"sn4cktimes" (snacktimes)
06/02/2019 at 21:57 • Filed to: None
4
15|
"sn4cktimes" (snacktimes)
06/02/2019 at 21:57 • Filed to: None | 4
| 15 |
Got some time into the car the last few weekends. Almost down to just electrical splicing of old and new harnesses. Then I can attempt to turn it over!
For those who don’t remember this project just nose around through my profile. Most of my posts are to do with it. Long story made short: 1988, converting to multi-point fuel injection, Edelbrock performance head (new valves, springs etc) on the original 4.2L, chopped up and self customers AFE header with 2” V-Band couplers, engine is bored out and decked down a bit, sub drag-racing camshaft, all new bearings, pistons, crank etc, biggest oil pump and timing set available, bunch of customed original brackets. BROWN, WAGON, 4WD! The future will possibly involve an AX11 manual transmission.
Original had 110hp, 232lb-ft of torque.
New should be 200-ish hp, 300-ish lb-ft.
Tristan
> sn4cktimes
06/02/2019 at 22:35 |
|
It’s been too long without an update, but I’m happy to see it!
The 4.0 H.O. gave 190 hp... With more cubes, more cam and a better head you should easily beat 200.
If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent
> sn4cktimes
06/02/2019 at 22:40 |
|
Not to belittle the effort you put into this but why did you go this route instead of a 4.0 swap? Same engine mounts and bellhousing, and more readily available power parts makes the 4.0 seem like the easiest swap ever.
|
sn4cktimes
> If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent
06/02/2019 at 23:25 |
|
I had 3 self-imposed rules for modifying this car:
1) It must remain 4WD no matter what
2) It must remain brown no matter the shade, brown it must be.
3) I wanted to keep the original block if at all possible. It was possible , not easy, but possible, so I did it.
Also, going with MPFI gets an immediate and verified 60hp on an unmodified and reasonable compressioned engine, plus 30% fuel economy while doing so. Seemed like a “better” route than fiddling /swapping and noodling the vacuum / emissions system to handle it.
But yeah, it would make more sense to everybody but me to do a swap.
|
sn4cktimes
> Tristan
06/02/2019 at 23:27 |
|
I’m hoping so. I’d absolutely LOVE to be able to pull off a 4 wheel burnout!
|
Tristan
> If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent
06/02/2019 at 23:58 |
|
The Eagle 258 has extra bosses cast into the block, IIRC. The front differential mounts to the block, so a 4.0 swap is impossible if you want to retain the original 4wd system.
AMC/Renauledge
> sn4cktimes
06/03/2019 at 12:27 |
|
I’ve long wondered why AMC, who had this very engine in production through 1991, never offered it with at least throttle-body fuel injection.
Or why they never installed the 4.0L in the 87-88 Eagles. It probably would have given a bit more life to their sales.
Godspeed. This seems like a very cool project.
Manwich - now Keto-Friendly
> AMC/Renauledge
06/09/2019 at 18:48 |
|
I’m guessing they never bothered to give the AMC Eagle any updates because they figured it would be replaced by the AMC/Eagle Premiere and they would leave the 4wd stuff to Jeep.
And I’m guessing there were plans to install the 4L in vehicles like the YJ sooner, but then AMC was bought by Chrysler. And one of the first things that happens after mergers/acquisitions is projects usually get put on hold to be reassessed.
Remember how there wasn’t that much new product in the late 1980s and very early 1990s for Chrysler? That was the effect of the AMC-Chrysler merger. Though it was great from 1992 and on. It’s a shame that great incarnation of Chrysler got screwed up by Daimler-Benz.
And it was a similar story for a couple of years in the early 2000s after the “merger of equals”.
And once again in the late 2000s after Chrysler became FCA.
And that’s why I’m happy the FCA-Renault merger fell apart. Supposedly they want to get access to BEV tech. But the BEV tech they would have gotten would have been crap compared to what Tesla was making. AND it would have led to delays for new product.
Would rather see FCA roll up their sleeves and build their own BEV platform using the Tesla Model S and Model 3 as benchmarks to meet or beat.
|
AMC/Renauledge
> Manwich - now Keto-Friendly
06/14/2019 at 13:41 |
|
A few things:
The Medallion was supposed to host the 4WD replacement for the Eagle, and the R21 actually did get 4WD in Europe. The R25 never did. However, once Renault insisted on building the Medallion in France rather than at AMC’s all-new, completed, and idle-for-24 months (before Premiers started production) Bramalea plant, AMC’s original plan was totally upended.
Thing is, AMC needn’t have waited that long to update the Eagle. In 1983, the subcompact Alliance got all of the company’s attention. However, since the larger 18i sedan never sold worth a damn, 1983 would also be the last year it was imported to the US. 1983 was also the last year for the even larger Concord. This left AMC without a sedan in its lineup larger than the 165" long 1.4L Alliance from late 1983 until March 1987.
At the same time, 1983 was the year the Malaise Era fever began to break, and all of a sudden, traditional, RWD cars with a fair bit of power came back into fashion. The Chrysler M-bodies shot up the sales charts. Pontiac brought back its discontinued B-bodies at midyear. The Panthers got a stay of execution, too.
Had AMC been allowed to spend just a pittance of money - about the same as they did turning the ‘77 Hornet into the ‘78 Concord - on updating the Concord and Eagle, the company could have capitalized on the pent-up demand for larger cars that hit from 1983-86. They had prototypes of 1984 Concords and Eagles with revised rooflines in the works, in fact. But Renault apparently didn’t see the potential.
Instead, when small car sales plunged in the middle of ‘84, AMC/Renault was caught totally flat-footed flogging 56hp subcompacts and a trickle of imported Fuegos and Sportwagons when the industry was gobbling up much bigger, more powerful, more profitable cars.
The Concord and Eagle were based on old tech, but the basic design was actually a few years younger than the Volvo 240, Saab 900, Jaguar XJ, and others that were selling quite successfully in the ‘80s and well into the ‘90s. Adding TBI to the 4.2 in ‘84 to go with the new AMC 2.5L four and planned styling updates might have given a facelifted Concord and Eagle a new lease on life until the Medallion and Premier replacements were ready in mid ‘87 and mid ‘88, respectively.
As for Chrysler, they didn’t really slow their new product launches from 1987-92. While Iaccoca had grown bored at the helm of Chrysler by the mid-1980s and was on a buying spree that included Gulfstream in 1985 and Lamborghini in 1987, the Chrysler pipeline was still pretty full. They launched the P-body Sundance/Shadow for 1987, the LWB minivans and C-bodies for 1988, the TC by Maserati and AA cars for 1989, the Chrysler-designed DSM Talon/Laser/Eclipse and Imperial for ‘90, the Stealth/3000GT, reskinned minivans, and Diablo for ‘91, and the Viper for ‘92. Chrysler did reassess the Premier-based Allure coupe and canceled it. Which was a misguided step that left Chrysler’s newest factory in Bramalea, with a 300,000 unit annual capacity making way less than 50,000 Premiers and Monacos per year. So you’re not wrong that this period resulted in major product reassessments. It’s just that the AMC/Jeep side was the recipient of all of them. No extended-cab Comanches, no fuel-injected Grand Wagoneers, no 4.0L YJ Wranglers for years. The Dodge and Chrysler-Plymouth pipelines were largely unaffected.
Iaccoca stubbornly clung to the K-car platform and staunchly resisted moving Chrysler design and marketing away from the conservative designs of the ‘70s and early ‘80s. Instead, he insisted on square-cornered cars much to the public chagrin of folks like Bob Lutz, who famously admitted to the press on the launch of the ‘90 Imperial that they should “take a good look, because this is the last car like this you’ll ever see from Chrysler.”
|
Manwich - now Keto-Friendly
> AMC/Renauledge
06/14/2019 at 16:10 |
|
Great info... thanks!
|
AMC/Renauledge
> Manwich - now Keto-Friendly
06/14/2019 at 16:47 |
|
You bet! Check out Patrick Foster’s “American Motors Corporation: The Rise and Fall of America’s Last Independent Automaker” for really cool sketches and prototype photos of the Renault-era updates they were planning for their existing AMC car lines.
The AMC story is full of what-might-have-beens, but those photos really amplify that sense. So many missed opportunities, especially in the Renault era.
|
Manwich - now Keto-Friendly
> AMC/Renauledge
06/14/2019 at 17:15 |
|
And thinking of that, can you imagine then how an FCA-Renault-Nissan would have played out?
*shudder*
|
AMC/Renauledge
> Manwich - now Keto-Friendly
06/14/2019 at 17:37 |
|
Yeah, I think FCA desperately needs new passenger car/crossover platforms and 10 years into the relationship, the only all-new mainstream platform they’ve launched that wasn’t a Jeep, Ram, Alfa, Maser is sitting under the Pacifica minivan . The Ram and Wrangler are the only other two platforms not underpinning luxury/exotics.
The 500 dates back to the 2003 Panda. The SCCS and Compact Wide platforms that underpin the Fiats and FWD-based Jeeps all date to either the 2005 Grande Punto/Opel Corsa, or the 2001 Fiat Stilo. The LX cars date back to the era when “yellowcake” was a household word. Hell, even the Grand Cherokee, which mints money for FCA, still sits on the previous-generation M-Class chassis, and debuted for 2011 - 9 model years ago. It’s by far the longest-running out of 4 generations of Grand Cherokee.
They obviously haven’t been able to afford anything more than warming over ossified old engineering. Where are they going to come up with the replacement platforms for the 500, 500X, 500L, Renegade, Compass, Cherokee, Journey, Grand Cherokee, and the Grand Wagoneer that was supposed to be coming in 2013, then 2015, then 2018, and now... who knows?
A Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi-FCA merger would have absolutely been a logistical nightmare, which is probably why it blew up on the launchpad. But FCA seriously needs new platforms, and Renault would have been an excellent source.
|
Manwich - now Keto-Friendly
> AMC/Renauledge
06/14/2019 at 17:44 |
|
FCA is making good money. T here’s simply no excuse for them to not use some of that money for new product and platforms.
I believe the real issue is some top execs want their golden parachutes.
That’s often what it’s all about from what I’ve seen.
|
AMC/Renauledge
> Manwich - now Keto-Friendly
06/14/2019 at 19:00 |
|
Don’t they also have tons of debt? As of March, they have €13b in liquid cash and €15b in debt. That’s pretty significant.
According to this, FCA is still considered fairly highly leveraged and has been committing a ton of their cash on a regular basis to debt servicing.
|
Manwich - now Keto-Friendly
> AMC/Renauledge
06/14/2019 at 21:55 |
|
Yeah.. that debt is one of the “benefits” of mergers and acquisitions...