Golden Lime SC360
 

I have a thread going on the amc forum but I thought I’d also create one here as well.

I’ll start this story September of last year. Months earlier I had spoken with a gentleman about some AMC parts he had for sale, during our conversation he mentioned that he owned an SC360 Hornet. He purchased it in the mid-late 80’s with a blown up 360 and planned to build a race car out of it. However life got in the way and the car sat, first in a driveway, then at a storage unit, then in a field behind a garage about 5 minutes from my house.

However he was not ready to sell it. So I moved on. However in September he calls me, interested in selling the car. Turned out he was behind on storage fees and needed to move it. Luckily I knew the owner of the garage and was able to go inspect the car. This is how I found it.

After inspecting thoroughly and hearing his very modest asking price, I immediately jumped on buying it. Next post will be that.

I love these SC360’s!!! What trans? What rear?

Ryan W31

So…

A week goes by, everything is set up, Saturday morning arrives, and I’m able to pick up the car. We all meet up, the owner of the garage gets paid his back storage fees, I pay for the car, and I have my dad and a friend to load the car on a flatbed for the trip home. I wasn’t going straight home as I had to go to a storage unit and pick up a bunch of the parts that the old owner removed to build his “race car”.

The car itself is a 4 barrel 4 speed SC360. One of 306 in that powertrain combo. AMC built a total of 784 SC360’s across all of the powertrain options.

Now the car is home and I have to come up with a plan.

T10 4 speed and it has 3.54’s in the rear. I’m not sure if it was 3.54 or 3.91 originally.

4 speed!!!

Now the car is home and needs to be cleaned. My dad and I spent some time giving the car a bath and going through all the parts included with the car. The trunk was full of parts, and I was given several totes worth of parts with the car.

I also love finding out the history of these cars and lucky for me, the guy I bought it from never titled it in his name so I was able to hunt down the owner before him and get a bunch more info for the next post.

It was also accepted into MCACN barn finds 2024 when I purchased it. I’ve been incredibly blessed to have a car at the show both in 2022(1970 Challenger) and 2023(my Barn Find SC/Rambler). And now I’m hooked. It is the greatest muscle car show on earth and I can’t wait to be a part of it again.

With the old owners name I began google searching and ended up finding a random phone number. Taking the chance I called the number. The gentleman picked up and I explained why I was calling. He was thrilled!

Turns out Henry(his name) bought the car from behind a butcher shop in Northern NJ in 1978. He was 13 or 14 years old. It was a basket case. He spent all 4 years of high school building the car, and skipping school to hunt down parts and put it together. He was able to send me 1 picture he had, though he says he will go through some albums at some point because he’s sure he has more photos. He also sent me photos of the plaque his mom had made for him. She worked at Bendix aviation and had some of the guys make it as a gift.

He drove the car from about 1981-1986. He had 4.88’s in the rear and one day spun a main bearing in the 360 he built and lost oil pressure. He was about to get married and his soon-to-be wife didn’t like the car anyways. So he sold it to the guy I eventually bought it from.

Henry told me he searched for years trying to find the name of the guy he sold it to, but never had any luck. We still keep in touch and he’s thrilled to know the car is still around.

Because of how relatively solid the car is, I decided that I would like to eventually drive it as is. I already had another 360 amc short block that needed a thorough cleaning, along with a nice cam and all the other parts needed to build an engine. I’ve also hunted down some of the missing parts

I decided to build the 360 like an 18 year old in the early 80’s would. Scrounging for parts. And using what’s available. So the 360 will end up with 993 dogleg heads, a Lunati cam originally spec’d for the Car Craft CC/Rambler, an old R4B Edelbrock, and a 1030 cfm 3 barrel Holley that I bought and rebuilt a year or 2 ago.

Now let’s check the trans that came with the car. Though not original it is a 2.64 first gear 1968 T10. And put the engine and trans in the car. Also at this point I have the 4 wheel manual drum brakes rebuilt and I’m a couple of lines short from being able to bleed them and hopefully I can have 3 working pedals soon.

Also I found a set of J bolt AMC traction bars. And a set of widened magnum 50’s with H50-14 Mickey Thompsons which will look badass on this car

I found an old Accel dual point and figured I would start getting the engine more together and ready to run.

This is basically where I’m at as of now, 4/13/24. I’m happy to answer any questions anyone might have and will update more once I get something else done.