"I wrote an article for my little AMC magazine on this car, and will do a follow-up when completed. I offered to send anyone here a copy of the article, and got a couple requests. If you like one (sent as a PDF file) drop me an e-mail -- farna@att.net. " Hey Frank, thanks for the pdf file on this build. Great article and pictures.
This is what can be done with the STOCK 58-63 Rambler American chassis and 196 OHV engine. I've had one set up a bit better than this car was -- you don't need to ditch the "funky" front suspension, just ask me how to set it up!! This one is almost bone stock... ------------------- Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009 23:47:15 -0700 From: tom jennings <tomj@wps.com> To: "AMC, Rambler, Nash, Jeep and family" <amc-list@amc-list.com> Subject: [AMC-list] SoCal TT! OK, so let me say first, no one is more surprised than me. Pretty much everywhere I go (even AMC meets), I get the 'oh there's that wierdo skinny guy in the 'wacky' car'. But never did I imagine that that a 1963 Rambler American would be a KICK ASS PARDON MY FRENCH GOOD RALLY CAR!!! I'm serious. You're all wrong about these cars. I have video and an award to prove it. OK it's a vintage car rally, check out the line up below, some oddballs (which I assumed I would be one of) but most are decently seriously fast cars. It's a friendly not-too-competitive crowd (everyone stops for anyone in trouble, lunch stops, etc). But almost no one is screwing off, and half the crowd was running pretty hard the whole time -- and that's the half I ended up in. Holey krap with a kapital K! About 550 miles in two days, Echo Park (Los Angeles) to Los Alamos (up near Lompoc) and back. Spectacular mountain roads, maybe 4000 foot altitude. Classic twisty windy back roads with a sheer 500 foot drop off on one side and a rock face on the other. Half of it no guard rails. Cool and dry (sprinkles today). 268 miles on Sunday, if anyone cares to know the route, I could post it, all I have is paper directions and paper maps. About the same mileage today, about 25% backtracking. I drove the SNOT out of this car. It performed FLAWLESSLY. It understeers of course, but only moderately. It's utterly stock, but the front suspension is perfect, it's got good 265/65-15's on new steel wheels (I ran 40 psi), and my hot-rodded drum brakes. More on those later. Otherwise dead stock, and in fact, the rear shocks are OLD! metallic blue with gold stickers, but mostly rusty. They're old but still good the look like Sears shocks or something. Stock and old springs on all four corners (but no sag and ride hight is correct). Other than a terrible an unsurprising lack of power, this chassis GETS BETTER when you push it. In ordinary driving, it leans a lot, comically so. But when you push it til the tires are slipping, it doesn't tilt any further -- in fact it hunkers down and is incredibly stable. I had no idea -- I've never driven this car hard, ever. I figured I'd go along for the ride and have a good time. But the more I tossed it the more I was surprised -- and I ended up sort-of in the middle of the pack. *** The Alfa had to pull over to let me pass! OK they're not agressive drivers, but I was HAULING A** and I have video to prove it. I'll load it this week and post the URLs. This American -- and i can't believe it's any different from any other American if you simpyl fix all the broken worn out crap, no matter how hard it is, and take the car seriously -- handles better than any rear-drive stock American car I've ever driven. I'm 54, I've driven a fair number of cars. Everyone is wrong. The motor is slow -- but it's torque is near constant. The T96 is awful and slow, but on a rally (road course) the slowness isn't much of a penalty. OD made the whole difference, I know I said earlier that the gearing in this particular model is precisely correct, it proved to be spot-on for rally driving in desert and mountain roads. What the hell was Nash making, anyways?! 24" tires, 3.77 axle with OD. If I had a motor I could confidently rev to 4000, I'd drop that overall ratio 15%. And that's exactly what I'm thinking of, but that's later... Nearly every car was a beloved project car. The Corolla with the hemi 4, and the Bluebird, were particularly well dialed-in. The Corolla was a japanese-market car, imported, with that beautiful little motor, and completeist japanese license plates, early toyota logo parts, graphics... beautiful. The bluebird had some very-late-model over the top Nissan turbo monster motor. The drilled drum brakes, OK, believe me or not I don't care, kicked ass, I did stuff with these brakes that were impossible. Hard HARD braking, no fade, done deal. 9 x 2.5" seriously ventilated and the drum drilling solved it. 6% - 8% grade, 20 minutes of 20mph switchbacks taken at 50mph, someone behind me said they could smell brakes, but I couldn't and they DID NOT FADE. ZERO. I'll pull a drum this weekend, photo and post. That will tell. I can assure you, I used my brakes HARD, by any standard, vintage or not. So the furthest third of the run included Tepesquet Canyon, a ridge about 3000 feet?, spectacular twisty windy and very recently repaved On the way out it was just me and the guy in the 75 MB diesel -- a car we all know is slower than anything but a volkswagen microbus, so I just headed out on my own. But on the return trip, I was in the front of the pack (people just leave at random, there's no starting lineup) -- me, the sprite with wankel, valiant, the 72 corolla, one of the datsuns. Went up, then down. By the down run, I was in the groove, but the whole time I was feeling like a jerk for not pulling over and getting out of the way. At lunch (2 hrs later) I genuinely apologized for not doing so -- but everyone said "no no no, really, you were not holding us back, it was fine". Well... Tonight there was a post-run dinner. Great fun. But I won PEOPLES CHOICE AWARD. WTF! It turns out -- to my complete surprise -- that they were not being merely polite, the AMerican was an actual respectable car. At the dinner I apologized again -- thinking they were being generous earlier -- and multiple simultaneously said basically "no no, if your car was any faster it would be a real threat"! WTF! The Rambler was the most surprising performer, least likely, a newbie that out-performed some setup rally cars. A number of people said to me, after driving near me, "you got that thing really dialed in!" and I had to admit then, all I did was fix broken parts and upgrade the brakes and tires. Because that's all I did. I'm not that good a driver -- I autocrossed a V8 Spirit and basically I sucked. The early Americans (nashcans) have a subtle blend of features that apparently have been over looked. How many times have I heard in this list -- and believed -- the slow, ugly stepchild of AMC, the old holdover from the nash days, etc, the crappy suspension and awful motor. Well everyone is wrong, laugh all you want. The motor is desperately short of power, the T96 weak. But a turbo will fix that (now I have a huge inducement to complete that!), the brakes are upgradeable, and the suspension, well fix the old broken crap abused by people that won't take the car seriously, and it GOES. The cooling system was utterly boring -- it never left low-normal, and pretty much I had the thing floored the whole time. I ran at 3000 rpm as much as I could but ended up lugging 2000 up the grades. 2nd, 2nd over. Down hills 3rd, 3rd over. No (zero, none) engine braking. It's a waste of time, there's not enough compression for it to matter, and it ruins the front/rear braking load and the T96 is too sluggish to download anyways. Better to rely on brakes. The carb ran out of fuel all the time on the hard turns. Never happens on the street. Carter WCD. Maybe you're thinking 'what is he smoking?', hey go right ahead... I'm gonna build a rally American! Here's the car line up. The sprites, all datsuns, the toyota, minis, MGs, porsche, beamers, alfa and surprisingly valiant, were serious runners. And the American. I had a severe HP penalty, so I was back of the pack uphill. But flat and level or downhill, I was in the mix! More in the next week or so. Chalk another one up for Ramblers. http://www.socaltt.com 67 MB 380 73 Maserati Borla 69 Citroen DS 66 Sprite w/1.2L wankel 75 Morris mini 74 TR6 69 MG midget 75 mgb 60 sprite, 1275cc 58 jaguar 3.4 ?? porsche 356 70 bmw 2002 63 rambler american 74 bmw 3.0cs 70 datsun bluebird, 13b wankel 72 datsun 510 64 valiant 66 alfa, guliana gt veloce 65 mustang, 289v8 68 mgb roadster 72 toyota corolla ke-20, 1.8l 3tc hemi 69 datsun 510 75 mb diesl coupe 69 datsun srl 311 </pre>
I really wanna see this thing on the road! That is gonna be one sweet setup, well balanced and it's beautiful. Yo, that's me There's no reason to dump the Rambler suspension, though it is weird if you have worked only on ball-joint cars. I mostly figured out why this chassis (59-63 Americans) handle well... checkout the steering geometry, it's a very well dimensioned unequal length A-arm system, that goes *negative camber* in turns. Later AMCs (and most U.S. street cars) go more positive for that nice safety please-go-slower gross understeer. It's a pain to find parts for if you need them, and that upper trunnion is a PITA if it is frozen but otherwise, besides bushings, you usually don't need to replace trunnions, they're good for many hundred thousand miles if they're greased *at all*. Inner arm bushings (upper and lower) are easy to get, so's the knuckle bearing, grease seals, any old O-ring will work. here's some pics of it: http://wps.com/AMC/1963-Rambler-American/Suspension Same suspension as the '59.
Hi all, Thanks for the input...I will shoot some video once done and throw on here..doing some more work on it tomorrow Mooneyes X-Mas is only 2 months away..gotta go to that one even if we have to push it in! Hopefully it will get done before then....
The only real problem if you have a badly worn 58-63 American suspension is the arms. The uppers use a standard thread pin. I've used a thin "jam" nut to repair the ends at the trunnion where the pin froze in the trunnion and turned in the stamped steel arm for several years. If that happens to the lower arms it's more difficult to repair them, they really need to be replaced. The good thing is that the bigger 58-61 Ramblers (all!) use the same lower arm. Parts books give a different number because the arm comes with the inner bushing, and the bushing is different for the big cars (smaller hole). Change the bushings and swap the arms! The upper arms are made different due to a different type trunnion on the bigger cars, but at least the uppers are pretty easy to fix. I have welded the lower trunnion "cap" to the arm as a repair when I couldn't find a replacement lower arm in the time frame I needed. No big deal, you just have to replace the arm and trunnion if it ever needs repairing again. For the most part keep it greased and it lasts nearly forever though. The thing has to be assembled before welding and can't be disassembled again without cutting one of the lower arms though. I drove one fixed like that for years with no problems, and it was a true daily driver (back and forth to work every day!). Tom and I both have found out that the little Rambler has an incredibly stiff body, especially compared to modern unit bodies. A Mercedes might have one as stiff, but no production American car I know of does! The convertible is just about as stiff as the roofed cars (as stiff as most modern unit bodies) due to a big X brace under the floor!
Fuel pump and new fuel line ran under car..Wiring is 90% done..Installed new push button start and relay..I do not like the stock ignition on the painted dash..the chips are from keys hanging and bouncing off the paint in the past..I will be touching that are up..relocating ignition up under dash but still easily accessible.
Tranny crossmember has been completed as well as the shifter and some new traction ala Hurst............. Getting closer..............
Your like the frank zappa of cars. Weird shit till people see what its all about. (I mean this in a good way.) Keep it up, Sets u apart.
more! seen this in person when mike was kind enough to rewire my truck, i must say this thing is beautiful !
As Tom said, if he had a better engine for the chassis it would be a real threat in rallys. I had a 196 warmed up about like Toms years ago. I rebuilt the engine and had Lunati cut me a hotter cam around 92-93. My cam had 0.10 more lift and 20 degrees more duration, so it boosted performance in mid to high range. Under 45 mph it performed about the same as stock, but once it hit 45 it started waking up! An easy 20 more hp. I drove the back roads around Warner Robins and Byron Georgia like I was in a rally -- just didn't let it go under 45. I only slowed for curves marked 25 mph or less, and once I was familiar with a 25 mph curve I could take it at 45... but was prudent with unfamiliar ones. Marked 30 mph was no problem! I had slightly stiffer springs which helped cornering much more than the 79 AMC Spirit sway bar I added. Could hardly notice the sway bar unless in a very extreme turn -- the stiffer springs were noticed in EVERY turn. So ramzoom is going to have what Tom and I both would like to have (and I might build yet -- got too many other projects right now) -- an early American body with a much better engine. I had looked at putting a Mitsu 2.6L four in mine before deciding to rebuild the 196. Sometimes I wish I'd made that other choice!
Doesn't quite sound like a Rambler anymore... but that's a good thing! Heck, you could hardly hear one of those old L-heads running with the factory muffler. I sneaked up in many a yard with mine back in the day! But I coould live with the sound of the blown Q4... ;>
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