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

[big gear head]

That is the 9 3/8 rear end, not a 9 inch. If you ever have to get parts for it then this is what you need to ask for. The pinion housing is sealed with an O ring, not a gasket. Sometimes you can pull the pinion housing out without having to remove the whole chunk, but many times you have to remove the chunk and loosen up the backlash before the pinion housing will come out. When you remove the pinion housing there will be shims between it and the chunk. This is how the pinion depth is adjusted. Don't damage these shims. It's been several years since I built one of these, but I think the shims are larger than what a 9 inch uses, and I'd hate to have to find replacements.

[njsteve]

I think I'll just live with the oil drips for the time being given the complexity of the repair. Looks like the dealer loosened the bolts and tried to inject blue Permatex in the gap, and then tightened it back up.

[njsteve]

Here's the engine bay after pressure washing. You can see some of the original factory markings on the sway bar and in the passenger side front fender behind the battery tray. Does that say "427 COPO" ??? (Just kidding)

I already started buying up suspension parts - upper and lower ball joints, lower control arm bushings., etc. Perusing my Dad's repair orders from the Lincoln dealer I could see that they already replaced the inner and outer tie rods, idler arm, the center link assembly, and the sway bar and strut rod bushings around 500 miles ago (in 1998).

[njsteve]

Engine progress! Block is already tanked, bored, honed and cam bearings installed. Heads are next. The Speed Pro H535CP .030 pistons are installed on the rods. These are an updated version of the factory piston with valve reliefs instead of a compression lowering pocket in the center.

With the factory DOVE-C heads it is well over 10 to 1. Once I CC the chambers I will know exactly what it will be. The Speed Pro spec says 10.8 to 1 with 72 CC chambers and 10.3 to 1 with the 77 CC chambers.

[njsteve]

Got the oil analysis today. Looks interesting in that it shows iron wear. That could be the cast iron rocker arms where they were grinding away at the valve stem tips. The high lead is from the leaded fuel most likely. My SD455 had similar high lead readings from using the same leaded 100 octane AV-Gas. Though the bearings on the 460 were down to copper on the mains. The machinist said the bearings looked like every other big block Ford he has taken apart over the years.

[njsteve]

Picked up the major stuff today today. I dropped off the exhaust manifolds to get surfaced. Years of blown out exhaust manifold gaskets pitted the mating surface on the manifolds. As you may have guessed it, the dealership would just charge my father for replacing the donuts in the exhaust pipe to manifold flange and call it a day, completely ignoring the actual cause of the exhaust leaks...and the noise.

I highly recommend Rogers Speed Shop in Garwood, NJ in case anyone needs any machine work done. They are an old time machine shop with experience that goes back at least five decades. They have done the machine work on all my Pontiacs over the years. They know Fords too (and Chevys of course). https://www.facebook.com/Rogers-Spee...6305069751697/