Specs, Mods, Photos
- MODEL YEAR
- 1973
- MAKE
- American Motors
- MODEL & TRIM
- Javelin Pierre Cardin edition
- COLOR
- maroon
- ENGINE
- 360
- TRANSMISSION
- TF727 automatic
- MODS - WHEELS / TIRES / BRAKES
- American Racing wheels, heavy-duty Kelsey-Hayes front disk brakes
- MODS - SUSPENSION / CHASSIS
- Caltracs traction bars
- MODS - POWERTRAIN / DRIVETRAIN
- headers, Offy dual quad intake, Edelbrock AVS2 carbs, Comp cam, bored .040 over, 2500 stall converter
- HISTORY / EXPERIENCE / COMMENTS
-
This car was bought in 2015 from a guy in WI who started resurrecting it years ago. He did a lot of patching on it, some good, some not so good. He was no mechanic for sure. The interior was a mess - the seats badly faded, coffee stains, burn holes, he had a poorly installed ratchet shifter (the car started life as a column shift). He had some ok ideas but they were not well implemented. My brother heard me say a few years back how much I liked the curved cockpit of the big-body Javelins, how the dash wrapped around the driver and it was all driver-centric. One day he started sending me email and texts with links to Javelins for sale - asking what I thought. This went on for a while, each time I'd find a problem with the car he'd found. He asked each time if I'd buy the car if I could. I told him I was cash-strapped and there was no way......... he finally said that's not what he was asking - if I COULD, would I. I finally said yeah, but you know I can't. Then it finally hit me......... he wasn't looking for himself (with a garage already full of Jeeps, a 70 mustang convertible, a 69 Javelin with a cool history, and more. I told him I liked the way this one looked and the possibilities, and he said ok, this is the car then. He rented a car, went up to WI and bought this one, drove it back and signed the title over to me. It was more expensive than the ones he had asked me about earlier so I did end up paying him a little for it over many months. When I asked him why....... he said "because you're my brother, and because I can".
So the car made it to my shop where I started the looong process of undoing a lot of screw-ups and making it better, restoring the interior, etc. The throttle linkage was a mess of parts from Menards and was frankly very dangerous. So I built new throttle linkage, took away the binding problem, got rid of the ratchet shifter and found a stock decent shifter and console at a swap meet.
I was lucky on the interior. There was a fellow who years ago bought a batch of NOS (new, old stock) original Pierre Cardin fabric that was used on these seats. I ended up buying what ended up being some of his last. I'm pretty sure there is no more. He sold me the front as "covers" or as he called them, "socks", so I was able to recover the front seats myself. The back seat he only had the flat panels so I did hire a pro to do the back seat.
My neighbor came to me early in 2018 and said he was looking for a set of 10" front drum brakes and spindles from an AMC. Hmmmmmm.........and excuse to put disk brakes on the front and help my neighbor, too. (he wanted them for his 49 Ford so he could lower the front a bit and set the SAI and scrub where things should be) So I gave him my front brakes and spindles and found a guy selling brand new heavy-duty Kelsey-Hayes disk brakes - the same parts AMC used on their H-D disk brake option for these cars. I found another fellow who had caliper brackets. I had to modify a pair of spindles I salvaged off another later AMC and put disks on the front. I ended up totally rebuilding the front suspension and steering because there were no bushings left and the front springs were broken. The rear leaf springs were rusted so bad the car sagged and the prior owner installed air shocks to hold the car up.
Found a complete set of springs salvaged from another 73 along with a limited slip differential.
Had to replace all the brake lines. At some point the beast had broken the drive shaft and it had whipped around and destroyed the brake lines going to the back. With disks on the front now I needed a combo valve (metering, proportioning and pressure differential) so needed to redo all the lines anyway to factor that in.
To center the rotor in the caliper I had to machine the mounting surface of the spindles a bit to move things inward. Luckily I was able to do that in my lathe.
The car had too much HP and torque for the light back end so I bought a barely used set of Caltrac traction bars for it. The exhaust system was a joke - straight pipes from the headers to horrible mufflers that dropped off under the back seat. I had a system built with an H pipe cross-over to smooth things out and took the exhaust out the back.
I found an AMX cluster and installed that for full gauges and the 140 mph speedometer and tach.
It's still very much a work in progress, but it's a fun ride, and fast.
The AMC 360 puts out 377 HP and torque was measured at 393.
