The Dark Wob

The spares car gave up a viable drag link and Pitman arm. I changed the brake pipe, breaking the die in my cheap brake pipe maker on the steel original in the process.

Then I only had the brakes to bleed.

The 4 pot bendix calipers on the fronts leaked fluid like it was going out of fashion. I contacted an outfit in the East of England somewhere about getting them repaired and resleeved but they wouldn't quote unless i sent them the parts.

I tried honing them and fitting new seals - the ones on the spares car didn't look any better, so I was screwed (again).

I ended up fitting a conversion from an outfit in the USA - it uses later AMC parts -
New spindles, discs and calipers. They have been good. Over in the USA people fit a Wilwood kit, or a conversion using Mustang or Toyota hardware.

Hooray!

Date tested 14 March 2008
PASS
Mileage 93,618 miles
MOT test number
4227 1447 8083
Test location
View test location
Expiry date
13 March 2009

Warren t claim wrote: ↑Mon Oct 12, 2020 12:38 am Didn't Chrysler make some sort of effort to punt these on here in the UK?

Chrysler brought in Aussie Valiants of all shapes and sizes including wagons 4 doors and 2 doors as well as the Charger. Unfortunately a range offered with 4l straight Six's as the smallest option did not sell well at the start of the oil crisis

AMC did market the Pacer in the UK. It didn't sell all that well....

That spares car doesn't look too bad in that photo

I think we had a few posts going on the beige about that. IIRC the Pacer, unlike the previous RHD models, never had a factory engineered version - so the RHD has a plank of wood instead of the plastic dash partly for ease of fashioning the dash, and partly to hide the big go-away chains from the rhd steering column to the LHD box.

It is so funny what goes around and comes around though. The Pacer was ridiculed mercilessly for having the longer door on the wrong side - but no-one said a word about the Bini clubman with only one rear door - on the wrong side - because it was the Germans. See also Bini Countryman which is like an uglier Allegro.

DodgeRover wrote: ↑Mon Oct 12, 2020 9:44 pm That spares car doesn't look too bad in that photo

That's one of my biggest regrets - the body is 100% better and until I raided it, the rest of the car was way more original and unmolested. Unfortunately it had stood somewhere very damp for a long time so everything else would have had to be swapped out or redone. Part of the carb had actually rotted away, and the wiring was shot too.

Sadly I never had time to make the 67 into the better car it's always been and it's been going downhill, helped by a stupid and potentially highly dangerous stunt I pulled when I started the 68, ran it up the sloping drive a bit and left it on the handbrake only (remember all those MOT fails) once.

Whilst I went into the garage to look for something, the 68 rolled back down the drive and made a big gash in the front of the 67. Lucky for me I wasn't in the way at the time - daft old bastard that I am.

Still to come, AMC fans -

Adventures with weird RHD Oil filter lash-ups (3 times)
Another Pitman arm needed for MOT
Changing the Alternator for one that could fit parallel to the engine.
Finding out why the brakes needed so much effort

Is the pitman arm etc unique to the RHD models?