Golden Lime SC360

[LetsFNgo]

Moderate update today.
Been a little while. Ran into an issue taking the drivers door apart to replace all the rubbers and door hinges since they’ve been wasted since I bought the car. I could move the door up and down a solid 3-4” at the back because the pins were so worn. I picked up a set in Kenosha and finally got around to changing them.
Rebuilt the door after receiving a care package from a fellow AMC’er with a missing mount and bolt for the front of the window to the regulator. Then this morning I promptly broke the lower mounting stud that bolts to the door. Luckily after a little cleaning and some welding I replaced the threaded portion on the mount and bolted it all together after installing all new rubbers in the door.
Once that was all done today I pulled the car outside and tried driving it. Then drove it home because of how poorly it drove. It DID NOT like 36 degrees lol. After some carb tuning and playing around I ended up with about 30 degrees(initial and total, it’s locked), set the float height so it comes out when I shake the car, went 1/2 a turn in on the idle mixture screws to lean it out a smidge, and changed around my throttle linkage more. It still needs more work but I drove the car on an approximate 10 mile round trip to CVS.


It runs great. No idea what fuel mileage is. But it doesn’t smoke, sounds good, has pretty much instant throttle response once the tunnel ram is good and hot(this is important), and idles at 800. Still a ways away from “good” but I can drive it right now without a problem. My only real issue is returning to idle. I have to wack the throttle so it goes back to a base idle, if I let off nicely it returns but sits at about 12-1500.

Next will probably be replacing the carpet one day soon, and then the front suspension will come apart to get completely rebuilt. I took a week off work at the end of April to try and get ahead of this so I have some time to drive and tune it before its big trip to South Bend.

Also included is the order form from Racetec for the new pistons for the stroker engine. Crank is done. Pistons will be shipped in 4-6 weeks. Then I can come up with a bobweight to have the crank balanced and shipped back to me. So that’s coming along. Just slowly.

Enjoy the photos