We ( and thats several interested parties ) have been very slowly restoring a 1967 Rambler Rebel for the last thirty or so years. It’s taken a very long time. In fact so long the pictures I took changed in resolution because cameras on phones got better and better.
A short history of the project
Initially my father bought the car from a doctor some time in 1990. At this point the car was a wreck. With the intention of fully restoring the vehicle there and then he had it stripped and did a full body restore with white respray. And this is the current state of the cars body now - for the last thirty plus years its been sat in his garage and not been run ( until recently ) and has a perfect body. Post this initial early 1990s period the story becomes a bit muddy. Several mechanics worked on the car, and then dropped it. In 2007 I moved from London to Dorset and around 2013 ish knowing it was sat in the garage decided to try and kickstart the project. Over the space of ten years it has slowly taken shape - with a new 290 V8 fitted. Its current state is that the engine heads have been stripped because in the process of finally starting the car again - we noticed that there were engine issues ( at ticker over ) and it turns out there is a bent pushrod - valve damage, so we are awaiting a full engine gasket kit and having the heads converted to unleaded in the mean time.
The car
The Rambler Rebel was a mid sized car, and thats American mid sized at nearly 3m long. It came in lots of different styles and models. This one was originally fitted with a straight six which we have replaced with a 290 V8. AMC as a company started as a wholly American company, were part bought by Renault and Fiat-Chrysler and transformed into Jeep, so quite a long history of Anglo European & American provenance.
A rough story post me working on the project
The car had been left in the garage untouched for at least five years I think, and this was 2013. The original project was nothing to do with me, but I decided Id had enough of seeing it languishing in the garage. I had at this point very little experience of vehicles other than motorbikes - but there was nothing to be lost in trying to get it running. Exhausts were on the floor, the previous straight six was lying about in another garage - we sold that. The engine was uncoupled from the gearbox. There were trays and trays of bits - some of which were nothing to do with the car.
I started by fixing the exhausts which were extremely rusty and taking up a lot of room. A quick angle grind and they were back to new. Then I went about sorting the items that were in various boxes - sifting for the correct stuff belonging to the car, and as it was mostly imperial being a 67. Easy enough.
Then as a first plan we involved Rod and Bruce from Rustys speed shop who are AMC specialists on Portland. They were originally involved in the sale of the car I believe Im right in saying. As Rod knew engines he agreed to be the guide as it were and I agreed to do the monkey work. First thing we had to do was mount the engine on a stand and fit core plugs. The the valley gasket had to be fixed as this was broken. We then sprayed the engine. At this point the engine was OK to couple up to the torque converter and gearbox. Then we winched the entire lot back into the engine bay. Also carbs cleaned and rebuilt. All the ancillaries were fitted back to the engine and exhaust fitted. The tank was emptied and cleaned and new fuel lines fitted. It was starting to look like a car. All this took place over some four or five years believe it or not.
Once the engine was ready we brought in a mechanic to actually go over the starting as it was I understand complicated with the electrics. More on that later. We got a rough start from it, a first firing.
Post this point I had to dedicate more time to working, so the work from me tailed off and the project went off the boil a bit. Somewhere along the line at this stage we discovered that there was a serious engine knock, which turned out to be a valve problem. Additionally there was an issue with the electrics which burnt out.
Largely this gets us up to the present state of affairs. We found another mechanic to work on the vehicle, and his first reaction was to completely refit the wiring loom - the electrics were very bad having deteriorated over time sat doing nothing. This took a very long time during which I had a feeling the project would again stall. But it didn’t, and after what seemed like an eternity we were once again able to start the car, and this time we could be assured that all the various bits on it would work as they should. And we start the engine again and this time it runs. But there was an issue this time with the knocking which we had not been able to hear properly before. It had a bent pushrod, possibly caused by a stuck valve - either way the engine was just not firing on all cylinders and so the heads had to be removed and sent to a specialist for work - simultaneously being converted for unleaded petrol.
Cue current state where we are waiting for the full engine gasket kit, valley pan gasket and push rod set.
Hopefully, after what is a very long time we are within touching distance of a working car, which will be fantastic.
Currently we a missing some bits. The stick shift has a broken indicator and end bearing race. Other than this - the car is intact. As long as we don’t consider the roof which is another story all together.
