jnorion

The car has been sold. I was not parting it out—selling it as a whole.

I'm still hoping to send the whole thing out the door as a package, although that hope is slowly fading with time—not quite ready to start dismantling it yet, though. What parts are you looking for?

Bump for fresh interest... anyone need a car?

Yeah, I think I was mistaken about the welds... I hadn't looked at it closely in a while. The skid plate itself is bolted to the bottom of the bull bar. I believe the side bars are custom, though, as a way to hook it up to tow behind an RV or something.

Now for sale on craigslist as well: http://portland.craigslist.org/mlt/cto/5638823278.html

No idea. This is the only car of this generation I've ever looked at in detail. They look stock to me, but who knows what that actually means.

Pretty sure this is basically a summary of every car forum thread ever

Ah, got it, I misunderstood what you were asking. The back side has definitely met with some cargo in its lifetime, but not falling apart badly: The rust you see is not the only rust, but it's representative of what's there. There's a fair amount that is strictly surface rust, ugly but cleanable, like this: There are a few places where it's worn through, but not in a way that's structurally compromising: The wheel arches look pretty good—some rust, definitely, but still appears to be mostly surface: Rocker panels in front of the rear wheels have seen better days but are still intact: Spare tire well is in similar condition—some rust, but seems to be structurally sound: And the underside has very little rust at all: The mustache bar bushings are somewhere between "bad" and "nonexistent":

I'm not in a huge hurry to get rid of it and the reason I'm going this route is because I don't have a ton of time, so it'll probably be a bit before I seriously consider parting it out. However, if I do get to that point.. The skid plate is a custom thing that's welded to the bull bar—no shipping one without the other. If I end up parting it out I don't mind shipping it, but it probably won't be cheap. I would estimate the whole thing as around 70–80 pounds. I bought the Weber new on Amazon for $260 and has a total of about 30 minutes and zero miles of use on it, so I'd like to get a good chunk of that back if possible. Probably $200 + shipping? If I do end up parting I'll come up with a more final number. EDIT: Whoops, just realized I skipped the question about the back seat. The upper section is in the same condition as the lower—very clean, very little wear. Much better than the front seats. Here's a picture from when I first brought it home:

Update: now SOLD I have a '78 wagon that's been sitting in my driveway for the past year while I've attempted to work on her, and I think I've just run out of time and energy—hoping that someone else can do better. Currently not running, although I think all that's needed is a tune-up. Read on for details. NOTE: The "probably for parts only" bit in the title is due to a missing piece in the chain of ownership transfer—the car has changed hands several times in the last 15 years and somewhere along the way a bill of sale has gone missing. I'm trying to hunt that down but without it titling and registering the car may not be possible. I'll update the ad if I find that. As she currently sits: When I bought the car, I drove her home (roughly) across town. Shortly after that she stopped running. I've revived her briefly a couple of times since, and I believe that the current issues are due to timing being off. I've replaced a LOT of parts in the past year. Here's what's new: Brand new Weber carb Distributor cap and rotor Distributor points Spark plugs and wires Vacuum lines Fuel filter Battery and terminals Ignition coil Voltage regulator Alternator Coolant overflow tank There's probably more as well. My work has mostly been documented here and here. When running, the clutch is fine, transmission shifts well, 4WD works, brakes work, electrical systems function as best I could test them (except for windshield wipers, which may even be something as small as a fuse), and she doesn't overheat. There's very little rust, and what there is appears to be mostly on the surface—the left front fender rusted through in one spot, but otherwise everything seems to be pretty solid. Odometer reads 76,984 but it's only got 5 digits, and I have no idea if it's rolled over or not. Title reads "exempt" from 1999 so I would assume it has. Notable problems (aside from the bit about not running): Parking brake only works partially. Won't hold on a steep hill. May just need adjustment. Rear seat back bolts broke when I tried to remove them. The seat back is out and the mounting holes are plugged. Will need to be drilled out to reinstall the seat. Windshield wipers didn't work. I haven't tried to diagnose the problem. Exhaust is rusted out somewhere near the front. There are probably more of these as well—it's been a while since I've done much with the car and my memory is fading. Suffice it to say this is a project at best. In addition to the car, I will include: Two full sets of wheels, both of which can be seen on the car in the pictures. The grey ones came with it and are stock size, with tires that are usable but not good. The black ones were purchased separately, and require spacers in the rear (also included). Three of them have good tires, the fourth one is badly worn but still usable for now. I've cleaned up and done a fresh coat of plastidip on two of the black wheels (the ones currently off the car). Happy to throw in a can of that for the fronts as well if you'd like. Any of the old parts you'd like, including the old Hitachi carb and stock air cleaner. Not sure if the others will be useful, but you're welcome to them. Some random spare parts—I have a fresh oil filter, thermostat, a second set of spark plug wires, a distributor, probably some other stuff. A full skid plate and bull bar, which has been cleaned and plastidipped so it looks fairly nice. I'd like to get $750 for the full package. I realize this may be a bit high for a non-running car, and I'm happy to negotiate, but if it goes too low I'm going to sell at least the carb separately, and probably the skid plate and second set of wheels as well. Would probably be best to trailer her out, although in theory there's no reason you couldn't flat tow as well. Located in SE Portland, Oregon. More pictures:

Yeah, that's not normal here. Apparently yesterday was the wettest day in recorded history here, and today is expected to have even more rainfall. We'll see how things go. It doesn't affect me directly much, but a lot of the city is having trouble.

OK cool, that sounds like an easy process. Sadly won't get to it today because the car is parked outside and the city looks like this today: Not really feeling like working on electrical stuff in that. One question, though—when I finally replaced the distributor cap, I believe the numbers were in different positions from the one I removed from it. As far as I know I kept the wires in the same positions (i.e. if it was at 2 o'clock on the old cap it's at 2 o'clock on the new one) but they may be marked differently. Those markings are just for convenience, right? As long as the wires are in the proper firing order and the in the proper spot then everything should work normally?

Thanks for the tips. I checked the grounds and contacts that I could find today, and wasn't able to discover a problem that way. There's exactly 12.71 volts everywhere in the system that I can measure until it gets to the ignition coil: 12.71v from positive to negative battery terminals 12.71v from positive battery terminal to chassis 12.71v from positive battery terminal to engine block 12.71v from positive battery terminal to ground screw on alternator 10.3v from positive ignition coil terminal to negative battery terminal I think something is bad in the positive wire to the coil, although I haven't hunted it down yet. However, that got me close enough to test some other stuff. I jumped the positive battery terminal straight to the positive coil terminal, and now that I've replaced the alternator I did get a spark out of the coil wire when cranking. So, with the jumper in place, I sprayed some starter fluid in the carb and tried to start the car. What happened when I did that was a big puff of something out of the top of the carb (didn't look like smoke—vapor maybe? the starter fluid?) and it bogged down and wouldn't crank for a moment, like pressure from the engine was counteracting the starter motor hard enough to stop the starter motor from being able to turn it over anymore. My initial guess from this is that either 1) the timing is WAY off, to the point where it's firing on the upstroke and stalling out the movement of the engine, or 2) the plug wires have been mixed up and it's firing in the wrong order. I've been very careful not to remove more than one plug wire at a time so I think it's extremely unlikely to be option 2, but I don't have enough experience with timing to be confident in that diagnosis. Any thoughts? Also, how do you set timing if the engine doesn't run to begin with?

Quick update to this—I bought and installed a new alternator. The results were... odd. Previously there'd been no power at all to the positive terminal on the coil. I jumped it straight to the battery for testing, at which point I had 12v there, but it still didn't spark. After replacing the alternator, I now have 10v at the positive coil terminal without the jumper. So, a couple of questions: Why would changing the alternator affect this? Keep in mind that the engine is still not starting, so there's no actual power coming from the alternator. The only thing I can think of is if some piece within the alternator burned or separated in some way, and broke the circuit. Where would I look for the missing 2v? Would that be a grounding issue? I measure 12v between the positive terminal of the battery and the car body and between the positive terminal and the engine block, and there's nothing visually wrong with any of the grounds, although I haven't inspected them in detail. EDIT: Another important piece of information is that I recently replaced the voltage regulator as well... it's been a couple of months but the engine has never run in that time.

Anyone know what the amperage rating for those is?