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

[KevinW]

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

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

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

[njsteve]

Too small! :-)

[njsteve]

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.

[njsteve]

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.

[njsteve]

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.