A life-long American Motors fan gets creative to tackle a daunting project

"At first I just wanted to get it together, get it running, and have fun. It wasn’t going to be anything to bring to a car show. But the more we worked on it, the better it got — it was turning out a lot nicer than I thought it would."— Jim Felton

Despite what you may see on any number of hokey made-for-cable car-resto TV programs, restoring a car properly is a time-consuming endeavor. Nothing happens overnight. You need time. You need cash. You need talent. You need a plan. And though it was too early for him to be swayed by such programming, Jim Felton, now retired and living in Phoenix, Arizona, fell short on all of these. This explains why this Big Bad Green ’70 AMC AMX took more than two decades to get into the shape you see here.

An AMX might seem an odd choice for the novice restorer — why not something more straightforward with greater parts availability? Because this AMX spoke to Jim’s heart. He never knew a home without an AMC or a Rambler in the driveway.

This is how the AMX arrived on Jim’s driveway in 1996: intact and complete (with little rot) but faded and well past its prime. Jim later replaced the broken hood trim with a piece from his own inventory

"My father was sales manager at Harris Motors in Winthrop Harbor, Illinois, which is on the Wisconsin border. Dad had settled into a ’69 AMX with a ’70s-era 360 between the shock towers, driven throughout the ’70s and ’80s," Jim says. His first car was a 290-powered automatic ’69 AMX. He still owns both his high school car and his dad’s old driver, but rather than beef up one of the AMXs that provided so many cherished memories and turn it into something beyond what he remembered from his youth, he (somewhat accidentally) decided to start fresh.

Jim was flipping through an old-car trade paper and found an ad for Kenny’s Klunkers in Colorado Springs, advertising "no car over $600." Jim eyeballed a 1970 AMX, a factory 390 four-speed car with a clean title, for $350. "Tow away, as-is," said the ad. Jim was enough of an AMX junkie to know that 1970 saw the smallest number of two-seat AMXs produced — just 3,749 total, with 1,632 of them being four-speed 390 cars. "A ’70 with a 390 for $350? I bought it sight unseen; I figured, even if it’s trash, I could part it and do ok. I convinced my wife it was a good idea."

That convincing wore off quickly: the tow bill alone ran $650, and the Bittersweet Shadow Mask 390 four-speed now sitting in his driveway was a rough customer for that grand. "The engine had thrown a rod. The windshield was broken. Someone glued tiger-skin cloth to the headliner and most of the interior. The glovebox was lined with black shag carpeting. The trunk was filled with papers, including an eviction notice. I think someone had been living in it. I was devastated. But after looking more closely, I realized that the body was straight with little rust to speak of."

The part about there being "little rust" would prove not quite true, though time had been kinder to this Colorado car than Illinois would have been. "I thought, if I dared to start the restoration, it would take forever, and I’d be in way over my head. But I couldn’t bring myself to part it out." Combine this with raising a family of four on a government salary, and the challenges become apparent.

Jim had a plan, but it was short-term: Get it running and the rest will follow. It was the early days of the internet, which Jim was savvy enough to use to source innumerable bits and pieces from online auction vendors. "I figured I’d need to learn a lot, and it’ll take forever to restore it, but one day I decided I’d do it. I’d buy parts as cheap as I could and do as much work as I could myself." Not an unrealistic goal, but it was never attained.

Out went the ratty interior, blown-up engine, and cracked glass. The Bittersweet paint, too, for that matter: Jim prepped for an eventual color change to AMC’s legendary Big Bad Green. "The idea was, do the engine compartment, get the engine in, get it running, then worry about the outside. I paid a friend $50 and a Metallica CD to spray the engine bay and jambs." But, you cry, the $51 Shadow Mask option meant that the AMX’s engine bay was painted black, along with the hood and front fender tops. Yes. We’ll get back to that.

A far cry from the tiger-print-and-shag mess Jim bought for $350, the finished interior sports minor mods like gauges in the center of the dash.

Suspension components were sandblasted and painted. Jim installed new rear leaf springs and rebuilt the front end with rubber bushings, so that he could keep his car a roller. He sourced a working ’69 390 in Indiana. Soon, Jim’s neighbor, Vince Farace, was lending a hand. "I was fortunate," Jim admits. "Vince was a mechanic; he worked for AT&T and serviced their fleet. We were friends, and he could help. He had every tool ... he’d come on the weekend or at night have a beer and help out. He never charged me. When I left, Vince told me, ‘You wanted to do the work, Jim ... I just showed you how.’"

Jim moved house in 1999 and the AMX sat. It almost didn’t make the move to Arizona with the Felton family in 2004. "At one point I’d made up my mind to sell it before I moved, but after looking at all the work that had already been done, we bolted in the short-block, installed the doors, bought a flat-tow dolly, and dragged it out West."

Even then, work didn’t begin again in earnest until 2008. When he was ready, Jim again sought help. "I thought, who has more vehicles than the postal service? I dropped by the place that services postal vehicles. I introduced myself and told them I was looking for a guy who wanted to make a couple of bucks off the books. An old-timer was the only one I would trust with this." That old-timer, Ron Fielder, became a regular in the Felton garage; he helped install the dealer-option Sidewinder exhaust among other tasks, and Ron farmed out engine inspection and re-assembly to another retired local. "Ron and I became friends. I never would have gotten that done myself."

With mechanicals largely sorted (save for another engine teardown following an oil pressure issue), paint and bodywork was next on the agenda. Again.

"AMX rear quarters were seemingly designed for catching leaves and debris and rusting out," Jim recalls. He had patch panels at the ready, but "some of the metal on the quarters was paper-thin — there were pinholes." The doors were another matter: Bodyshops were advising new door skins for what amounted to parking lot dings, clearly clueless to the notion that there were no reproduction doorskins to be had.

At last, Jim met Peter Tann, owner of Vintage Mobile Restoration, who said if he could get behind the metal, he could straighten it. Once that was tackled, the pair soon came to an agreement: Peter would charge an hourly flat rate for work, doing jobs in stages as Jim was able to pay, with the AMX never leaving Jim’s garage. "Peter also said that while he was capable of doing everything on the car, if I wanted to save some money (which I needed to do), I could do as much work myself as I was able to."

A rod hanging out of the original 390 block meant sourcing another engine altogether; the replacement engine was restored before AZ AMC guru Dan Curtis found a correct ’70 block and built upon it. 2

Jim and Peter got to work. Jim did the chemical stripping himself. New rear quarters were on the docket, as were a couple of rusty floor pans. As time went on, "Pete knew my kids’ schedules better than I did, since he was in the garage while I was off at work. Finally, Pete told me we were at the point to make a decision on the Shadow Mask; I didn’t want to pull the engine again, but Shadow Mask was original to the car. Out went the engine." Fifty bucks and a Metallica CD — all for naught.

Turns out, the paint wasn’t the only work that needed redoing. "The rebuilt front end had completely dry-rotted. I’d never even driven the car! The coating hadn’t held up well either." A new front end with urethane bushings (unavailable during the late-’90s phase of the build) was installed, and powder coating replaced the previous finish on the steering and suspension components. The rest of the build went smoothly. Jim enjoyed showing his AMX at events held around the Valley of the Sun for most of the 2010s. An aluminum radiator helped keep things cool in Arizona’s oppressive 100-degree-plus summer weather, but the fun was put on hold when the repaired fuel tank saw fit to send some debris into the engine, leading to a cracked cylinder head. "By then, I was out of ambition," he says.

The interior had been festooned with tiger-skin print and black shag carpeting— and then lived in. Only the original console armrest pad, which somehow escaped a stripey fate, remains in the car.

At that point, Jim had been in Phoenix long enough to have heard of Dan Curtis, the Southwest’s AMC whisperer and owner of AZ AMC Restorations in Phoenix, so he authorized a repair. Mid-rebuild, "Dan told me that he could lay hands on a correct ’70 block, if I wanted to swap blocks and make my car correct." Who could say no?

Before you could say "Group 19," the new 390 was fortified with a 401 crank, aluminum heads and aluminum Edelbrock intake, ceramic-coated shorty headers, PerTronix ignition, and an output estimate somewhere north of 450 horsepower at the flywheel. Jim also installed a Wilwood disc brake conversion in front, which he could make good use of with that kind of power on tap. Jim also elected for a 15-inch set of Magnum 500s and white-letter radials to fill the wheel wells.

Even so, Jim still only considers his AMX "mostly done." After nearly a quarter-century, we sure hope so.

The original engine bay was pretty scruffy, so Jim stripped it, painted over the areas with surface rust with sealer, then primed before paying a friend cash and a Metallica CD to spray the bay Big Bad Green.

From 1998: Once the engine bay was painted, Jim installed a factory-replacement front-end rebuild kit. Before the car was completed, and without the AMX ever turning a mile, the work seen here would have to be re-done.

"Two steps forward, one step back" is how the owner describes this project. With the $50 Big Bad Green engine spray on board, Jim chemically stripped the AMX in his garage with aircraft stripper, largely by himself.

The original quarters were clean but thin. Body dings had been gently hammered back into shape. At this point, the $50 BBG engine bay spray was still on board.

Patch panels were available for AMXs and were installed; the finish work, as did the entire build, took place in Jim’s two-car garage in Arizona.

Floors and quarters now repaired, Peter Tann of Vintage Mobile Restoration primed the AMX’s body in Jim’s garage. Note the engine bay masked off.

In or out? This car’s second engine, a ’69-era 390, was rebuilt and properly finished. It was pulled after an oiling issue involving piston rings, and was pulled again to complete the Shadow Mask paint scheme.

Once Jim chose to stay true to his AMX’s Shadow Mask origins, the engine was pulled and Pete got to spraying the glossy finish material in the engine bay, on the fender tops, and around the windows.