Steve, how about a factory 429CJ intake and Q-Jet, 2 1/2 mandrel bent dual exhaust and a 3.25 Traction-Lok for it?

It has a weird 9-3/8" rear with the prehistoric rear wheel ABS that took its pulse sensing off the pinion. So I doubt anyone makes gears for it.

I'd would like to find some 429 Ford polished aluminum valve covers for it. That would be a cool addition. Or a Boss 429 head conversion...

The 9 inch chunk fits in place of the 9 3/8 chunk. You can't put a 9 3/8 chunk in a 9 inch housing because the ring gear will not fit into the housing. From the back side the 9 and 9 3/8 housings look the same, but if you look at the opening in the front you will see that the 9 3/8 housing has notches to clear the larger ring gear. So any 31 spline 9 inch chunk will fit into your 9 3/8 housing. I have a 9 3/8 Traction Lock chunk, but I can't remember what the gear ratio is.

I spent the day pulling apart the steering column to fix the tilt assembly. All late 1960's through the late 1970's Ford tilt units have a flaw in their design. The .25 cent pin that is supposed to be press fitted into the lower tilt housing slides half way out over the years and no longer fully engages with the teeth on the locking pawl assembly. So if you tilt the wheel and apply pressure downward, it will disengage and ratchet down into your lap. Rather disconcerting if it happens while you're driving.

Luckily my Grandfather bought all the repair manuals for the car back in 1971 so I just followed the instructions on how to get to that spot in the column. Three hours later I arrived at the destination.

A Cougar specialty store sells an upgraded pin made from tool steel that has C-clips on both ends so it wont slide out. I had to get mine out to get the correct measurements before buying it.

You can see from the photos, the hanging pin, and the chipped bottom tooth on the pawl. Luckily this is the uppermost tilted position that only Private Detective Frank Cannon needed to drive his car.

I also disconnected the heater core. Since I only drive this car in the summer there is no need for heat. Plus, it has that Rube Goldberg automatic, hydromatic, thermostaticly controlled climate system that only allows you to pick a temperature between 65 and 80. No fan speed, No vent control. Just High, Low, Off, Vent, Defrost and De-Ice. It is annoying as hell to have the system constantly opening and closing the heater box and A/C vents to maintain a temperature. Kind of like being in the shower when someone flushes the toilet and suddenly you get scalded.

So I did a little searching on the interwebs and found that a company makes a 180 degree, 5/8" to 3/4" heater block off hose for LS engines (for $11) that was the exact radius I needed to route the heater hoses together. I then bought a couple of rubber caps for $3.

It works great. Now the GM Frigidaire, R-12-filled A/C system actually works and doesn't blow intermittent hot air to even out the temperature to an exact 65 degrees when what I want is an exact 45 degrees all the time. Too bad I can't get the fan speeds to boost in to overdrive.

BTW, I would love to put a cool Shelby style wooden steering wheel in the car in case anyone has any aftermarket/repro ideas out there. Any suggestions Ford guys????

Yep, you were spot on.....LOL :beers:

a pic of Frank Canon in full tilt up for the younger crowd.

Awesome!

The fancy-shmancy pin with the C-clips arrived yesterday and I put everything back together today in about two hours. And the tilt now works and holds firm in "Huggy Bear," all the way up to "Frank Cannon" positions without ratcheting down. Amazing. All that work to replace the 25 cent pin with a $32 pin with clips.

I can't complain since West Coast Couger identified a problem, created a solution, and sell a part that fixes it exactly.

https://secure.cougarpartscatalog.co...tml?attribs=79

Here's the pin: (it's the thinner one of the two. The thicker own is for the locking lever itself.)

I have an advantage, having a lathe, mill and heat treat oven in my shop. When I need something like that I can usually make it pretty quick.

I decided to treat the old Lincoln to a new steering wheel. I found a replica 1960's Mustang wheel from GT Performance. It's a lot better quality than the Grant stuff and has CNC machined hubs and horn button assemblies. I did have to wait a week after finding out I needed a horn assembly spacer ring to move the button out by 1/2" to avoid the internal wire terminals hitting the end of the steering shaft under the horn button. The alternative is grinding off the end and I did not want to do that.

So here is how it turned out. The wheel is the same 15" diameter as the original rimblow wheel. The added bonus is that all three horns now work in harmony. The old wheel seemed to have certain sections of the wheel that would play certain individual horns on the car. Weird, I know.

It’s officially a race car!!

----Now you're talking! Nice looking wheel......Bill S

GT Performance makes nice wheels that aren't prohibitively priced. I used a 3 spoke wood one on the '66 GTO restomod build a few years ago. It was well constructed-vintage looking with proper amount of dish, but had a modern large diameter grip. They also had a Pontiac horn cover for it as well. (It was nice to find good things off-the-shelf occasionally on that build.)

It's been a while since I did anything with Grampa's Lincoln. After 4 years of sitting in the garage I decided to pull it out a couple weeks ago. Operative word being "tried". Or should I say inoperative. Turns out that 5 quarts of Type F transmission fluid had wicked its way through the cork pan gasket and I couldn't get it to do anything in any gear. So after a couple days I was able to hunt down 6 quarts of Type F. Who'da-thought it would be so hard to find these days?

I filled up the transmission and pulled her out of the garage and washed her off. It took several minutes for the engine oil to get up through the valvetrain from the sound of the clattering. After a while the old 10.8 to 1 compression 460/365 hp smoothed out.

I took her for a ride and noticed that the 15 year old BFG's that I stuck on there after the 30 year old generic radials blew out, were making weird noises when rolling. So I splurged and bought a brand new set of whitewalls for the beast. It took a Michelin 225x15 originally. I still have the original spare in the trunk. That translates to a 225/75R15 now. I found set of some Venezia Classic 787 whitewalls (made in China) whitewalls and installed them. They balanced up very nicely and I couldn't believe the cost: around $55 a tire! I've been driving the car around for a week now (over 100 miles) just to use up the old gas.

I then siphoned out the remainder of the vintage 2021 Costco Premium for use in the lawnmower later this week. Surprisingly the gas still smelled fresh. I did add a ton of Stabil back in the day as well as some 100LL aircraft fuel over the years so that probably helped. I then went to Costco and filled her up with more 93 octane premium. For giggles, I checked the receipts in the ashtray and it was only 10 cents more a gallon than it was in 2021 when I filled it last.

I changed the oil yesterday with some Valvoline VR1 classic/racing 10W30 high zinc oil and a new Wix filter. She's been my daily driver now for the past week and a half or so.

This week I have an appointment with the body shop that repainted the Suburban to have their paintless dent guy give me a estimate for removing the several dozen dings in the doors and fenders that my dad installed while using the car as a garden tool storage rack for 20 years. Wish me luck!

A view from the road and of the super cool, blood pressure, sphygmomanometer-style speedometer in action.

In case you were wondering: sphygmomanometer

Steve
The car looks great with those White walls.

Way cool!!

Beautiful car! I'd be proud to drive that.

Leak
 

Nice car , before you change pan gasket look at selector shaft seal . Common leak , torque converter drain back into transmission causes fluid to get higher and higher the longer it sits the fuller the transmission gets till it reaches selector shaft seal/linkage and ends up on the ground . Not difficult to replace , have to remove pan then selector shaft to access seal . The other most common leak is dipstick tube o ring . Gravity causes pan gasket to appear to be leaking . Brake clean can be very helpful pinpointing leak .Also warm hot fluid thins out and can help locate leak quicker after brake cleaning suspected cause of leak .

Yeah, I was looking online for C6 common leaks. I think the sitting for 4 years and the resultant draining of the fluid into the main area of the case is what caused the leakage, as you said. There were initially some drip marks around the selector shaft as well as the entire pan gasket. I ended up tightening the pan bolts and brake-cleaning the entire area. Haven't had any more drips since then.

Here's a couple shots after brake cleaning the entire area. BTW, is that black plastic spacer on the selector shaft supposed to have that slot in it? Or is it a crack?

The plastic piece is seldom seen probably a Lincoln item for protecting the o ring behind kick down lever and am sure it came with the split or crack . There is a small o ring on the kick down shaft they didn’t leak very often and very easy to change , if you remove nut holding lever to shaft the o ring is behind plastic piece. If car sits for a week or longer the converter starts to Fill the transmission more and more that is why so common for automatics to only leak after sitting extended period . Factory used cork gasket dry just want to make sure pan rail straight from over tightening pan bolts over the years (torque to 16 ft lbs) The kick down shaft contacts valve in valve body past 3/4 throttle or so and only moves 1/2 inch or so is spring loaded . Those are neat cars , friend of family bought new 2 door like yours , except his was a 74 give or take a couple years .

Yesterday I brought the Lincoln in for a long delayed front end alignment. I had replaced the entire front end with new parts 7 years ago and assembled it back together totally by eye. It tracked dead straight with zero pull so I never wasted the time to get an official alignment done when I had the old tires on it. Since I just bought new tires and I had a free day, I brought her in. After a few minutes the tech comes in and says "You really want me to charge you for this?"

It turns out that by some miracle I had gotten everything within the green spec zone except the right front toe which was off by 1/16". I laughed and said yes, please adjust as needed and print me out a before and after spec sheet. I was happy to pay him the $129 since he seemed to enjoy working on something way out of the ordinary. I even bought the correct vintage Snap-On WA-171 alignment tool on ebay for $25 but he ended up not needing to use it. The tool has a point at the tip that slips into an alignment hole in the frame next to the A-arm and the claw moves the A-arm in or out depending on what you need to adjust.

Took Grampa's Lincoln to the local cruise night today. I was able to deliver Kevin's Camaro grill, that I promised him a few weeks ago before the last show was rained out. You definitely know your car is a wide-load when you can fit an entire 69 Camaro grill, flat in the trunk with a foot to spare on either side.

A buddy also showed up in his 65 restomod Vette, so I had some more company as well.

I gotta say, the old Lincoln seems to attract a helluva lot more attention than any of my musclecars. Everyone that came by had a dad or grandad story of having one in the family. I let a bunch of people sit in the back and reminisce on the rear sofa.

Perusing the interwebs I found some more old historical info on the Golden Anniversary (or more like the Guldens Mustard Anniversary, given the exact color match to the spicy brown condiment). Here you go:

And a better scan of the original 2017 Hemmings Classic Car article. Funny thing is that when you google 1971 Golden Anniversary Lincoln, this is the very first thing that pops up! We're famous!

Today I took the old girl out for an early morning cars-n-coffee in Millstone, NJ. 100-mile round trip. Drove very smoothly. A/C worked fine. No issues other than the gas gauge moving toward "E" very rapidly. On the way back I was surrounded and overtaken on I-95 by a gaggle of tiny JDM cars on their way to a show somewhere in Central NJ. It was hysterical. It was like a whale shark surrounded by a school of remoras. I hit the gas to get over into the far right lane and the Lincoln pulled the group along like it was caught in the riptide current.

Just need another 25 mile trip and I'll finally have an entire 1,000 miles on the engine I rebuilt in 2018.

And...the mission creep continues. When I got home yesterday I decided to pull the interior for a deep cleaning that has never been done. And I did have one young kid stick their head in the car at the show and say to their dad "This car smells like old people". LOL
Due to all the years of storage it has had its battles with mice, mildew and mold. I pulled everything out and started cleaning. Found two enormous mouse nests in the back seat and several petrified mouse mummies under the carpet.

Found several broadcast sheets including one that said "REWORKED DOORS" on it. I am borrowing the wife's carpet cleaner today to shampoo the carpets after I spent an hour vacuuming them out and beating them with a stick to get all the sand out. And the mouse nests (next to a piece of 2x4 for scale).

Close up of the broadcast

A better shot of the broadcast remnant that was stuck to the underside of the carpet. And other paperwork found under the tar paper, sound-deadening mats in the rear seat area. And the rear seat with a pristine broadcast sheet in the springs. I guess the mice weren't interested in it for their nest(s)

The carpet sections after two rounds of shampooing with the wife's Bisell machine. They smell very nice now. Not like "old people" any more. I also used the machine and shampooed the headliner, seat belts, and the door panel carpets as well. It was a balmy 90 degrees out today so the dampness in the fabric/carpet evaporated very quickly.

I reinstalled all the tar paper sections that I took out yesterday to vacuum and disinfect the floors. By the way, the section of tar paper on the back floor that was permanently bonded to the floor was most likely the result of the ambient heat from the original single muffler that resided just underneath that location. There was no sense in trying to remove it since I was reinstalling the rest of the sections anyway.

Ready for the carpet to go back in tomorrow.

Interior all cleaned up and back together. Smells a lot nicer! (according to my wife who has an actual functioning sense of smell).

More mission creep. Still ridding the car of old car smell. I removed all the trunk lining panels and tar paper and cleaned it it all out and scrubbed the sheetmetal.

Then I washed and scrubbed the panels and separated the fiberboard backing pieces and wet them down as well. That way I could apply some 2x4s and weights overnight to get them flat again. They were all buckled and bowed from years of being half-attached and half-hanging. Luckily it was hot and sunny yesterday and today so they all came out clean and pressed nicely.

Looks like the floor section was the victim of a spilled can of oil around a half century ago. Hence the black stain.

I then used some spray adhesive to reattach the backing panels and installed everything.

And voila! The finished product. And the trunk smells so much nicer now. I gotta tell you, it was somewhat disconcerting to have to climb all the way into the trunk to clean the upper shelf area where the spare tire goes. I was completely inside the trunk and at the mercy of the Lincoln in case it decided to go "Christine" on me. I did place the shop-vac hose over the edge of the bumper just in case the trunk lid decided to come down and lock me in. I did also clean and reinstall the original section of green outdoor carpet that my grandfather hand-cut in 1971 to protect the floor. Still fits perfeclty!

Took her out to the local cruise night for a celebratory drive. Finally hit the 1,000 mile break-in point for the engine rebuild from 2018!

I got to park next to a friend's 1967 Shelby GT350 with 12,000 miles on it,

After seeing the Marti Report that my friend had for his Shelby I decided to finally order one for the Lincoln. I order the Elite report which has everything including the window sticker reproduction. That's the one document we don't have for the car. I also learned that Marti has the original invoices for a certain number of cars built in this era. When I reviewed that option on their site, it included our Lincoln based on the first digits of the VIN. Fingers crossed, they will be able to provide it. Now the waiting begins!

The bad guys could easily fit a few bodies in that trunk, it’s huge!
I think I have watched to many mafia movies!
Great work, fun to watch!