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  #316  
Old 05-25-2022, 04:26 PM
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Also, what the hell is going with the price of Eagles?
When I bought in a wagon was $2000 and needed a ton of work. The community was nearly dead and Eagles were a footnote in automotive history that were even less known than the Pacer. Then as COVID Mania took over, at the same time their popularity flared up. I was seeing new articles, honorable mentions, youtube videos and their value started to creep up. $4000, $8000, $10000...
Last year a late, late '88 model that was in excellent condition and low mileage with all the options went for about $25000, which at the time was a record and kind of understandable because it was in great condition and the last of the last. Then this week an '84 in excellent condition, low miles and considerably fewer factory options than mine smashed the previous record and sold for $41000.

I..Wha....That's silly money. That's Corvette, Firebird and Mercedes money. I can't really explain or understand why their value is now spiking.
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  #317  
Old 05-25-2022, 06:29 PM
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Maybe with the world going to hell an inline 6 that can go off road makes people feel better than a fuel hungry V8 that will scrape it's bottom off on too steep of an entrance to the grocery store parking lot.
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  #318  
Old 07-19-2022, 07:16 PM
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So in the end the rebuild went exceptionally well. It went quite a bit over the expected turnaround time due to problems getting the camshaft bearings to ship but the work finished in mid-June and it went back to the other shop to reinstall it.
THEIR WORK I'm still repairing. It's a whole other nightmare of misrouted hoses, disconnected cables, broken parts and an exhaust leak that persists. I'll probably need to take the exhaust manifold off again to inspect and replace the upper and lower seals because at this point I lost all trust in that shop.

So with the exception of working on that and repairing my prized cruise control my goals this year are:

-Install the brackets for the console
-Install the car phone
-Replace the power seat switches
-Swap in the new 10-disc CD changer with CD-Text support

I'm starting with the center console/gauge package. Because I'm not a "Limited" Eagle with the luxuries of air conditioning or the lower parcel tray I can't have the gauge package because there's no way to secure it to the floor or under the dash. I can fix that with a bit of metalwork but it's tricky because I don't want to drill into the floor or damage the (frankly already ruined) carpet. Instead I cut and shaped a steel bracket that steals two screw studs for the floor shifter and holds down the front of the package. This was the hardest part to do because nothing else could be done until this was secured but now its done and the brackets that reach up and bolt underneath the dash can be fabricated, THEN finally after years of saying I was going to do it, I'm wiring the car phone in.




There's another thing I came across over the winter that I started getting curious about. Secondary Air options. Canadian Eagles initially were available with no secondary are and no catalytic converter. These days that's considered a massive plus because it means you get a serious handicap if and when you need an inspection. Later on however both became mandatory.
The classic AIR system was Air Injection which is often also called the Smog Pump. A mechanical vane pump forces air through a set of valves and lines to either ports at the exhaust manifold flange or a port on the catalytic converter. The goal was that adding fresh air to the exhaust reduced hydrocarbon emissions before it left the vehicle and helped the early catalytic converters from setting themselves on fire.
Universally the smog pump is hated. The air pumps these days are all remanufactured and their bearings are not all that great. The system adds a lot of plumbing and on an Eagle that snakes over and hangs off the valve cover and visually isn't attractive. Before the valve that determines which direction the air is going to go is the diverter valve which suspiciously looks like a Ford part. It vents the system when there is too much air pressure and during deceleration (when you usually cough out elevated hydrocarbons) it stops all air flow and stops backfiring. Overall an older system with lots of parts, but a proven system.

AMC however came out with their own thing called Pulse Air. Naturally aspirated. While I'm aware of positive backpressure being needed by the EGR to meter its operation, the exhaust somehow also creates a negative or near-atmospheric pressure that can be used to draft air in using check valves. The result is a far more simplified system that tucks all the plumbing at the back of the engine.



TECHNICALLY my car supports secondary air. The live data jig says its operating and the extra pins on the harness are present. I do also have most of the parts to add Pulse Air so if I was crazy I could add it to the vehicle and then see if using an Exhaust Gas Analyzer see if it actually works. There are however two big hurdles. One is that I do not have the upstream and downstream ports on my exhaust, especially on the catalytic converter because I don't have one at all. Just a resonator. I'm curious how the ports are plumbed into the main pipe. Is it just a hole in the wall of the pipe? is it using the venturi effect? There's not a lot of information and what information is available seems to conflict. The CeC was redesigned for the 1981-1982 model years. Some sources say Pulse Air was supported then. Every vehicle I've seen so far that still has it installed are later model years after 1983 when the computer was again redesigned. This is reinforced by my ET-501 tester's diagnosis charts clearly indicating that the two control solenoids on the 81-82 years are for "Air Control Valve" and the "Diverter Valve" (the air pump system) and 83 onwards are for "Upstream Air Valve" and "Downstream Air Valve". (Pulse Air)

Asking questions to clear this up or even scavenge parts has been relatively unsuccessful. Often ending with the comment of "You do not want to put that in your car" and "that system never worked".
Well dammit, I'm curious and I kinda want to try it. I don't have a catalytic converter but in theory putting a downstream port on the resonator will do about the same thing.

Last edited by MIPS; 07-19-2022 at 07:25 PM.
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  #319  
Old 07-20-2022, 01:30 PM
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I ended up pulling the drive train on my 47 Oldsmobile to replace the transmission myself because all my guages work and I didn't want some time-is-money mechanic to cut my oil guage capillary tube or speedo cable because they "didn't have time to soak it with penetrating oil overnight". I didn't make anything worse except the exhaust leaks...The exhaust pipe and muffler are older than me and were swiss cheese before I started so I pretty much didn't mess up anything that wasn't pre-ruined.
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  #320  
Old 07-20-2022, 03:27 PM
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I deleted all the smog equipment on my w250 (LA 318 w/ Holley TBI) long ago, the AIR pump was seized anyway and no smog testing in my county. I'm thinking about ditching the Holley TBI and going to a 4bbl carb/HEI dizzy/hotter cam to try to get mo' powah......
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  #321  
Old 07-21-2022, 12:27 AM
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I'm seriously tempted to install it. There's no point as I'm lacking a catalytic converter but it's not like it will cause problems with it being there.....and its not like it would be hard to remove it again. I just need to find a source for the check valves that isn't $30usd each. @_@
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  #322  
Old 07-22-2022, 04:08 PM
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Well that experiment went out the window fast.
I guess one of the check valves I didn't receive with this pile of parts had failed and the exhaust blew out one of the control valves. Messing with Pulse Air was going to be a minimal cost thing but even used those valves are pricy, so I'll put all that away and go back to working on the center console.
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  #323  
Old 07-26-2022, 05:09 PM
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So I will admit that I've had none of my headlight alignment screws working the entire time I've owned the car. It was lousy driving at night, but it wasn't unusable.
Well this last weekend I finally dismantled the entire frond of the car to remove the headlamp buckets and replace all 8 adjusters. One of the buckets is weirdly tweaked even after I reassembled everything but with a quick alignment the beam seemed to be okay.

The other thing is that I discovered that while I have the optional two-tone horn the high-note horn has been dead the entire time as well. With the buckets out I could reach in and remove it and found it had been full of water in the past. Cleaned out the rust, burnished the contacts and blam, I got a two-tone horn!
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  #324  
Old 08-24-2022, 12:08 AM
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Does anyone know the name or brand of this style of connector? I've seen it referred to for older stereo wiring but this has the clip in a different orientation and there's a notch in the other side.


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  #325  
Old 08-24-2022, 11:18 AM
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A quick search found an expensive complete harness, which may not even have both halves:
https://www.amclives.com/products/da...mc-amx-javelin

What circuit connects through this? Maybe a search by circuit name would find something?
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  #326  
Old 08-24-2022, 12:06 PM
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It's the harness end that connects to the solenoid manifold for the "Vacuum Switching Solenoid" (the vacuum-driven half of the Sol-Vac) and both solenoids for the air management. It's very unlikely that it's an AMC-specific part because of how much phoning-in there is with the rest of the vehicle's electrical. The hard part is finding who the connector OEM is because the connectors are being repurposed (EG: a 2-pin GM alternator connector is being used by AMC for the air cleaner temperature switch and a 3-pin Chrysler neutral safety switch connector is being used for the coolant temperature switch and yet another alternator connector variant is used for the washer fluid pump, so even trying to search pigtail ends is a challenge because it's being used in entirely different jobs)

The idea is that with further research you can technically adapt the Pulse Air solenoids to work with mechanical secondary air using two relays but I need to build an adapter that plugs in between the two parts of the harness. Instead of modifying the original harness it makes more sense to use the same connectors and then when I'm done I don't have to convert the connectors back.



I did a similar thing this summer while the engine was out. I replaced that pesky coolant switch with a modern equivalent but instead of altering the factory harness I built an adapter.



I was gifted a replacement air control valve so now other than this and the metal air tubes that go under the car it's ready to go for the test.
Speaking of testing, I finally bit the bullet and bought myself an Exhaust Analyzer. Someone near-ish was selling a Sun Modular Engine Analyzer for $100 and I'll be going to pick it up in a week or so. I see the later model units occasionally for sale around here and they show up at auction and sell for pretty much the same price range and they normally don't sell for a lot but they're massive and this gives me a reason to replace all the stacked boxes in the garage with proper benches and shelving because it it wasn't getting obvious all these spare parts, tools and equipment are turning the garage into a bit of a perpetual mess of things stacked on eachother.

Last edited by MIPS; 08-24-2022 at 12:19 PM.
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  #327  
Old 09-19-2023, 11:09 AM
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Time for another major upgrade.
The wiring harness mostly being assembled by Ford it has the same issue Ford (really everyone at the time) had with the full load of the headlamps routing form the battery, up to the dash, through the headlamp switch and back to the front of the car. Long runs meant voltage drop and that style of wiring was prone to overheating and burning up the headlamp switch and it's associated plug. I talked about this back on page 20 (gee, this thread is long...)

I had to go in and replace the switch in 2020 because the terminal had failed and roasted the switch and the main battery terminal but during the summer my headlamps started to fail again when the high-beams were on. Finally over the weekend I could smell hot plastic and the low beams would flicker out so it was time to go back in and see what failed, plus make a change.
Harness conversion kits are available that relocate the load of the headlights to a pair of relays in the engine compartment, leaving a few hundred mA going through the switch instead of many amps. You simply plug them in to an old headlamp socket, attach a battery link and grounds and you are set. They're also extremely cheap.

Usually you can get away with the packaged wire lengths as everything is nicely crimped and sleeved but the Eagle has a problem in that between the positive post and the front of the car is the battery. Either you mount the relays in the engine compartment and your headlamp wiring is too short or you locate the relays in front of the battery and extend its battery wire an extra 12 inches. I opted for the latter.




While not ideal because a relay issue means pulling the headlamp assembly apart, behind the headlamp bucket is a cavity which will fit a pair of relays with room to spare. I located it as high up as I could to keep water out of the sockets and then routed the battery cable through the adjacent hole, around the battery tray and up to the battery terminal on the starter solenoid. Each lamp socket gets a new ground cable which terminates at a new point on the body. Yes I ground down under the terminals to ensure a good contact. The harness tucks away cleanly in the cable path of the old headlight harness which I left in place but tied back. The white cable clamp below the relays supports the harness so it cannot unplug from the relays.
Then came testing. The new harness plugs into the 3-terminal socket of the old low-beam lamp. For some reason all three wires were incorrect so the socket had to be de-pinned and reconfigured.

Last edited by MIPS; 09-19-2023 at 11:16 AM.
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