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AMC 360 Beautification and Installation

12K views 44 replies 16 participants last post by  Matt1981CJ7 
#1 ·
I just picked up a running AMC 360, Jasper rebuilt with 10k miles ($500), and I'm planning on cleaning it up, mating it to a T176/Dana 300 combo and swapping it into my CJ to replace the 304/T150/Dana 20. This is just to keep track of where I am, make it easy to share with my uncle, and so if I'm doing something terribly wrong someone will hopefully point it out.

Got the engine unloaded from the truck (that's the last time it will ever see 20mpgs)







Then I sprayed it down with more oven degreaser and hit it with the pressure washer, covered myself in dirt in the process, but it looks cleaner now. I think there's a small oil leak at the valve cover gasket, but I'm taking those off when I paint it and putting new gaskets on. Now it's hanging in the garage, mostly clean.



There's so much emissions crap and unnecessary things on this motor, I'm taking all the smog stuff off and converting the A/C compressor for on-board air because I can just take the top off and on-board air is the bees knees.



I finally got almost everything off, only had one broken bolt. PO broke a bolt in the block for the exhaust manifold and then put it back together like that (*******), so I need to PB Blast it and try to get it out with an easy out before drilling and tapping.





Tomorrow, I'm breaking out the air tools to try and get that flex plate off and then putting the block on the stand. Flex plate gets replaced with a flywheel when it goes back together.

Bungie cord keeps the motor from spinning.

First question, what kind of tape do I use to cover the surfaces when painting? I tried blue painters tape, but it wouldn't stick to the metal.
 
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#29 ·
Welp I was racing a lexus and about two lights later the bottom end of my 304 went so that really sped my progress along. For a little while I thought it was a bad ignition module or the timing was off, but when I started pulling plugs to check for TDC, I knew it was over.



I broke a bolt trying to lift out this motor and stuff with the little lift chain that I had which scared the piss out of me, so I figured I might as well get the big one out and just wrap the motor. It was surprisingly balanced at that point and came out pretty easily.



Tried to sell the motor/transmission/transfer case on CL with no luck, but a dozen scrap companies were willing to haul it for free so I went that route. The engine bay was dirty and the frame was oily and greasy, good thing a nice thick coat of oil keeps the rust away.



My girlfriend, Jenna, worked with me the entire time and got filthy.



Blurry picture of the painted engine with valve covers. The valve cover studs I bought were good for all of the holes except the 4 where I had spark plug wire loom rails going so I had to make a few extra studs out of random bolts I had laying around.




Old intake manifold I got off of craigslist, AMC performer. It was dirty, busted out the dremel and a few packs of wire wheels to shiny it up. Wouldn't recommend it to anyone, but once you start you can't really stop. Took forever, only looks ok, and according to the pdf owners manual there's a special cleaner that would've worked fine. Also, I burned out a dremel that was less than a year old (still under warranty). I hope someone reads this and it helps them.



Got the engine bay cleaned up, flat black high temp on the firewall, gloss black chassis paint on the frame and axles. I had to take the tires off and lower the front of the frame down to be able to open the hood wide enough (full fiberglass front clip) and the rake of the frame like this made getting the engine with transmission in a little easier.



Then Kevin wanted to be the engine for a bit. He sounded better than most v8s.



I didn't want to lift up the engine with the chain again because I didn't want to break any bolts and the big chain would've been too long. I was nervous at first, but I caved and bought a lift plate with some grade 8 hardware and it worked great, held nice and tight and felt much better than a chain. Once I got the engine off the stand I could put the flywheel bolts on, which were different than the auto flywheel bolts I took off. Luckily, my dad had 5 of the 6 I needed in the everything bucket from when he changed his CJ over to an automatic because of knee issues (sometime in the 90's). Carquest had 1 bolt that would work and it only took 20 minutes of looking in the back to find it.



Once I got the clutch mounted with the throw out bearing and clutch fork all in the bell housing, I went for a (preemptive) victory pose before lowering it down to attach the transmission/transfercase.



I ran into problems with the transmission being stuck in third even when it looked like it was in neutral. It would shift into other gears, neutral, or third but never could come out of third. I figure this is because it was in third when I pulled the cover and when I flipped it upside down to paint it the rail could've come loose or something. It took a few hours, and a , but we finally figured out that one of the gears was stuck and needed a little persuasion with a screwdriver. Shifts smoothly between all the gears now. :2thumbsup:



Got the transfer case bolted on and new fluids in with some permatex to seal it all up. I couldn't find one of the two longer bolts that hold the top shift cover on so it's missing one of those for now.



Set the engine down on a couple short rail road ties and put the transmission on a floor jack to get everything lined up. Add in a little assembly grease and it went together like butter.




Got the engine up in the air, it took two tries to put it in (should've had the boom extended the first time). When we were sliding it in, the lift got a little unweildy so we had to counter weigh it with people/person.



Although we had it lowered, we still needed to lift up the tail end to clear the front of the frame. Used a piece of gas pipe and a johnson bar between the transfer case and transmission so it wouldn't slip while two people held there, two others were pushing it in. Worked well, had to swap which bar we used to get around the radiator supports.



All this moving around got Pat worried that we were hitting the light with the clip. It was ok.



Once the engine was more or less in place, we sent the big guy under to help manhandle it into place. He didn't mind too much.



Finally got the engine down on the motor mounts with the transmission supported temporarily.



BAM! Most of the wiring and stuff done.



Unfortunately the stupid connections on the top of the steering column for the ignition switch kept hitting the frickin' brake pedal bracket and the wires wouldn't reach. I remounted the little white switch at about the 2 o'clock mark so the wires would reach and it would be out of the way, and broke the damn rod that connects it to the key tumbler. I tried to make a new one out of two coat hangers wound together with a nylon clamp holding it on track, but it's not really stiff enough to hit the last part of the switch. I also broke the damn horn button taking the column apart and putting it back together so many times. Any suggestions on what to use as a replacement that wont bend as easily? I'm going to use heat to bend it this time. :brickwall:




I swapped steering boxes with a waggy box and a tilt column for a non tilt column because both of those were shot on my Jeep. Everything feels much tighter now, but it's still irritating.

Lesson to learn: Don't paint your starter, you'll get paint inside of it and then you'll go to start the jeep after the swap and it wont go.

Hopefully, two of these will work. I know the right three wont.

 
#35 ·
Someone local had a starter and the right drive shafts and another bent power steering pulley, so I'm a little further than before. Turns out the starter thing wasn't my fault, it was a sealed motor so paint shouldn't affect it, but either way, I swapped in a stock style starter and ran a dedicated ground. Turned the key for a minute or so and she fired up and revved way way high. Turns out my throttle cable linkage is too short and was pulling the throttle back so it's disconnected until I can modify the bracket or make a new one. Once I got that all disconnected so it should be at idle, the carburetor kept flooding out of these two holes.



Figured something was wrong with the float level and when I took it apart I quickly realized that they were installed upside down and wanted to smack myself. Flipped them over, readjusted them, and stuck it back on the intake. She fired right up, needed a little idle adjustment, but stayed running! There's a clicking at the exhaust manifolds where they weren't torqued, and the passenger side gasket wasn't square when installed so it's got a big leak at the manifold flange around cylinder 1, but they're fixable issues. The bigger issue was that I used rust reforming primer on the headers before I painted them with header paint, and it's not rated for hot surfaces.



On the plus side the metal underneath is perfectly smooth and shiny so when I repaint them, they should look real good. I have to get new u-joint straps as the dana 20 used u-bolts to hold the u-joints on, but the dana 300 uses the straps.
 
#37 ·
That's too bad about the manifold paint.

FYI, I used the VHT paint, straight to bare metal with no primer, on my manifolds. It's held up beautifully. :thumbsup:

Matt
That's the plan for one of these weekends. Strip off whats left and repaint without the primer.

Finally took it out for a test drive today. It's in 4-low and I need to figure out the D300 shift pattern to fix that. It doesn't have power steering, but bigjoe is selling me a power steering pump pulley so that'll be taken care of soon as well.
 
#39 ·
No luck figuring out why she wont run for more than ten minutes at a time, I tried and insulating gasket between the carb and manifold because I thought it was vapor lock but that didn't help. I pulled the plugs and they all had white on them, with just a cumulative 3 hours running.
Plugs in order, 1-8









These are Champion RC12YC plugs, the stock ones for a 1991 AMC 360 with a .35" gap. From what I've read, either these plugs are too hot or my timing is off. I'm going to throw a timing light on it tomorrow, but I'd appreciate any input on my issue.
 
#43 ·
No, I have the MSD 6AL with a MSD Blaster 3 coil, bigger cap and rotor, and MSD wires. I think it has to do with the dual plane manifold not sending fuel through at the same rate. I'm going to try to adjust the air/fuel mixture screws and maybe put an open spacer. If those don't work, I might try staggering the jetting, although I don't want to do this. Any recommendations?
 
#45 ·
Cowjuice,

I doubt your problem is the manifold. I'm running the same one, and my plugs are all very consistent in color (see pic).

Is the choke engaged during the 10 minutes that it runs? If so, it could be that your carb tuning is way too lean, or you have a major vacuum leak, and the choke is richening the mixture enough to allow it to run. When the choke opens up, the mixture goes way lean and she dies.

I'd start by looking for a vacuum leak.

Matt
 

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