Full Build: Transforming an AMC Javelin to a 70s Muscle Machine

today on detroit muscle we start the process of taking our amc javelin back in time with an old-school theme but first we have to see what makes this classic car tick [Music] hey folks welcome to detroit muscle today is an exciting day for us because we're introducing a brand new project car and this time it's going to be a pony car now when you're talking about pony cars there's been much debate over whether they're muscle cars or not but they've got a v8 under the hood well that's good enough for us we're talking camaros mustangs cougars firebirds and trans ams cooters and challengers and let's not forget the amc javelin now love them or hate them you cannot deny that this thing is covered up with style and when we got this thing in well we had some pretty big dreams for it and we found what we thought was the perfect candidate down in alabama so we headed down there with the truck in the trailer to take a look at it we did like you normally do when you're checking out a used car we fired it up checked out the interior i really like this cockpit too the headliner is wild you could replace that i guess if you wanted to but i don't want to that's cool and made sure it drove [Music] so we decided we'd pay the man loaded it on the trailer and it was ours and with the heritage that these cars have well that inspired our original plan mark donahue and roger penske put anc in the winner's circle with numerous wins and trophies to show off cars are spectacular on the racetrack because they don't go around like they're on a rail they slide and drift pick wheels up in the corner they're really fun to watch with what they did in those races cm in an amc's place in the history books to follow that success amc developed performance versions of the javelin to offer to the public including the mark donahue edition and the javelin amx these hypo rides were offered for several years but amc was a little late to the game by this time the gas crisis and epa standards had killed performance and the muscle car era was over now we absolutely love early 70s trans am cars and you can't deny those red white and blue amxs now to build a car like that you're going to need several components big gnarly power up under the hood some tricks suspension huge brakes and some wheels and tires to handle all that exactly and let's just say this isn't a camaro or a mustang there's just not as many parts available so it's gonna be a lot more work and we definitely did not want to shortchange a build like that and you have to think about the time as well to build something of that nature well it takes months if not years to complete and after having this thing sitting around here in the building for a bit well we realized we were missing an excellent opportunity let's just call it old school cool playing off amc's undeniable 70s style this ride is begging to be transformed into a muscle machine with fats in the back skinnies up front and a raked out stance to show off its backside its outside appearance is going to stay red but with an old school scheme i sure can't wait to get started on this thing because i'm digging what we're fixing to do absolutely yeah this is something we both love and this is the perfect car for it but before we dig into it get started i want to drive it because i only drove it from where it was parked at the guy's house to onto the trailer and just that little bit like the seat's comfortable steering feels nice i like the cockpit and i've never really driven one of these so i'll get the door for you buddy appreciate it it's gonna be awesome [Applause] don't forget to pull the choke oh yeah oh come on baby i bet tommy drained the gas jokester ah there we go coming up we take our humpster on the road and then put it on the dyno to see what upgrades it needs to become a muscle machine oh i'm taking this old javelin out for a spin and so far i like it it drives like a like a sedan of the same arrow would just like steering's like real slow big steering wheel it's not doesn't have the feel of a performance car and i know this isn't a performance trim level this isn't an amx but it feels more like a luxury coupe minus minus the leather more like a t-bird would have been or something like that the ergonomics of this thing is great though i love the way that the cockpit feels and that's what i liked about it right off the bat when i when i pulled it into the trailer is you know just the way it feels to sit in here i guess it feels more like a european maybe more like a european grand touring car would feel so you know it's got it's very european now that i'm now that i'm in here it's kind of making sense kind of like a maserati or something like that or a uh aston martin now i know this is different different ball game there but it just kind of has like that's what they were going for when they designed this car and you can really see the hump in the fender it's very pronounced from the driver's seat and it really makes you feel like you're driving something special and the steering it really feels like i'm driving a big car kind of floats down the road steering's nice and soft you know the seat's super comfortable but yet i'm sitting low and like i mentioned that fender you know it just feels feels like a sports car that's just missing the pet you know which i like that because we can add the pap brakes feel great again nothing you know nothing performance related but it was a pretty tight turn there and i only gave it about a quarter of a turn of input so maybe the steering isn't as loose as i thought but definitely numb feeling not getting much feedback from the from the road through the suspension see how this power application is well it didn't kick down like i thought it would just then so we're not sure which engine this is uh this car was available with just about every engine option they had in the day which is ranges from a 304 all the way up to a 401 uh it's probably not a 401 being that it's it is this pierre cart in addition but it could be anywhere in between though all right kick down there oh yeah it just floats it's pinging a little bit too yeah it definitely needs more power there's no question about that but i'm sure back in 1973 when this car was new whoever bought it drove this thing off the lot was just really happy and probably a cool dude driving it off the driving off the lot with a polyester shirt probably some corduroy pants and some loafers he was the king of the road i guarantee you that but overall i mean if just on its own it's a nice riding and driving car i would i could take this car on a long road trip no problem again really the only thing i would would change is i'd had some more power and if i was gonna do a lot of spirited driving with it you know change the change the steering a bit make it a little more sporty but this is just a nice cruiser you know if you're into oddball you know low production numbers front engine rear-wheel drive v8 american-made two-door cars this is a nice car and they're not really that expensive to get a lot of bang for your buck with this car and i'm sure it was the same way when it was new if you were daring enough to buy one in instead of a challenger a mustang or a camaro feels like a really really well-built car this is the kind of car my wife wouldn't complain about riding in you know it's not loud doesn't smell bad it's reliable rides nice lots of room for a two-door it's a it's an awesome car well all i need to do now is get it back to the shop and get it on the dyno i want to see how much power this thing makes and figure out what we need to do about that and make some improvements numbers don't lie and how impressive will ours be we strap our javelin to the dyno well mark finally got back after his joy ride of stretching the legs on this old amc now we have it strapped to the dyno and we're pretty much ready to see what kind of numbers this thing's going to make you fellas ready absolutely no before you get started this car where's it ben because uh when i was out doing burnouts in the parking lot and uh we said we're going to build an engine we built an engine for this thing so you're still going to build an engine it's just a different one different one okay tell me a story we actually have we figured out a better plan for the entire build and that means a different engine okay well i'm all for it but you know you know how we are we'll build anything but this will be a cool one but i'm very curious to see what this makes because we're out doing uh j turns and reverse slams and burnouts it seemed pretty spicy but the roller tells a story so all right let's find out [Music] all right you you don't have attack in there do you no attack okay i'll see if you can see that uh right now we got good signals down just a little bit what are you gonna run it up to uh let's go to five on the first one see what happens i like this i like the way you think are we taking predictions on how much it's gonna make i definitely won't have a two in the in the in the number right i might it'll be a one two it won't be a two in the first number i'll not start with two all right it should make i should have took that bet well i got a good lunch at least if it makes 160. i'm gonna be like there you go it's gonna be crazy for 150 i hope yeah i was going to say 180 but i think that's probably uh kind of hopefully come on come on let's go let's dyno is that [Music] well let's see here well no 2200rs well it's got it's got a big wave in it right now we can't uh we can't actually get a number on that it kicked down so i i got out of it it kicked down that's the great craziest looking dyno graph ever i'm just going to go ahead and get rid of that why don't you delete that and let's do it again it's his first day i'll see if i can prevent it from kicking down this time it's crazy as that line looked just then that kind of matches the amc everything about it's kind of odd okay ready yeah i'm gonna try to get it to not kick down this time [Music] foreign every minute i thought i was going to need a protective vest on well i thought i thought i was going to need a sundial retirement with i don't know that sounded like a hundred horse that was a long pull that was long whoa baby we were all way off are you ready for this yeah 132 horse would it make it peak it's not mad peak was somewhere at uh 3 800. okay i mean try to get your head to roll into his kicking down try try another one all right it uh it did make 200 pound feet of torque all right yeah i felt that oh man all right here we go i love it make sure you push it all the way down this time i had it had my foot in the carburetor [Music] oh man we stepped her up okay 133. man we keep doing this a hundred times okay probably won't get much better 201 pound feet i guess there's no point in me pulling it up that high though right i mean unless you want to replace the engine no no initially it's not i know a guy it's not falling off i mean it's not cratering it just doesn't have any power yeah it runs fine what what i mean what causes that i mean i know what causes that but i mean this is a 73 yeah 73 uh i mean smog engine i mean and it's kind of small cubic inch dude it's got everything going against it it's 304 cubic inches or whatever very small cubic inch uh it's a small gear engine so the compression is very very low it has a whole bunch of stuff that's tuned specifically for emissions not for outright power so uh just the fact that uh it it it's making that is pretty good i know it seems kind of lame but that's definitely uh easy to improve what could you do with that engine well that is a this just because it's a smaller engine doesn't mean it's not going to make power the kind of like a 302 ford right you get cylinder heads for it you can get cams for it uh you can definitely spiff it the big thing that makes these run better is compression this thing i i would be surprised if it was over eight five to one so you get it up to around ten to one put a put a little cam in it uh you can significantly increase the power i wouldn't venture a guess but uh we we could uh we could significantly improve it but it'd have a two in it though right it would definitely have a two in it at the start or a three hopefully i don't know it's hard to predict on this one but it's still got all its guts there's nothing puking out on the ground and it didn't blow a tire they must have one of them heavy duty oil fans too because nothing comes yeah see the worst thing to have is a catastrophic oil pan failure so that sounded like an offer absolutely no get get that thing out i'd like to for one what we're gonna do is i'm gonna put that on the engine dyno i'll clean it just to see what it makes you know from a driveline loss standpoint and uh we can definitely make some improvements all right well let's get it unstrapped and we'll take it down there and get it out it's nothing like coming to see your buddy and then making you do more work on the same day man that ain't bad what does amc stand for we tear into our javelin and soon find out you know putting this thing on the dyno i really wasn't all that impressed man that 130-ish horsepower we got a lot of room to improve man i got to tell you you didn't drive this thing out on the street and you had the opportunity to and that was the sweetest 130 horsepower i've ever driven yeah i'm not a sweet yes i hope would it be cool if it was like 3 30 or 4 30. so how how did it drive did it drive actually pretty nice it drove nice yeah like it's a night it drove like a big sedan i like the car actually i like a lot more than i expected to so i'm anxious to see what it's going to be like once we get it all finished so what do you think it's going to drive like once we get you know like 300 400 horse under this thing um i think it'll probably be just as nice of a driver but more fun like it just that's really all it lacked was power because you know with the style that we're gonna throw on this thing i want it to look the part and i also want it to act the part so all right let's get this thing out of here take the hood off yeah that'd probably be wise to be the first thing [Music] you know i've always been curious about these braces on the front end of these cars i've worked on big body cadillacs camaros now amc's i wonder if you just took these things and threw them away you would even notice any difference like that sure flip side us man i'm sure i'm glad we put them braces on the front end of this car whew dude it sure does drive a lot better let me take this other one out we got room oh i understand are you good for the battery oh i thought you were doing it for something else i thought you was going to hold the wrench i didn't throw my back out no i got something else to keep me looking busy over here a little tip for you whenever you're removing the heater hoses that connect to your heater core is actually just take the clamps off and then take a razor blade and slice the hose if you just go to wrestling on that hose well oftentimes what happens is you'll crack or destroy the heater core this way you will have to replace the heater hoses but you probably need to do that anyhow but you will save the heater core so gracefully no seriously mark working on this thing what do you think amc really you know stands for american motors corporation no not the true name oh uh all manufacturers combined what gives you that idea well you got a chevy power steering pump you got a motorcraft carburetor i mean it looks like it should be a mopar distributor but it's got a gm style cap on it i know i was starting to think this was the first time i'd worked on an amc but with that statement i've worked on a bunch of them i'm anxious to see what's underneath [Music] hey mark was the speedometer working uh no not at all what i guess you could say it needs a rebuild kit is it broken just on one hand hey tommy yeah i can tell this thing's got custom exhaust on it you know i can tell how's that buddy they installed the hangers with lag bolts like screwed it right into the floor very no expense [Music] two down i'll let you do the honors on that [Music] hey get the cherry picker i think it's a do it i think that'll do the job let me get this ford product out of the way look at it it's even a ford gasket that's what was restricting this car from making all that power [Music] oh whoa you wouldn't think that little motor would be that heavy no i think it was just stuck stuck in there keep coming well i'd say we got a lot done today introduced the car showed us picking it up i took it out for a ride joey ride you didn't even let me go away you had the opportunity and i know yeah that pop quiz down there at the dyno you know we didn't really pass with flying colors but no but you know if you want to start low that way you got a big big gap yeah i guess there's some truth to that and uh we got the engine and trends out so we can get that down there so that wasn't hard but i bet that cleaning this junk up well the bottom's out here is gonna be a mess i think you're the man for the job yeah i know somebody can handle it [Music] [Applause] name's mark chris [Music] today on detroit muscle our 1973 amc javelin goes from boring to bodacious splashing on layers and layers of color to create one retro-style paint job that lifts some spirits [Music] hey guys welcome to detroit muscle we're in the middle of the reflection rejuvenation on our amc javelin after all the painstaking bodywork was over it was ready for a quick rub down and a bit of some quality time with the air hose to get it cleaned up then we pushed it into the booth taped her up and it was finally ready for a coat of sealer [Music] for painting products we went to summit racing for a full setup and we also brought ourselves in a trigger man ted swann master painter extraordinaire hey man you ready for this big day i'm ready for this and today on our javelin project we're going to use the entire summit racing line everything from the cleaners and degreasers up to and including the clear coat unlike some of the projects that we've done in the past tom and i have quite a few more products laid out color selection-wise do you want to tell them a little about that sure now summit offers 30 colors that are available in bass clear and single stage but they've upped their game now available is some pearls some candies and even an intermixing clear this allows you to be plenty creative and that's exactly what we did with that test panel and that was so much more than a test panel doing something like this is always a really good idea because it gives you an opportunity to transfer what's in your head to a canvas and just doing that sometimes can be a bit complicated it's a lot more complicated than what we've done in the past we have cherry bomb blast which is slightly translucent on top of three other colors here we also tape this off so that we can demonstrate to ourselves do we actually like each individual color sometimes you'll do this think of it as like a feasibility thing not just a test panel where this really worked but i didn't like this part of it at all and that prevents you from getting committed on the real job we can change our minds at this point well with that said we've got our road map down and we're trying to get to a destination you ready to start pulling the trigger ready start pulling trigger we know where we're going let's go [Music] [Music] [Music] to give you the inside scoop on ted he's a master automotive refinishing specialist for summit with his forte and spraying techniques and finding solutions for painting complications this fella has sprayed well over 2000 vehicles in his time he's also worked in the industry for over 37 years and got his start painting custom bikes with his old man he sure does make painting look easy [Music] well we're finally ready to start spraying our graphics our red is on it's plenty dry enough to start taping now with our artwork we're not going to get all kind of elaborate with it we're going to run a stripe down the middle it's going to tee off and then come down the side now over these big bulbous fender flares it is going to get a tiny bit fatter but that's going to add a bit of style to it and to do it we just need the tape some razor blades and a paint paddle to use for a measuring tool it's time to get started [Music] when it comes for masking tape there's pretty much two different types you have the vinyl and then you have paper tape i prefer to use a fine line vinyl for laying out your hard lines and then the paper for the fill in right there a paint paddle is handy to use as a measuring tool and it's cheap insurance if you're using a tape measure and accidentally bump the retract button you can cause yourself some heartache this gentle stick can work just the same [Music] with my graphics i prefer letting the car tell me what it wants working with the factory body lines and accentuating its curves and its features [Music] whenever you start laying your stripes out a lot of times you'll have to lap over the tape and here's a little trick for you using the razor blade using the dull side of the razor blade you can lay it right on that edge mash that tape nice and tight against the other piece [Music] if you don't do this the paint will actually blow up under it and you'll see it whenever you unmask it the other thing is use your blade to lay right on your edge and pull your tape at kind of a 45 cuts it nice and clean [Music] then you have to use a razor blade to cut it you got to be real easy just cut through the tape and not the paint with our design dialed in stretching across the hood and all the way to the back bumper we're ready to mask off our graphics [Music] then the gold can be laid down ted's applying three coats and i can't wait to see this thing transform with our final candy color if you've ever had the craving to create something with sweet candy we'll give you the recipe for this bad apple next on detroit before going into booth and spraying it's very important to have your spray gun set at the correct pressure this can be found on your product data sheets and it varies from product to product for today's demonstration i'm gonna put some water in here put some air to my spray gun and you can see a pattern coming out now that's a full wide open what i'm going to ask you folks to pay attention to i'm now going to narrow the pattern down that's typically the top knob and you're going to see my pressure go up now the reason that's doing that is because there's no air going to the horns once the pattern is narrowed down they make these so that you can spray a variety of objects from something the size of a car to something small like a tubular structure and not have this like 11 inch wide pattern when it's narrowed down if you were spraying something small you turn the pressure down till it's back to normal and you also turn the fluid in what this is doing is not letting as much material come out so you could do something like shading or creating a shadow or just a small touch up either way that you adjust it's always good to have the spray gun adjusted before you go in there and work on your pride and joy so be sure to adjust the gun put it on some masking paper and spray a pattern out and that's how you do that man that's a really nice gold i do like it now ted's got our stripe color all laid out and we're pretty much ready to start unmasking so that he can spray on that sweet candy now if you see what i did here i'm taking the masking paper off the fine line is going to stay on there because that is the outline of the design what he's referring to is on our graphics layout we're using the fine line to create a viper red outline stripe so that tape needs to stay for now [Music] [Music] you may notice while i'm on taping that i have the jams masked off what that's doing is preventing the overspray that goes in here on these edges from exiting out of the jamb and contaminating the rest of the panel i hope this tip helps because this is a very good practice to do whenever custom painting going from panel to panel yeah i know that red and that gold is very strong to look at you may be second guessing our decision-making skills but trust me this thing's gonna be killer when we're done [Music] well we got it all untaped and i have to say my mouth is watering just thinking about that candy you ready to get something mixed up you can't wait to get a taste of that can you it's gonna be sweet the appearance of our car currently versus this hood may be a bit confusing to a few of you guys and you may be wondering how to go from that in the booth to this the magic happens in the mid coat or the candy coat we actually sprayed two different colors here on these stripes silver and gold we did this because we weren't exactly sure what our colors would turn out like under that cherry bomb metallic on the center graphics is where we painted the gold rush if the light hits the color just right it's a breathtaking ruby red the narrower stripes on each side is where we sprayed the bright silver and it reacted quite a bit different it has a much brighter appearance and the flop of the color is very impressive turns out ted and i both prefer the gold more than the silver and that's why we sprayed it onto the amc now this next step is really going to transform our javelin into a true stunning piece of detroit muscle for the effect we're going for we're going to lay down three coats spring candy can be a difficult task [Music] running the length of the car and some cross coats helps to ensure equal coverage when applying translucent color after ted's handiwork we can reveal our final colors there's a lot more to unmasking this car than just pulling off this tape you spend all this time and effort doing artwork if you will and pulling this off incorrectly well can cost you all that labor you don't want to pull the tape off perpendicular to the panel because you're risking a chance of the material peeling off of the surface it's always a good idea to more or less pull the tape back upon itself that drastically reduces the chances of delamination [Music] with that satisfying process out of the way it's time to pour on the clear [Music] this first coat of clear confirms our paint choices were a success just look at that color hell yeah i don't know about you but i'm digging what we've created [Music] brother i believe we knocked it out of the park you know i really think we did i mean it's a perfect combination to the car and the color scheme with the right graphics on it because they fit the shape of this car and this thing certainly is an hourglass of a car with a couple creases in it now i know amc's have some shape to them but that complements this color it does you know with that said this type of paint scheme shouldn't be on every car it shouldn't be i mean if we had a car like that hammy car we knew about you'd want to leave that alone maybe do a restoration but this this was a nice clean car and a great starter point well you worked pretty hard let's go grab you a beer or two let's go get some yeah that'd be a great idea what color would you call that i don't know yet what about bad apple i like it up next how to put that shine back into your old trim with a little hand jiving well we got our amc out of the booth unmasked and we can finally step back and admire all of our fancy handiwork what do you think about this thing man i like this thing with all this fancy paint work done we're ready to start reassembly now this is the part that i really like because with each piece that gets us one step closer to completing this retro masterpiece oftentimes following new paint is all new components going on it you know with that shiny new surface you'd want a grill tail lights trim and bumpers to match and if this was a chevelle mustang or charger or something well right now it'd be christmas time we'd be ripping boxes open packaging going everywhere all excited about our new pieces going on our shiny car but where we're at with that odd duck amc there's not a whole lot of aftermarket support so that's going to require us to do some refurbishing now everyone loves chrome but not all shiny things are created equal if you're looking to brighten up your exterior trim and the parts are stainless well all you're going to need are a couple of tools and some patience the first thing you want to do is inspect the part you're looking for dents dings and scratches with the lock cylinders they always have scars from using keys by the looks of things someone may have sanded across it at some point or another but we can fix that another common issue is paint on the surface now to remove this there's a right way and a wrong way you don't want to scrape this off with your trusty old timer because you're risking costing yourself more work just let it soak in some paint thinner for a few minutes [Applause] and it normally wipes right off [Music] [Applause] now that it's all cleaned up it's time to repair these blemishes it's going to take some sanding depending on how deep the scratches are determines the grit of paper you should start with we have some gnarly grooves so we are starting with 400. then we will move finer as we smooth things out and the finer you finish it with paper the less time you spend on the polisher it's time to add back the shine and that's going to require a high speed polisher with a little dab of compound on the wheel and some patients that we mentioned earlier this thing will look like new again it's a good idea to wear gloves for safety and just keep the part on the wheel with a small amount of pressure it takes a few wipe downs to check your work but with some quality time you will have perfection [Music] man that has to be the best looking lock cylinder i've worked on today let me see that thing dude that looked pretty good don't it ain't too bad you're so good at it i got you some homework really hey man i should have never said anything about polishing stainless coming up chrome slabber bars mag wheels and the air shocks trust me you want to see this hey guys welcome back we're continuing down the path of our 70s theme javelin we've given this thing a retro paint job to help complement this aggressive body style and we've been working on brightening up our trim to help complement this fresh paint now parts for these old amc's are extremely hard to find so restoring what we had was our best choice now i've had about all the trim work i can stand so we're going to go back here and start working on this rear suspension [Music] now first thing we're going to do is change out these old air shocks what's unique about these things is the fact that they one function like a normal shock but two they're adjustable with air pressure these are fed by two air lines that are connected to a common schrader valve these can be used to raise and lower the car and can be aired up to roughly 100 psi now these are essential to building a proper 70s themed street machine but they're not without their fair share of problems like this one here road debris and good old-fashioned dry rot from age are the leading causes and the failure of an air shock what happens is the car goes up and down going down the highway it'll eventually develop a crack from the dry rot and turn into a hole like you see here then it won't hold any air the good news is that replacing these things is about as easy as it gets it's what i like to call a six-pack job takes the first three to come up with the idea and the second three to get them on the car [Music] just a couple of nuts and bolts and she's free [Applause] for replacement summit took care of us with these monroe max air shocks these will definitely give our amc's backside an altitude change [Music] this kit includes new airlines and it's wise to swap out these fatigue twos from yesteryear [Music] drop this thing down see how our upgrade went [Music] will get the job done now if you're a fan of 70s era muscle you've probably seen a set of these traction bars slapper bars torque bars whatever you want to call them and these things serve a bigger purpose other than just looking plain right cool what they're actually designed to do is limit axle wrap when you stomp on the gas pedal the engine applies torque through the rear end causing the differential to rotate in the opposite direction of the wheels this causes the leaf spring to flex upward in the front and downward in the rear if this action is too excessive it can cause wheel hop and the loss of traction by installing traction bars these limit the amount of flex caused by the rear during heavy acceleration to install a set of lakewood traction bars it doesn't get easier than this you've got a couple of u-bolts you just cinch them down and you're pretty much ready for a night on the town when tightening those u-bolts you want to make sure that you don't tighten one side too much because you actually pull it off to one side and that isn't what you're looking for [Music] [Music] as the old saying goes out with the old and the end with the new these cragar ss's wrapped with some sticky mickey thompson's will surely give us plenty of attention and a period correct look we wanted this amc to turn some heads so it had to go under a heck of a transformation that mainly happened inside the booth with a few stripes some candy paint and a few coats of red we believe we hit the nail on the head the next time you see this bad apple it will be time to add some serious motivation today on detroit muscle we pump a few more ponies under the hood of our retro javelin while keeping it true to the amc fans speaking of pumping we install an easy efi conversion kit that will make you wonder why you would do it any other way [Music] hey guys welcome to detroit muscle today we're going to be dropping in the power plant to our amc here on the exterior we kind of went down the retro path and up under the hood well we've kind of taken a left turn in the direction of a bit more modern what we have here is our newly improved baby v8 and i bet tom's statement had you amc guys a bit worried thinking this old javelin is going to get elected so calm down it's still traditional amc we pulled this old greasy thing out all right and sent it down to the guys in engine power we thought it was bad on the outside look at this nasty but the inside was even worse look at that we've been getting some doozies pat and frankie stayed after it and then started working their magic this amc meal got the works with plenty of machine work and some goodies they punched it out installed a bigger bump stick some aluminum heads and efi then it was time to put their hard work to the test and strap it to the dyno [Music] this little thing started out from the factory at 150 horse with their mods they have more than doubled its power output making 337 now with this install of our engine it's pretty much self-explanatory and straightforward because that's the exact engine that we removed from our amc it's a really good idea to make sure that you save all your old components because you never know what you'll end up reusing whether it be a piece of hardware shim washer or even a bracket now with that we went ahead and saved our old motor mounts but with the plan of replacing them with some that we got from rock auto and the reason for that is because these things can kind of age out yeah whenever we pulled the engine out it was all happy and wasn't broken or nothing like that but if you look closer at these things well you can see the damage that they have if you'll notice that the plate is starting to break away from the cushion or delaminate so to reuse something like this well you're just postponing a problem to swap these engine mounts out right now it only takes a couple of minutes where to put them in the car and then have to come back and change them later down the road it's going to cost you a couple of hours [Music] some people prefer using solid mounts especially in performance applications but in our situation a standard replacement from rock auto is the way to go it bolts right into place and has the added benefits of a rubber mount which reduces vibrations that's transferred from the engine [Music] you ready to get that on i'm ready to put it on you got the bolt let me get you started [Music] on our amc the flex plate is pretty simple it has an irregular bolt pattern which is handy meaning that it can only really go on one way now that our flex plate is in place and our bolts are started it's time to torque and respect now it's important to remember that each manufacturer has a different specification and this depends on several factors like bolt diameter thread pitch or material of components so it's always important to do your homework and have the right information for whatever you're working on if you were to torque these to the setting that was too low it could possibly cause detrimental problems like vibrations knocking or even the flywheel to crack or even possibly shatter well i got my part you ready just about i've been busy you know that oh yeah i can see can you handle that pump handle all right gearstar took care of us on this one our little a904 is built to the hills for trouble-free service they've modified the drums increased the capacity of clutch packs and added a custom billet converter every trans they produce is dyno tested and with 20 years of experience gives durability for thousands of miles you want to go up if you can installing an engine like this it's always good to have a couple people working on it you come down with the jack a little [Music] bit and it takes a little bit of some finesse yep let's go back toward the car a little more slow down slow down it's also a good idea to not get in a hurry [Music] once you wiggle and jiggle it just right it just falls into place that's hurt in there like flint shoot i can't wait to get this red rocket out on the road [Music] up next converting that old-school setup for a modern efi system the easy way next on detroit muscle hey guys welcome back to the shop well we're well on our way reinstalling some of the hard parts back into our anc so that we can get this thing to finally breathe some fire and by the looks of things over here you may be field dressing a radiator no i'm just pulling these old fittings out because we're probably going to have to reuse them but what we're not going to be reusing is this old radiator the reason we're not using this radiator is due to the broken solder joint between the neck and the tank right here and this is a pretty common thing on an old radiator and another common problem is this green corrosion right here which is a result of a leaky core so it doesn't really make sense to redo that one does it no not at all well i'm going to go grab a few extra parts and i'll let you get after it all right now our new radiator comes to us from frostbite it's a direct to fit application which is great because it has fully tig welded brackets that also have the factory bolt pattern pre-drilled into them that keeps you from having to make anything crazy or do any kind of modifications to get it fit in the car second thing i like about it is the fact it has an integrated trans cooler and all we have to do is screw in our original fittings and then our factory transmission lines will hook to them when making more power oftentimes you need more cooling aluminum radiators have more than one benefit aluminum dissipates heat more efficiently [Music] plus they are lighter than the old style made of copper and brass and when all polished up they look pretty snazzy [Music] we're running electronic fuel injection on that hopped up amc power plant that engine power built for us and for it to run and operate properly well it requires a much greater fuel pressure normally what you have to do is modify your fuel tank and mount a fuel pump internal or external you got to figure out where you got to mount a regulator then you got to run some new lines a feed from the front to the back and then a return headed back toward the tank now we've done this in the past but this isn't your only option this edelbrock kit that we got from summit racing is pretty trick it's a fuel pump regulator and reservoir all in one how it works is your stock carbureted fuel system feeds this thing and then it supplies your engine with that higher fuel pressure that that efi is looking for when mounting this you want to keep it away from anything that gets hot [Music] mounting hours on the inner fender keeps it safe and tucks it out of the way from the factory our amc had a steel line running from that mechanical pump up to the carburetor now we're not going to be reusing that we've got some rubber hose here it's going to get the job done we're also going to be installing a couple of fuel filters we have one that runs from the mechanical pump up to the sump and then we've got this one that came in the kit that goes from the sump up to the fuel rail now just because you got a couple of fuel filters doesn't mean that they're created equal this one has a much greater psi rating for efi so make sure you have the right one for the application [Music] when routing lines i like to make things look like they belong taking time to run them under behind or around items can really go a long way on the appearance of the install [Music] final thing that we need to take care of is the wiring and since we're running that pro flow 4 it's basically a snap push on the pigtail then connect the wire from the harness the next thing we're going to do is jump in the electrical system or more particularly the starter as you can tell our old one here seen better days it was dragging real bad and had an engaging problem now this gear right here is the bendix and as you can tell it's starting to get chipped up pretty bad now if you look at our old flex plate here you'll notice it's in pretty bad shape too when these two gears get worn over time and don't mesh well together anymore they end up failing and if you look right here at the ring gear you'll see these two weren't getting along and that's the result of the screeching sound you heard when you turn the key this is why we had to replace it when we put in our new transmission now we could replace the bendix in the sole starter but that would require digging into it and considering the age of this old thing that might be opening up a can of worms plus i don't think this ugly thing is going to look right on our freshly rebuilt 304. our new one here is a duralast remanufactured unit from autozone it has all the latest updates that meet or exceed the oem unit and the install is really easy a couple of factory bolts to line everything up plus this duralast starter has a lifetime warranty coming up how to cure your shaking and shimmying with a little break 101 next on detroit muscle often times on late 60s and early 70s muscle cars you'll have two different brake systems on the same ride you have disc on the front drums out back now drum brakes were the standard up until this point and yeah they did get the job done so manufacturers came up with a much better design disc brakes and they've got a lot going for them one is they handle the heat a whole lot better which equals greater stopping power plus they're easier to surface when we drove this drill the brakes would stop the car but when you laid your foot on the brake pedal well it had what some would call a small hop to it the pedal would pulsate just a little bit and the car had a small shake these round things on both sides the rotors is what's causing our issue they must be warped this can be fixed and you pretty much have two options one you can replace the rotor or two have it turned we were already planning to swap the pads out with some ebc yellow stuff so all the brakes was going to have to come apart now we can fix our problem and do an upgrade all at the same go [Music] on our ride with the tire out of the way the next thing to go is the caliper i like to collapse the piston just a bit using a pry bar to make removal easier [Music] then with this spindle design of this old amc the grease cap cotter pin and nut has to come off to remove the rotor on later model stuff the rotor normally slides right off and you don't get nearly as greasy shoe that stuff stinks turning a set of rotors can be a cheaper way to go instead of replacing the part however you can only do this a few times each time it gets resurfaced the rotor gets thinner a rotor also has to dissipate heat as the brakes are being used if it's too thin the contact surface becomes too hot too fast which can lead to brake fade and even cracking this process is to smooth out the brake pad contact surface if your rotors aren't warped but do have the grooves from the pads this is still a wise decision as a rule of thumb the rotor should be re-machined every other time the pads are replaced this will maximize brake pad life and optimize the smoothness of the brake system man that looks nice [Music] with everything all shaped up we're just about ready to reinstall our rotor whenever they were cutting this thing there was metal shavings going every which way and one thing that you don't want those is to get into here i cleaned all the old grease out before we sent it out to the shop now with a quick blast of some air well we should be pretty much ready to move on [Music] we're going to clean up our bearings to see what kind of condition they're in you don't have to have a parts washer to do this a rag and some cleaner will get the job done as well everything on our bearings checked out we just had to repack them and remember if you're working on a disc brake application you need to use some high temp grease on a spindle nut you only need to snug it up don't get all he-man on it and don't forget your cotter pin these yellow stuffed brake pads from ebc are a great way to upgrade your braking system with a simple component swap they go in the factory locations and use factory hardware easy as pie well that repair and upgrade wasn't too difficult at all we're pretty much done here we'll still have to bed in the brakes but we'll do that once we're out driving i'm wondering where old daniel's at you guys know how he is he's like a blister shows up after all the work's done today on detroit muscle we hit the road in our 73 javelin and spin the rollers on the dyno but before we can get to all of that ooh shiny [Music] the great red white and blue is known for many wonderful things american muscle for example and then there's this a product of the american motors company for better or worse well that will have to be your decision whenever we kicked off this project we were looking to build something unique and fun whenever it comes to working on anything amc what'll be different isn't hard at all boy you got that right buddy as for the good time part of this project we are finishing it all we have left to do is wrap up the exhaust shine up that paint practice rotating the earth on the dyno and then cruising it back out on the street now you want to do exhaust or do you want to do some sanding and polishing off you don't want me standing and polishing so i guess i'll do exhaust all righty our goal for today is to take our paint job from pretty good to perfection and what that's going to involve is some cutting and buffing that's where you wet sand your surface and then polish it back out now whenever we started down the path of painting this car well we knew that we were going to end up with a subject just like this we began with a couple of coats of sealer followed by some bass followed by some graphics followed by some candy and then several coats of clear none of this is unusual in this situation with a normal paint job you have about a third of those coats with every layer that you apply potentially that's more opportunity to get debris into your paint job also you can accumulate more and more texture so before we even pulled the trigger on the paint gun the first time we knew that we were going to have to buff it to take our paint job to the next level [Music] to do something like this you need to plan on spending a lot of time it doesn't take a lot of tools just some sanding blocks paper and a bucket of water [Music] whenever i'm west sanding i like to use a sponge or a squeegee to clean the surface what that does is remove the material that's in the water and it makes sanding a whole lot more efficient because all that debris well keeps the paper from touching the surface when color sanding you want to be consistent with every stroke working in smaller sections helps to ensure your accuracy and a tip for you the more water the faster the cut when sanding and a couple of people even say a few drops of dish soap in your bucket helps as well we've completely sanded our hood with 1000 grit and i've stepped up to 1500 and then i'll follow that with 2 000. then we'll finally be ready to apply some polish and get the luster back to this hood now i'm really excited what this hood's going to look like when we're done but i'm even more excited how that amc is going to sound with that exhaust daniel scott now what we have here is a side pipe kit that we got from summit racing it's going to help give our old amc javelin that mean street machine look we've been going for this is a 60 inch chrome side exhaust kit made by patriot it's got large inlet and outlet pipes that make it a low back pressure system and six sided louvered core mufflers giving us that tough muscle car sound it comes with these chrome heat shields that just scream 70s and that's perfect because it's exactly what we're going for also in the kit are all the clamps brackets and hardware that you'll need to perform the installation and once we get these things sitting pretty under the car it will complete our retro styling package on our javelin this kit is pretty much straight forward it only takes a few minutes to assemble a couple of u-bolts and another two we're off to the races placement is in the eye of the pipe holder for hours we wanted to make sure we could still see those shiny slapper bars after marking center we used a step drill for our pilot hole and finalize the diameter with the proper size drill bit that matches our threaded insert all right guys what we've done is we've drilled our thread cert holes into the rocker panel now by doing this we've exposed some bare metal so what i like to do is i like to put a little strip caulking or some sealant on these thread certs so we don't cause any rust or any problems in the future using inserts like this makes it convenient to mount numerous things and trust me with a handy tool like this will make you question how you did things without it to feed the exhaust daniel fashioned up a quick 90 to mount to the header and then simply clamped it to our rocker panel tubas man them some fancy looking twice pipes right there if i do say so myself now i've got one more to finish up on the other side but in the meantime tommy's gonna show you guys what a man running a buffer looks like well we got our hood all finished sanded at 2000 grit and we're pretty much ready to start adding back on all that shine and to do that we're going to be using a product from sonax it's their perfect finish what's really nice about this setup is it's only one step it isn't two or three different pads two or three different products we're going to be using a green medium density foam pad with our buffer here and it's going to look like a million bucks when we're done well we're gonna have kind of a buffing 101 here you guys just saw me slap this thing on there well there's actually a procedure you want to do you don't want it all crooked like because you know it's going to spin around all crazy also another question that people oftentimes ask is how much compound do you apply well it kinda all depends on the pad this one is brand new and doesn't have any material on it so we're gonna have to up the amount to load it properly and then we'll dial it back to the rule of thumb three or four dobs about a dime size [Music] with perfect finish you want to start out slow at about 800 rpm that prevents the compound from slinging off the pad and helps keep you much cleaner then we'll crank it up to 1200 rpm and you always want to keep the buffer moving i'll polish this in small sections like i did when sanding cutting and buffing is a tedious process but seeing a transition like this going from a cloudy sanded surface to a shiny lustrous reflection with just a couple of passes makes it all worthwhile as a conclusion well that sanding was a little bit labor-intensive polishing not so much our results they're tremendous we started with dirt nibs and an orange peel texture and finished it off with a reflection that looks so deep you could reach your arm into it coming up our serenading sound through side pipes and our power number hey guys welcome back we're down here in the engine power with pat and frankie and we've got our amc on the dyno now this is the first time you guys have seen this car completely assembled we've got the hood on the paint's all shined up and our exhaust are correctly installed thanks to yours truly now what do you guys think is fixing to happen well to start off this thing is gorgeous right the paint's beautiful uh obviously we like the engine because you know we had a little bit to do with that one but uh and it rolled in it was very rumbly sounded great so uh i'm excited to see this thing turn the rollers man that's good i love the side pipes i mean the chrome just the way they go down the side the whole length i think it really goes with the paint job which i also love but side pipes very nice i have a serious 70s flashback when i was a kid growing up there was a lot of these running around you know these type of cars and if you had a car with craigers on it with big tires sitting in the yard you were cool oh yeah yeah this car looks like running 200 miles an hour while it's sitting still well it just may run 200 mile an hour on the roller um what rear gear is in this thing i believe it's 308 that's a that's super steep so i think we're going to have to dyno in second gear otherwise we'll have a wheel speed of like literally in excess of 170 right we're not going to do that with those balloons on the backs yeah well that was tommy's choice so we'll just bring him let's just throw him right under the bus on the tire now uh um as far as how much power is going to make this thing made 337 on the engine dyno what transmissions in this it's got a 9043 speed in it 904 three speed okay well um i think what would this thing make before made about 130 the last time we had it on the chassis dyno and i guarantee you we're going to break that yeah yeah i you know it was i think it's definitely going to be above 200. awesome the number's going to start with a 2. yeah this isn't a race car this is a street car this is something that's supposed to be reliable with the with the injection this is something that cold starts well drives around well doesn't give you any problems and if you want to take it to this drag strip you can and it will uh it will do everything you want you can drive there have some fun drive it back awesome so if we could have a 100 more than than we started with basically then we've pretty had a pretty good success i think sir i think you're right so we can get there all right well uh let's uh get some heat in it and see what happens all right all right go for it all right [Music] [Music] that's not bad turnout that's 223 and 233 for torque yeah pretty good that's nice i like that nice and smooth too sounded good maybe get a little bit more heat in the transmission maybe uh make a couple more bangs on her but uh how the air fuels and everything look okay hills look fine everything's good we're good on temperature and speed and everything else nice yeah yeah we already made over 200 that's that's right everything we picked second because you're going about 110 at the top that's 110 seconds faster those tires need to go how many cars you know to do 110 instead a year of this age [Applause] [Music] all right she's got a little heat in her right there yeah 242. everybody it's over 100 what we win yeah 242 and 236. man that's over 100 from where we started you're finally burning the smoke out of the side pipes too those pipes are going to smoke forever hey man that's part of the effect yeah nice matt that's but that's we've already eclipsed the 100 over on the tire man i can't wait to tell tommy he'll never believe it i'm officially impressed this thing is sweet man that is nice modern fuel injection you know everything runs nice nice part about this car it's the original engine this is 311 inches yeah yeah and no leaks not hot 110 more than where we started i think we can't do any better than that boy we yeah that's that's very very good i like that uh it's a it's a well put together someone's going to have a lot of fun in this uh hopefully you know if whoever ends up with this maybe i'll buy it hey hopefully this this will look good in the old yard right here so yeah it's awesome man you go cruising on friday night and yeah try not to get yourself in a street race this this is yeah this was uh i'll tell you this one will attract some attention because someone sees those big old fat tires they're going to want to run you so uh yeah them side pipes don't ever forget about them oh yeah that's right man congratulations this thing uh this thing is nice good deal looks good man i appreciate you guys help yeah man well we'll get her off so you can start driving and enjoying it sounds like a plan let's get it unstrapped up next we take our retro piece of muscle out for a spin next on detroit muscle the time is finally here the javelin's ready to get back out on the highway after its retro makeover so we're gonna go grab a bite to eat enjoy the fruits of our labor tell us when that right you know it didn't take a whole lot to get this amc from stagnant to stunning that's right when we picked this old javelin we knew that we had a jewel we didn't want to start with a pile well a pile of rust that is so after doing some digging we finally found us a candidate it rode nice it drove well and if a person just wanted a cruiser it would do that too and with that being said it made a perfect choice for what we had of our sleep the stock 304 didn't run all that bad as for power well really didn't have all that much and the dino told the story we stopped by and hung out with the fellas down in engine power and strap this thing down to the rollers just to see what it would do after a few pulls we ended up with a whopping 133 horsepower which isn't too far from the power numbers it had rolling out of the factory we wanted more performance and really wanted to turn our small cubic power plant into a powerhouse so we dove right in stripped it down and sent it down to pat and frankie after a bit of machining a good bit of go fast parts and some tuning they had this thing singing one heck of a sweet song with a grand total of 329 horsepower was a vast improvement and out of an engine that is just over 300 cubic inches isn't too bad while those boys are doing their thing it was time for us to do our thing starting with the paint we wanted this javelin to look aggressive and tasteful at the same time with amc's of this era it's easy to say that they are a bit voluptuous so if we complemented the lines and the curvature of this body in the end we would have us something special with a couple of stripes a splash of a few killer colors from summit racing followed by some sweet candy that did the trick [Music] [Music] dude i'm starving with our snazzy new paint we just needed a few groovy accessories to complete this street machine makeover yeah that paint and several throwback components are what transformed our amc into this altered muscled up creation air shocks and slapper bars were a must any dignified muscle car from back in the day was hiked up on the backside and showing off that glistening chrome on the bottom our ride had to be the same the best part about both of these upgrades is that you get a lot of bang for your buck while we're on the subject of shiny stuff i've got one word for you craigers young or old if you call yourself a car guy you know what these are i'd wager that this wheel would have to be the most recognized custom wheel hands down and with our combo of big and littles you see why brother i'm feeling me some onion rings yeah sounds good now this piece of detroit just needed one more thing to finish it off it looked nice but it just needed something you think you're gonna get the jumbo one here yeah what he's talking about well some vehicles come from the factory with these you know the cool stuff like corvettes long nose peterbilts oh yeah those are real nice it hitting the spot oh yeah now i'm definitely proud of the way this thing turned out yeah it's got trick paint a lot of chrome plenty of performance and all the attitude after finishing up our grub we were headed back to the shop you know there's something that just feels right whenever you're grabbing some fresh air and sitting behind the wheel of some vintage muscle if you're looking to store your ride one thing's for sure is you don't want to put it in harm's way a custom form fit car cover from covercraft can help protect your ride the fabric is engineered to protect against minor garage dents and dings that oftentimes seem to mysteriously happen when no one is around the material is also highly breathable to prevent vapors and heat from building up under the cover it's also super soft and won't harm glass chrome or your paint so if you want to preserve protect and shelter your baby you might want to check out covercraft [Music] you

Channel: POWERNATION

Views: 498,485

Keywords: Car, PowerNation, howto, how-to, diy, automotive, cars, trucks, automobile, do it yourself, automobiles, auto, powerblock, detroit muscle, muscle car, amc, amc javelin, restoration, old cars, 1973 javelin, classic cars, amc javelin restoration, american motors, amx javelin, american muscle, american motors corporation, powernation tv full build, full build, car restoration

Id: HAEIPsSvGoo

Length: 77min 18sec (4638 seconds)

Published: Sat May 28 2022