Re: Oh Lordy, I now own a Fordy (a Lincoln actually)..
 

pretty great that you have this car. I have my Grandfathers 64 Corvette Coupe that he bought new in '64. That lincoln is badass.....

Re: Oh Lordy, I now own a Fordy (a Lincoln actually)..
 

The reproduction license plate arrived today from www.licenseplates.tv. TV-77 was my grandfather's plate issued by the State of New York. the official &quot;TV&quot; plates were specifically issued to television station employees, similar to the official &quot;PRESS&quot; plates they have today. Since WABC was 77 on the AM dial, he chose that plate early in his career and kept it for decades. When he officially retired he had to turn the plates in, which didn't make him too happy at the time. So now his car has its (new) old plate back again. [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/smile.gif[/img]

https://www.yenko.net/ubbthreads/pic...6-p1010391.jpg

Re: Oh Lordy, I now own a Fordy (a Lincoln actually)..
 

Looks great! That is one LARGE front end.... Kinda the last thing you see before getting run down... [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/biggthumpup.gif[/img]


BIG

Re: Oh Lordy, I now own a Fordy (a Lincoln actually)..
 

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: ronebee</div><div class="ubbcode-body">pretty great that you have this car. I have my Grandfathers 64 Corvette Coupe that he bought new in '64. That lincoln is badass..... </div></div>

That's pretty cool. You should do a Member's Rides story on that '64 - love to hear about it.

Man, a family could live in that Lincoln Steve

Re: Oh Lordy, I now own a Fordy (a Lincoln actually)..
 

I need to get one of the unique A/C hoses rebuilt for my Grandfather's 1971 Lincoln Continental. The hose was rubbing against the master cylinder, and wore a hole in the rubber section of the hose. These cars were unique in that they used a GM A6 compressor and the complete Frigedaire A/C setup just like any 1970's GM car. No one makes the replacement hoses for them.

Does anyone out there recommend a specific shop that can replace the rubber hose section and reattach the ends (or replace them)?

Thanks.

Re: Oh Lordy, I now own a Fordy (a Lincoln actually)..
 

Someone on the CRG had modified/made a set of dies for a Weatherhead hydraulic crimping machine to replicate the factory crimp on the AC hoses (your appear to have the same crimp), you will have to do a site search as it was a few years ago if memory serves.

Re: Oh Lordy, I now own a Fordy (a Lincoln actually)..
 

I ended up sending the hose to Classic Auto Air in Tampa. They gave me a price of $112 to redo the hose with my ends. Hopefully done in a week or two...or as soon as the cold weather hits.

I did find an NOS Ford hose for the other side high pressure line for $45!

Re: Oh Lordy, I now own a Fordy (a Lincoln actually)..
 

If their crimp is exactly the same as original let the GM guys know, as this was the issue the person on the Camaro Research board faced when he ultimately decided to modify a set of current dies to produce the identical crimp on the production line installed assembly.

Re: Oh Lordy, I now own a Fordy (a Lincoln actually)..
 

What a great story, I so wish I had one of my Grandfathers old Cadillac's for the garage. Amazing pictures and he sounds like an amazing man. Thank you for sharing.

Re: Oh Lordy, I now own a Fordy (a Lincoln actually)..
 

Thanks to Enio45, who sent me the bulk section of hood insulation he found, I was able to reproduce the original insulation sections for the hood on Grampa's Lincoln. Hopefully the mice won't like this stuff as much as the old stuff they chewed up while it sat in my Dad's garage for a few decades. I'm glad I saved the old pieces to use as patterns.

The whole process only took about a half hour (minuse the several times I had to chase the stuff across the driveway when a gust of wind came through). [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/rolleyes.gif[/img]

https://www.yenko.net/ubbthreads/ubbthrea...d-id#Post671822

https://www.yenko.net/ubbthreads/pics...img_2643_2.jpg

https://www.yenko.net/ubbthreads/pics...img_2644_2.jpg

https://www.yenko.net/ubbthreads/pics...img_2645_2.jpg

Re: Oh Lordy, I now own a Fordy (a Lincoln actually)..
 

Great story Steve and cool car. While our interests mainly focus on muscle cars, I think (I know I do) most of us appreciate any nice car, especially one with a story like Simon's attached to it. I have a friend who names my cars by the first name of the previous owner.......that Lincoln will forever be &quot;Simon&quot;. Congrats on the save. That service manager should be appalled and embarrassed for THINKING, let alone SAYING that to Simon. The dealership principal should be notified and the story explained in its entirety. Oh yea, one more thing......we're watching &quot;Killing Lincoln&quot; right now.....coincidence???

Re: Oh Lordy, I now own a Fordy (a Lincoln actually)..
 

LOL. I cannot imagine how anyone back in the day thought that driving one of these behemoths was in any way relaxing.

It is truly frightening to have negative road feel or for that matter, any idea where you are in your lane or when the steering might actually start...er...steering.


If I were an advertisiing executive back in the day, I would have phrased it this way:
<span style="font-size: 17pt"><span style="font-style: italic">
<span style="font-weight: bold">The 1971 Lincoln Continental: the automotive equivalent of Botox.</span></span></span>

[img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/grin.gif[/img]

Re: Oh Lordy, I now own a Fordy (a Lincoln actually)..
 

LOL!!

Re: Oh Lordy, I now own a Fordy (a Lincoln actually)..
 

Grandpa's Lincoln made the big time: It just came out in the April 2017 issue of Hemmings Classic Car. The guys from Hemmings shot it last year when they came out and did the features on Enrico's SD455 and Gramma's Firebird all in one day. The car barely fits within the page! [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/grin.gif[/img]

https://www.yenko.net/ubbthreads/pics...coln_p1_2a.jpg



https://www.yenko.net/ubbthreads/pics...ncoln_p3_4.jpg

Re: Oh Lordy, I now own a Fordy (a Lincoln actually)..
 

Congrats on the ink!

Re: Oh Lordy, I now own a Fordy (a Lincoln actually)..
 

Thanks. All my siblings and relatives were excited to see it in print...(and taking up all the room in my garage, and not theirs) [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/grin.gif[/img]

Re: Oh Lordy, I now own a Fordy (a Lincoln actually)..
 

Congrats, neat story for sure.

Steve, this story made me think of your Grandpa's Lincoln :D

http://jalopnik.com/for-6-000-will-t...iii-1793815404

https://tucson.craigslist.org/cto/6065004139.html

https://images.craigslist.org/01616_...M_1200x900.jpg

Too small! :-)

Looks like my dog is a jinx. Part 1

Two weeks ago I took our Jack Russell out to a cruise night in Grampa's Lincoln. We got 3/4 of a mile from the house when the left rear tire disemboweled itself.

I heard a thump and then something sounding like a football thrown into a blender. Luckily we were only going 20 mph when it happened so I stopped within a few yards. No real damage since the tires are so skinny and fully contained inside the skirts. I backed up into a neighbors driveway and noticed the sound would disappear when in reverse. So I got a brainstorm: it seems that when you back up, the delaminated section would roll back up onto the tire carcass like when you pull the toilet paper roll too hard and have to re roll it by spinning it backwards.

I then spent the next 45 minutes backing up in the opposite lane (with the direction of traffic) on the side street by my house. That worked out to 1 mile per hour since I was 3/4 of a mile away and it took 3/4 of an hour. (Feel free to chime in if my math is wrong). The dog just loved it. He was wagging his tail the entire time standing on the seat. I, on the other hand pulled a lower back and neck muscle from being twisted around looking out the back window for 45 minutes.

We got home and I pulled all the old tires off. Luckily I had a set of unused Goodyear Eagle ST 225/70x15 sitting in the garage and mounted them on the car blackwall side out. They were close enough to the factory 225/75x15 Michelin radial tire option that came on the car originally. I did check with Tamra at MK Insurance and she did some research: but the collector car policy specifically excludes tire road hazards from the policy.

Looks like my dog is a jinx. Part 2

Last weekend I had replaced the master cylinder and sanded and repainted the brake booster. I also pulled out the starter to get it rebuilt locally to solve the hard hot start issue. Turns out it had a bent armature. He had it fixed overnight and I put it in Saturday morning. Boy is that thing heavy, especially when you have to lift it one handed and try to squeeze it in sideways between the steering linkage and the frame.

After I got the starter in, I took the Lincoln out yesterday to buy dogfood for the dog. As I merged with traffic on a local side road, the transmission shifted weirdly into third - actually it sounded like it was shifting and the engine RPM changed but the car was not moving forward any faster. I manually shifted into second and the problem disappeared. I put it in drive and it then shifted normally to third.

I got the dogfood and went to drive to my buddy's garage to tell him about the shift glitch. We discover that the vacuum line to the transmission modulator was not connected. That seemed like a totally logical reason for the weird shift incident. I thank him and go to leave. I put it in reverse and back up a few feet and then shift to drive.....nothing happens. No first gear, no second gear, no third gear. No forward movement at all. I was like the shifter linkage fell off only I still had park, reverse, and neutral. So Al, my mechanic buddy declared my transmission DOA and I called AAA to tow it home. Luckily I was only 6 miles away and they flatbedded to my driveway and I was able to back it into its space in the garage.

Well, I had been thinking about pulling the engine and transmission in order to regasket everything since the cardboard under the car looks like the Shroud of Turin with a perfect image of a 460, a C6, and a 9-inch diff all exactly reproduced in oil drips in outline form.

So I guess yesterday's tranny adventure has pushed me over the edge and I now have my next Fall/Winter project to play with. Out comes the 365 horse/500 lb torque, 10-1/2 to 1 compression, 460 and the non functional C6. I have a local old-time transmission rebuilder lined up for the C6. I am also going to install a dual exhaust on this car since it still has it's 2-1/4" single pipe (rusty) muffler setup on it now. That should wake things up a bit for the 5500 lb car. Hot Rod Lincoln, here we come!

Stay tuned!

And here is the jinx dog trying his best to feign innocence while hiding underneath his bodyguard.

That car should have the 9 3/8 rear end, not the 9 inch. Keep this in mind if you ever have to buy parts for it.

Thanks for the info. I will have to start reviewing all the factory service manuals that my grandfather bought for the car back in the day. There’s half a dozen Ford service volumes in the trunk.

Time for some preliminary tests...I warmed up the engine for a half hour (and even tried putting it in gear and low and behold, drive works again!) in preparation for a compression test. I pulled the plugs and the coil wire and propped the throttle wide open.

Here's the results:

Cyl 1: 205 psi
Cyl 2: 205 psi
Cyl 3: 210 psi
Cyl 4: 207 psi
Cyl 5: 205 psi
Cyl 6: 206 psi
Cyl 7: 205 psi
Cyl 8: 207 psi

I guess the rule of thumb is that you want them all within a 10% range of each other. Looks like this is around a 1% range!

And here are the plugs. They appear to be burning nicely for the 443 miles I put on the car in five years. Running on 93 octane plus some 100 low-lead Avgas.

Since the engine was already warmed up, I pulled an oil sample and I'll send it out for analysis just to see what it says. Once I get the engine out and on the stand I'll pull the pan and check the main and rod bearings. I don't plan on touching the short block other than maybe a new oil pump, rear main seal, and gaskets. I will most likely pull the heads and get a valve job and new valve seals installed. Maybe new valve springs if they don't meet spec.

Been a long time since I had a Ford with transmission problems, but when I had shifting problems like that it was because the aluminum valve body was worn and the valves that were supposed to move freely were hung up by a ridge of aluminum. I pulled the valve body, removed several of the valves and lightly scraped the openings in the valve body till the valves were able to move freely again. Of course your problem could be something completely different, but I'd ask someone familiar with those transmissions before going to all the work of pulling the complete transmission.

My old time mechanic friend said the same thing - valve body issues. But from sitting so long - over 27 years since my Grandfather passed and the car has only driven around 1000 miles in that timespan, it is time for a freshening up.

Ah, detective work. MacGyver is back at it! Good luck and consider leaving JR at home until you sort things out!

Spent the weekend unbolting everything and removing the engine and transmission. I now realize why the factory manual recommends removing the engine by itself and the transmission later. This has to be the world's longest transmission! The adjustable leveling engine lifting saddle really came in handy as I had to pull it at a diagonal to get it to clear the nose since the entire front end rose about a 10 inches in the air once the weight of the engine was taken off the frame. I then had to pull the front tires and lower the body to the ground on two floor jacks just to get the assembly to clear the nose. Did it all by myself, with the wife and son only assisting during the final maneuvering over the front sheetmetal when someone had to hold up the trans yoke to clear the final hurdle while the hoist was pulled forward.

I only broke two bolts during the entire process: one was a tiny 1/4" mounting bolt for the choke tube assembly to the intake and the other was the top water pump to timing cover 3/8" bolt. Everything else came out easy which is pretty darn amazing for a car that spent it's life in New Yawk.

Here's all the parts. I wasn't able to mount the engine to a stand today as I did not have the 5 inch by 7/16"-14 bolts that the 460 uses - much larger than the 3/8" bolts that usually go with GM engines. I had one old GM motor mount bolt that was perfect but without the other three, I was dead in the water. Going to the local Fastenal store tomorrow to get the right grade 8 bolts for the stand.

Time for cleaning that enormous engine bay. I'll be borrowing my friend's pressure washer his week to get all the old grease and gunk off the engine bay and the front suspension.

One thing I did find was missing: the water pump backing plate. My Dad brought the car to the local Lincoln Mercury Dealer to have the water pump replaced back in 1998 - they also did the timing chain at the same time since they broke a bunch of water pump-to-block bolts and had to pull the timing cover off anyway to drill out the broken bolts. (and set the timing to 5 degrees AFTER TDC when they were finished!!!). Looks like the dealer never bothered to reinstall the backing plate that gets sandwiched between two gaskets behind the water pump and directs the flow into the engine. Luckily the car never overheated since it was never driven around much after that repair job twenty years ago. I guess that also explains why the fan belts were wearing a bit weird due to being cocked from the 1/16" misalignment from lacking the water pump plate.

By the way, does anyone happen to have an original power steering pump dipstick? The metal curled part of the handle broke off and is missing from mine. They make a chrome repro but I'd prefer an original one in case anyone has an old Ford rusting away in the backyard somewhere...

Got the 7/16 x 5 inch bolts this morning and got the engine on the stand. Boy is this thing big and heavy. I started the disassembly and have already broken two 3/4" Craftsman sockets trying to pull the heads off. Those are some torqued down bolts! I'll need to use an impact rated socket tomorrow (after I buy one).

There is a ton of gunk inside that engine. When you touch it it crumbles more than smears. So it looks like I'll need to completely take this apart and hot tank the block to get all the goo out. That's what comes from 47 years of cold starts and limited driving. When I drained the oil (that only had 400 miles on it) - it was like black coal coming out of the drain plug. Can't wait to see what the oil analysis will say.

I pulled the first main cap to check the bearings. The crank looked great but the bearing was all copper. The rod bearing I checked looked fine and still had all its material intact. I'll Plastigage each one before I pull it all apart in the coming days. I like to know exactly how things were wearing in case I just go with a polish and re-bearing at STD size.

Interesting thing I am learning about Fords - they number the cylinders 1 through 4 on the passenger side and 5 through 8 on the driver's side. Not 1-3-5-7 and 2-4-6-8 like a GM. All the rods are number stamped.

A friend of mine put a big block Ford together many years ago and put the rods and pistons in like a Chevy and couldn't figure out why they didn't look right.

I got the engine fully apart today. Almost got a hernia too, breaking loose those $%#@*& head bolts with my old trusty diesel mechanic 3/4" drive ratchet and a pipe on the end of it.

The rod bearings looked decent but you can see the small copper wear pattern on the tops of each rod bearing - most likely from my Dad running the 10-1/5 to 1 compression engine on 87 octane for the random times he was driving it over the past couple decades. OUCH! All the mains were at the copper layer top and bottom. The crank itself looked very nice. I guess the original Ford Clevite bearings did their job and sacrificed themselves instead of the crank journals.

I Plastigaged a couple bearings and the rods looked to be really tight: much tighter than the minimum 001. line on the paper. The mains came in at .002.

I had to borrow a ridge reamer from the local autoparts store to get the minor ridge out of the tops of the cylinders so as not to damage anything coming out.

The lifters has a varnish buildup and were sticking in their bores at the top of their travel so I just left them there and turned the block over and then pulled the camshaft out while the lifters hung upside-down. I then pushed them back down their bores and they slid out nicely from underneath without scratching the lifter bores at all. The original camshaft looked decent but there was varnish on the surface in spots. All the bottoms of the lifters were evenly worn with a hint of concave wear.

The combustion chambers on the heads looked very nice, as did the pistons. Not much carbon buildup at all.

And here's the giant assemblage of parts as of this evening.

I dropped off the block and all the engine parts at the machine shop today. The machinist noticed the "Felpro blue" on the deck surface and said that the headgaskets had been replaced sometime in the past. It had to be when Grampa had it as I have no paperwork documenting any major engine work since we have had the car since 1991.

We also notice how badly the valve stems are chewed up. Looks like we need a new set of valves and rocker arms, at least.

Stay tuned for further episodes of "As The Wallet Opens..."

I don't think I've ever seen valve stem tips look like that before.

Wow Steve when you make up your mind to do something, things get done.
This will be fun to follow.:biggthumpup::biggthumpup:

Steve
I am following along, great project. How many people did it take to lift the hood off?
I know a fellow up in Vermont that is into these older Lincolns. Let me know if you want his contact info, he may be able to offer some info of tricks he has learned over the years.
Couldn't help but notice Grandmas Firebird and your old Suburban in the background.

Paul