AZ AMC Restorations

07/17/2026

UPDATE! The family just told me that they accepted an offer from a collector in Canada so like the last one, this car was scooped up within 24 hours of it being posted on FB

This week I received a call from an owner of a 390 auto with factory AC Donohue Javelin we restored a couple of years ago that wants to sell it due to personal reasons resulting in the car no longer being driven. It currently lives in Canada and is a fantastic running and driving car that looks every bit as good as it drives. I purchased the car in a multi-car deal when it was non operational and hauled it to AZ from Vegas and we started restoring it shortly after it arrived in 2018. And because it was a nearly rust and accident free car with a faded repaint over the factory baked enamel on just part of the body where it had what appeared to be a parking lot scrape, we deviated from our usual strip to bare metal and instead sanded off the repainted areas, fixed the areas that had the scrapes and parking lot dings and repainted the entire car inside and out in PPGs top base coat/clear coat acrylic enamel after expoxy primer sealing the entire car. The sheet metal on this car was so good that we also did not do our usual skim coating the entire car because it was only needed in the areas that had been scraped and parking lots dinged which is a very, very rare find these days.

Like all of our restoration, the engine build received a full balanced and blueprinted forged rotating assembly with a mildly bumped up cam along along with a decked decekd lock and resurfaced heads for a good tight and leak free head to block seal. And like all of our restorations, we upgraded to electronic ignition and upgraded the suspension bushings and installed KYGB gas shock plus added an adjustable proportioning valve. We also replicated the factory wheel looks with aluminum 15x7 trim ring Magnum 500s with 215/65/15 front and 245/60/15 rear radials resulting in the car running and driving like a modern vehicle with a firm and very comfortable tight but also very quiet ride. The engine builder at my shop is a wizard Borg Warner auto trannies and he went through the entire tr**ny with new seals, bushings, bearings, steeles, and bands and it shifts hard enough to chirp both second and third gear. And of course we replaced all the interior upholstery with Legendary components and materials to make the corduroy interior look brand new.

This car sold at BJ Auction for $77K during Covid BEFORE Donohues went through the roof and it is every bit as nice now as it was when we restored it. The onwer is hoping to recover at least most of their purchase cost which is way below market value in today's market. If someone in the US is interested in buying we can help you with getting it back over the border due to it having previously been registered in California before it was sold at auction. With the cost of parts, machine shop charges and materials doubling or trippling over the past 5 years, it would cost nearly double what they are asking to make a car you already owned as nice as this one making this car a great opportunity for someone to own a restored Donohue Javelin with a 390, auto and factory AC at a reasonable price.

The attahced video is from shortly before it went to the new owner who, much to my disgust, flipped it at BJ auction where the current owner purchased it. If anyone is interested, I can get current photos from the owner. The last Javelin I posted was scooped up in a day and was a 69 not a Donohue. If anyone is looking for a Donohue and would prefer an automatic to help our aging knees, this a beautiful and extremely enjoyable car to drive and own.

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07/10/2026

We need an empty Edelbrock cylinder head box in the Phoenix area for shipping factory heads. Anyone have one they didn't toss?

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07/08/2026

Here's an amusing true story about the IRS with regard to my AZ AMC Restorations business. Sometime in April after my tax return was processed, I received a notice from the IRS stating that I had overpaid withheld employer and employee income taxes bu around $10.5K which I knew to be untrue. What actually caused the notice was from switching payroll companies resulting in both companies reporting the same tax payments.

The issue was that when one company takes over payroll taxes during the tax year, they also require getting printouts of the prior company's tax documents that they can take over tax reporting for the full year. In addition, the reason I left the prior payroll company was because the FAILED to submit the withheld payroll taxes on a timely basis in the first place ,resulting in fines that they finally paid due to the fines being because of their error, not mine. As soon as I received the paid iine notice from the IRS, I dropped them like a hot potato!

Fast forward to the end of 2025 and instead of handing off year end payroll tax payments to the new comany like they should have, the same damn fools at the old company reported the payments in addition to the current company reporting the same total annual payments amounts. I've had some interesting dealings with IRS erroneous charges or credits in the past so thankfully did not request a refund check due to being pretty certain the IRS would eventually get it sorted out. Low and behold, this past Friday I received another ominous looking IRS letter in the mail telling me that I in fact owe the $10.5K after all so it all washed out in the end.

The kicker here is if I had requested and cashed a refund check, the most recent IRS letter would have told me that I not only owed the erroneous amount credited but would also have owed Lord only knows how penalty fees they would have assigned for lack of payroll tax payments. So I dodged a bullet on that one! It's a jungle out there for employers!

07/04/2026

Happy 4th of July to all my online friends and followers of this page

07/01/2026

This is how you can tell the difference between a good body and paint shop vs an exceptional body and paint shop. This is also why people wait for up to two years befoer we can take in their cars to be restored because we make them as good as they can be and way better than factory. Take a look at the reflections on these two 66 Coronet 500 rear quarter panels. It is not often that you will see big flat and long quarter panels like these two that are totally ripple free. Why? Because we take the time to hand block flat surfaces like these which prevents the little ripples from a power blocker that you so often see on otherwise nice paint jobs which is the difference between good and exceptional body work. Good work isn't cheap and cheap work isn't good!

06/29/2026

This is a picture of Rebel Machine Wheels that we restored using restored original term rings and reproduction center caps. We still have to get the blue centerpiece on the center gaps but otherwise they came out pretty darn nice. We conjured up a formula of multiple layers of coatings on the wheels to replicate the factory textured metal flake finish and I think it came out pretty nice.

06/26/2026

Update: Interior pics added! I get calls all the time wondering if we have any cars available and this 69 Javelin SST with a 70 hood and done in 70 Sonic Silver Poly with base/clear PPG DBC and their top clear coat may soon be available. This is a rust free California body car by rotisserie restored by our shop with our tried and true killer very high performance fully balanced and blueprinted 69 390 engine with Edelbrock heads, Scorpion roller rockers, very bumpy Edelbrock 7132 cam, K1 rods, Wiseco forged pistons, Airgap intake. Hollley 670 Avenger, Mallory Unilite distributor and custom 2.5" side pipe mufflers making it a torque monster running through the TKX 5 spd transmission with custom center console (I need to find the other picture of the center console and dash but included one from an AMX that is basically the same). Original rust free body Gen I Javelins are rare as hen's teeth. The inside has very nicely done custom pleated seats and matching door panels and the outside has the shortened 70 hood which looks great and has painted lower C Stripe, 15x8 Trans AM Racing Engineering 15x8 rims with 235/60 front and 255/60 rear tires and all new exterior chrome parts. This Javelin does not have AC but it can be added easy enough as a $3K option

We finished this car in late 2023 and it is still a fresh restoration with very few miles since being returned to the owner. I will get a good picture of the car's own interior with the next couple of days but have included a picture of an AMX we did with the same setup. The owner is considering selling it due to our finishing up another car he asked us to rebuild. It is currently located in California but may soon be brought back to my AZ AMC Restorations shop for us to sell for the owner. It runs and drives even better than it looks. Price and more pictures will be coming soon.

06/13/2026

I try to post helpful hints and tips from time to time and this one should help lots of folks with yellowed white letters on their tires. My 68 AMX has BF Goodrich Radial TAs and the rears are 5 or 6 years old while the front are a year or two newer. The rears were badly yellowed to the point that they looked like an old horse's yellow teeth no matter what I did to them including using Brillo or SOS pads. While at a show over the winter, an elder gentlemen (even older than me!) shared his secret which is to simply sand off the yellow surface with 220 grit sandpaper on a sanding block. I have to confess that I was very skeptical but today I decided to give it a try due to going to a large car show in the higher elevation in Arizona in the city of Prescott. Well, I am pleased to let everyone know that not only did the sanding far exceed my expectations but it was actually quicker than scrubbing the white letters with an SOS pad which had never made the white letter look anywhere near this good in the past. The first picture is the newer front tire and the second picture is the older rear tire and now they both look new! BTW, I have a hunch that the tire black crap contributes to the yellowing of the white letters.

05/28/2026

We recently concocted a combination of paint materials to replicate the Machine wheel finish and it came out as good as any restored wheel I have seen and considerably better than most. The first picture is before the final dusting with a metal flake but with that final step, it was a 5 step painting process. First we media blasted the wheel to bare metal and then primed it with a black self etching primer. Next we painted it in SEM trim black which is a satin finish. Next we hit it with a textured coating before painting the wheel in a dark argent metallic paint that we use on the botton flat panel on 69 AMX grills. The final coating is a metallic "stainless" paint that we dusted the wheel with in order to recreate the extra glittler finish on top of the dark argent metallic. The two pictures show the dark argent before the final dusting and after with the final dusting. If you zoom in on the picture where I am holding it in the sunlight, you can see lots of glitter. I have seen lots of Machine wheel finishes and this one is as good or better than any restored Machine wheels I have ever seen