1966 AMC Rambler Classic 770 Project

[Thump553]

My parents had a '62 Rambler Classic that five of us learned to drive on, was the only car my mother ever drove. They kept it until the late 70's, my dad sold it without my knowledge when I was away at school. Great if very quirky car-push button auto transmission meant you never ever got stuck even with those skinny tires. One big drawback-huge steering wheel with almost six turns stop to stop (no power steering) meant you arms were very busy-that's why grannies always drove Ramblers so slow.

Very intriguing project, I'm looking forward to following your progress.

 

[LTC8K6]

My 92 and 93 Ford Explorers had kickdown cables.

Yeah, I think my old Tempo had one.

Then there were those vacuum modulators...

People don't know how good they have it today. :biggrin:

 

[FuzzyDunlop]

wow, amc, I didnt know you had a thread going. Nice read. one question though: how big are those brake rotors... they look tiny.

 

[AMCRambler]

wow, amc, I didnt know you had a thread going. Nice read. one question though: how big are those brake rotors... they look tiny.

Thanks. Yeah I work so slow it'll be another 6 months before I've got enough progress to make another update.

Rotors are ~10 1/4". Small by modern car's standards I guess. My GTO's front rotors are 12.5".

The pads are pretty large though and as a result so is the contact area between the pad and rotor. The problem with large rotors is these cars have 14" wheels so the drums and rotors had to be smaller.

Another thing to consider is that newer cars weigh a lot more than these old cars. So the brakes don't need to be as beefy. The disc setup on there is still going to stop the car 10 times better than the old drums did.

 

[JCH13]

:thumbsup:

 

[vshah]

awesome! look forward to your next update, whenever that is

 

[FuzzyDunlop]

if your planning on welding in your floor pans I'd suggest getting some 0.025mm welding wire with 75/25 Argon/CO2.

Set your pan in place over your hole. Tack weld where metal makes contact. Push, press, hammer down the rest of it and tack weld till its almost all in place. THen put some seam welds in. Then spread seam sealer over the edges of the pan (including where you welded). Primer.
After that you could either paint to look stock
OR, what I like to do is use a rubberized coating. Its under the carpet, so nobody is going to look there - and it'll never leak!

 

[AMCRambler]

Thanks for the advice Fuzzy. Ill give it a try.

 

[JCH13]

if your planning on welding in your floor pans I'd suggest getting some 0.023in welding wire with 75/25 Argon/CO2.

:awe:

 

[FuzzyDunlop]

.023in ... yeaaa. dont listen to me. I have no idea what im talking baout.

 

[JCH13]

.023in ... yeaaa. dont listen to me. I have no idea what im talking baout.

:biggrin: Just keeping you honest fuzzy.

 

[AMCRambler]

Floor pans update. Seats and all the carpeting out of the car. I thought it was just the front pans that were bad but I've got trouble spots under the seats and in the rear pans too. Started on some of the smaller areas first that needed a lot of fabricating work. First up, passenger side rear seat anchor.

Where the seats bolt to the floor there's a support rail that runs across the car that was spot welded to the frame rails and floor pan. Lucky me, the sheet metal and support had rusted out right where the seat bolts in. Started the passenger side before I took pics but I snapped some of the drivers side so you can get the idea:

Inside

Underneath

New welder is paying off in spades. I cut out the crap with the trusty dremel and angle grinder:

After cutting the crud out realized the frame rail was rusted out where the support was spot welded to it. Cut that out and fixed it:

Fabbed the replacement part of the support rail, new support in and primed. I tried welding upside down hence the crappy looking underside. Not that it matters, no one is going to see it.

New sheet metal repair panels:

And finally, finished up welding the sheet metal in tonight. Not pretty, as I used .030 wire. Its 18 gauge sheet metal so I thought it would be alright but it was too much wire. Gonna need a spool of .023 like Fuzzy said. I'll clean this up a bit with the grinder and then put some primer on it. Its under carpet when all is said and done so it doesn't have to be perfect.

Trying to decide if I want to do the passenger front floor pan next or repeat this process again for the drivers side.

 

[JulesMaximus]

That's quite the project.

Looking forward to more updates! :thumbsup:

BTW-How's the weather there in Literbike?

 

[AMCRambler]

That's quite the project.

Looking forward to more updates! :thumbsup:

BTW-How's the weather there in Literbike?

Ty Jules.

Its downright balmy. Perfect riding weather.

 

[AMCRambler]

Well I took the summer off because it was too damn hot to work in the garage. Yard work and other things kept me busy. This weekend with cooler weather now here I made some more progress on replacing the floor pans. Started the passenger side floor pan first. Easier to do with no pedals in the way.

I'm a couple hours into now and I've pretty much got it all cut out.

Test fit, nope not quite, needs more trimming.

Here's whats left that came out.

The car is a unibody so there's a big reinforcing channel that runs right underneath the floor pan. The damn thing was spot welded to the floor pan every two inches and with all the damn sound deadening coating the sprayed on finding each weld was a total pain in the ass.

Well I'm beat for today. Maybe tomorrow I'll get the rest of whats still spot welded on that channel and start pounding the replacement panel into the right shape. Its for a Rambler American so its a close fit, but not perfect. Still trying to figure out how I'm going to weld it to the channel. Might buy an el cheapo spot welder.

 

[RamblerMan]

Seems like this post is a bit dated but any information would be great. @AMCRambler Where did you get the floor plans? I've never seen reproductions. If you could email where you got them that would be appreciated.

66.rambler.classic@gmail.com

Jason

 

[mspencer100]

i am replacing the rusted out heater core section, on my 1965 AMC Classic 770 and ran across you post here a few years back. I have the repair section and am not 100% sure yet the best way to attack this. Any guidance is greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Mark.

 

[AMCRambler]

i am replacing the rusted out heater core section, on my 1965 AMC Classic 770 and ran across you post here a few years back. I have the repair section and am not 100% sure yet the best way to attack this. Any guidance is greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Mark.

Well the repair for that was a pain in the arse for sure. I cut out the rusted sections with my Dremel, polished the edges down to bare metal and test fitted a bunch of times till I had a half inch of overlap all the way around. Since it was so tight in there and I didn't want to remove the dashboard, I actually used a metal bonding glue on the repair panel to attach it and then ran sheet metal screws through it to pull it on tight. There was not enough room in there to weld without taking the dashboard out so I used one of those two part epoxy adhesives for bonding metal. Worked well.

I caulked the seam all around from above to make sure it was water tight. After it had all dried and I had painted it and I then dumped a couple bucket loads of water into the cowling to test the water tightness and it worked great.

I have pics somewhere I can send you if that helps. PM me an email address.

 

[BUTCH1]

OP, did you rebuild/test the donor V8 before installing it?, anyway cool project, I like that body style and it's not going to be a car that very commonly seen, even at shows.

 

[AMCRambler]

Compression was good on the donor motor so no I didn't. I was doing the engine swap in my parents garage when I was in college so my dad wasn't going to let me tear it down and rebuild it anyway and I had a small budget. I scraped all the crud off and painted it up though. I wish I had time to clean the engine bay in my car while the motor was out but the old man wanted his garage back ASAP so it wasn't going to happen.

Did some looking around and the epoxy I used was something similar to this:

http://www.eastwood.com/no-weld-panel-adhesive-replacement.html

Works for something like that cowl patch panel that isn't really structural but more acts like a gutter to channel water out the fender drains. Need to search the desktop PC for the pics of that work.