The Holiest Man
Just a Silly Little Fella
- Joined
- Nov 14, 2017
- Location
- Schaumburg, IL
To start out, I did approximately 8 minutes of googling to see if there were any other lifted 1800ES examples out there, and to my surprise I found only 1, which was a body swap onto a 4x4 frame - I don't count that.
___________________________
Anywho, it all started in August 2023 when a guy, who happens to have the same last name as me, but we are not related, posted a couple photos of a very unfortunate looking ES.
"Parts car, manual trans, abandoned on farm for 23 years, 2k." was basically what it came down to.
The moment I saw it, I had to have it. I had owned v70s, 244s, and currently a 242, but I always wanted one of these.
I saw the potential, and even if I couldn't get it to run, or the frame was completely gone, I know the glass was worth a good bit, so I could recuperate most of my costs - probably.
So, I messaged the fella, and delightfully I recieve the message:
I was calling my best buddy and telling him to prepare the trailer for that weekend. 3 days late, off we went.
A dairy farm in Kalamazoo, Michigan is where it sat, untouched, for ~23 years.
It was a battle to get it on that trailer, and it was a sweltering 80 something degree day on a hot farm, with the ripe beautiful smell of cow shit lingering in the nostrils. But we had a mission, so onto the trailer it went!
And then said goodbye to all my new friends:
We drove the 3 hours back around Lake Michigan to the Chicago suburbs, and with nothing more than fresh spark plugs, a poached coil wire from my 242, and some brake clean down the yap, it barked off on the trailer. Running for the first time, I'm told, in 23 years. God what a feeling.
Then it made it's trip south to the suburbs of Champaign, IL at my buddy's house, where it lived for the next ~2.5 years. Spending weekends with my best friends thrashing until 2 in the morning just replacing everything you could imagine.
Water pump, belts, head gasket, valve cover gasket, ignition system, fuel lines, BRAKES!!! JESUS CHRIST IT'S IMPOSSIBLE to find that shit. All new calipers, rotors, and pads all around, soft lines, hard lines, master cylinder. Fuck me, according to the Ship of Theseus thought experiment, I'm not sure it's even the same car anymore.
Slowly we got closer and closer. The car could now start, AND stop under its own power. The majority of the problematic rot had been dealt with, and we were finally ready to turn our attention towards the final goal - slamming it on it's nuts, and welding some diamond plate to the underside so it shot sparks down the freeway.
Until... I saw a YouTube video of a fella restoring an AMC Eagle, and I was captivated by it...
Out of attachments to post on this one, will continue in comments.
___________________________
Anywho, it all started in August 2023 when a guy, who happens to have the same last name as me, but we are not related, posted a couple photos of a very unfortunate looking ES.
"Parts car, manual trans, abandoned on farm for 23 years, 2k." was basically what it came down to.
The moment I saw it, I had to have it. I had owned v70s, 244s, and currently a 242, but I always wanted one of these.
I saw the potential, and even if I couldn't get it to run, or the frame was completely gone, I know the glass was worth a good bit, so I could recuperate most of my costs - probably.
So, I messaged the fella, and delightfully I recieve the message:
I was calling my best buddy and telling him to prepare the trailer for that weekend. 3 days late, off we went.
A dairy farm in Kalamazoo, Michigan is where it sat, untouched, for ~23 years.
It was a battle to get it on that trailer, and it was a sweltering 80 something degree day on a hot farm, with the ripe beautiful smell of cow shit lingering in the nostrils. But we had a mission, so onto the trailer it went!
And then said goodbye to all my new friends:
We drove the 3 hours back around Lake Michigan to the Chicago suburbs, and with nothing more than fresh spark plugs, a poached coil wire from my 242, and some brake clean down the yap, it barked off on the trailer. Running for the first time, I'm told, in 23 years. God what a feeling.
Then it made it's trip south to the suburbs of Champaign, IL at my buddy's house, where it lived for the next ~2.5 years. Spending weekends with my best friends thrashing until 2 in the morning just replacing everything you could imagine.
Water pump, belts, head gasket, valve cover gasket, ignition system, fuel lines, BRAKES!!! JESUS CHRIST IT'S IMPOSSIBLE to find that shit. All new calipers, rotors, and pads all around, soft lines, hard lines, master cylinder. Fuck me, according to the Ship of Theseus thought experiment, I'm not sure it's even the same car anymore.
Slowly we got closer and closer. The car could now start, AND stop under its own power. The majority of the problematic rot had been dealt with, and we were finally ready to turn our attention towards the final goal - slamming it on it's nuts, and welding some diamond plate to the underside so it shot sparks down the freeway.
Until... I saw a YouTube video of a fella restoring an AMC Eagle, and I was captivated by it...
Out of attachments to post on this one, will continue in comments.
. 
