So... That's was a huge waste of money. I would have to pay for two bars to be shipped back to them... So basically I'd pay three times the price of their bar new just to get what I thought I was buying up front! 

Then I tried to swap the Redhead quick ratio gear box... The thing wouldn't take fluid and couldn't be bleed properly. Spent 5 days messing with it. Decided to rip it out and return it. What a huge headache that was. I ended up just buying one from NAPA instead.. which worked fine.

Next I tried to swap the power steering pump with a Lares Remanufactured unit from Rock Auto. Nope... It wouldn't pump fluid out of the box!!! Again... Back to NAPA... Theirs worked fine... 

After that I swapped out the strut rod bushings to Mevotech rubber ones because I hated how harsh the poly bushings made the ride. I could feel all the shock in the dash board. They were ridiculous. So the rubber bushings were fine for about two weeks until they started knocking. I took the car to the shop thinking maybe something loosened up... Nope... The rear bushings were already "beat out" and the metal sleeve was touching the strut rod mounts! So then I had to contact a local guy who had a set of old stock Clevite bushings. I have to try those now!

And finally... The distributor I swapped in has started spraying oil out of the distributor shaft gasket! I tried to get two new gaskets... They both allowed oil to spray out and gather on top of the timing chain/oil pump cover. So I spent the last several months scouring eBay for a good OEM distributor and came up with a brand new Mopar Performance Distributor the other day. I literally punched in the part number I had for it into eBay, found it and won the bid within 10 minutes of finding it. It was an incredible piece of luck considering how many times I wanted to give up and finally just buy an MSD instead. Anyway... I sincerely hope this distributor will get me a good seal at shaft gasket now.

Last but not least... The car has been running fantastic... I knocked down 16mpg recently...