'77 Lincoln Mark V resto/mod

[andymarkv]

Figured you might enjoy some pics of the father in-laws Givenchy edition Mark V.
He found it in a barn in upstate NY. It had sat for 10 years, rotting. It was still solid on the underside though.
I got it running for him and he drove it in that condition for a couple of years as a summer fun beater. It burned oil like crazy though....a quart every 100 miles!!! I did a compression check and everything looked good? I wondered if the oil use was caused by something other than bad ring seal. We ended up doing a cheap topend rebuild. The parts we used were, pre72 timing chain (non retarded), Summit racing cam (204/214), Edlebrock valve springs, performer intake, 750 carb and recurved the distributor. The drivetrain recieved B&M shift kit and 3.00 gears in the nine inch. The sucker runs really strong now!! From a roll, it will stay pretty close to my wifes '00 5speed Mustang GT. The oil use came from wasted valve seals and leaking intake gaskets. It still uses oil though....now only 1 quart every 1000 miles. But hey, it has 133,000 miles and 10,000 of the last miles were in hopped up condition with us not being very gentle with it!!

We got serious about going on Hot Rod Power tour in the winter of '04 and started doing bodywork.... The pics are pretty self explanatory!







The paint turned out pretty good for a garage shoot..... If I would man up and color sand it, it would look even better!! Trying to find a vinyl top guy around here is hard, so we just "painted on" the vinyl top
On hot rod power tour we saw the "crate camaro" The 69 camaro built with reproduction body. The drove the snot out of that car!!!

And only two other Mark V's on the trip, here is one of them

We also tested some of the wide open spaces on that trip!!!

We also tested the tires.......



We wanted to go on Power Tour again in '07 and decided to change up the look alittle bit. We threw on some dirt cheap Cragar 441 wheels (15x8) and 255/70/15 tires. I also took off the front bumperettes and made fillers from left over bumper trim.



The next project was a newish budget 460. We were given a FREE 75 town car with a supposed 70,000 miles (the motor seemed pretty clean inside, so maybe?) The frame was pretty rusty (as was everything else) so we didn't feel too bad about parting it out! (it doesn't look too bad in pictures....but it was a bondo bucket)





The block didn't need to be bored so it got standard flat top pistons for around 8.75:1, cleaned up D3VE heads with stock valves and a comp cams 262H cam. With the better compression, bigger cam, cleaned up heads, bigger 2.5 inch dual exhaust and 2200rpm stall converter, there should be a noticeable improvment!!
Flat top pistons in the short block...

Pic of my lame clean up job on the exhaust port.....







I ended up setting the timing at 16* initial and limited the total to 38 at 2900 rpm and it runs OK.
I did regear, sort of. I stuck some short 195/60/15's on and ran it around. (29"s tall to 24.3"s tall) With an inch less rubber width and effective gear ratio of 3.50 it does good burnouts, but it isn't night and day in the upper RPM's. We didn't go too fast because we are right at the limit of the weight rating of these tires. But kicking it down a gear at 30mph isn't night and day from the tall tires...... (Thats the problem. If this car is all about seat of the pants performance, I'm not willing to run the extra revs on the highway without major gains)

Here's a couple of burnout pics with the tiny tires...... This car with rear disc brakes will not power brake at all, even with the tiny tires and 3.50 efective gear ratio.....
We're having fun and thats all that matters!





Tried out some other wheels and tires... Big-n-littles, the traditional muscle car look.
15x7 235/70's front, 15x10 (4" backspacing) 275/60's rear.
These are off an 78 2wd chevy truck. 5 on 5 bolt pattern. (keep this in mind, there are dirt cheap used wheels and tires around if you look. These cost 40 bucks)





The father in-law scattered the spider gears in the 9" on the way over to my house for the header install.... Damn, more work for me!! But better to do it now than on power tour!!



After getting the rear almost straightened out.. We started test fitting the headers.
Found a set of headers to try. They are Hooker 6126 headers for '75 460 Torino's. The rest of the exhaust is 2.5" crush bent pipe and Magnaflow mufflers.
The converters are on there to pass visual inspection. They are 2.5" straight piped.


Here is my cliff notes for install;
To install my driverside header I had to take out both motor mounts and jack the motor almost as high as it will go. You will know when its high enough because there will be wiggle room when the other guy uses a pry bar to push the engine to the passenger side. (If it isn't high enough we found the motor would't move much when you pried on it) We found that prying the motor over to the side was the only way to get it to finally slip in.
The driver side header was the only one I needed to clearance. BUT these were used headers with clearancing already done to them.

The passenger side can be thrown up in there with the motor flat in its mounts (get the driverside taken care of first, if you jack the motor up with the pass side on it will hit the floor/firewall)
I did clearance some of the flange, it was really close to the trans.
Speaking of which, I did cut the collectors back to get a little more room from the trans crossmember. (side note, It looks like the pass side might have hit the floor if the collector wasn't shortened)
The header hook-ups were the most time intensive part. I think there are better ways to do it than the way I did it. You'll have to get creative. Mine are ugly and booger welded. But now I can get it to a shop that can do it right.


I still need to move somemore things around to have more heat clearance. Brake lines, trans cooler lines were some of the most obvious.
This steering return line I'm going to replace and move on top of the fender.

Also the plastic AC box probably need some kind of protection before summer stop and go traffic....



The headers seem to have made a nice improvement!! It pulls strong to the shift point! Now that it will rev, I bet the 3.50 gear set will make a big difference.

Here is a short video clip off my camera....
I think if I figure out the settings I can do better, I really thought my little camera could do better than that! Or just borrow a real video camera!
He wanted to do a burnout, but all my neighbors were home so I just had him get after it a little.

[img]http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e127/andyk1...

Turns out my combo is pretty lame!
Right off the bat, tuning with a wideband is a snap! My idle was way rich and adjusted it in three min. It actualy sounds like it has a cam when 14:1 at idle.
It was pretty rich WOT and a step down in the secondary jet got it just about perfect with a 16whp gain at 262whp. The fuel ratio was right at 12.25/12.5.
We tried a few pulls to optimize timing but started to see the effects of heat soak after three pulls. 18 initial, 16, 20 and a repeat 18. 18 seemed to be the best, but the 18 wasn't repeatable due to heat soak. The more we ran it the lower the numbers got.
All these pulls were done in second gear. In second gear max HP was 262 and TQ was 345.
We let it cool off and tried a couple pulls in top gear, but at a high RPM to keep it from down shifting. 240hp backed up with a 238hp pull both around 42/4300rpm. Torque was 325 at 3500rpm
This was on a Dyno Dynamics dyno. Brad will send me the graphs later.

This is just a tuning aid, but low numbers still suck!!
I did learn that it is still making power close to 5000rpm when the motor isn't heat soaked, so getting the governor to shift the tranny higher than 42/4500 will make it feel faster.
I do feel better knowing it runs the best it can.

This a staight up opinion, don't bother with a half ass rebuild on a 460 like I did. Do it right with well ported heads, 9.5 compression on a zero decked block. If you can't swing the funds, mod the stock motor with a small cam.

Car was heat soaked on this run and you can kind of hear it. (lost about 10hp) Wish I had video when it was cooled off it sounds a little stronger.....

[IMG]http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e127/andyk1...

Now that the motor runs pretty good in our never ending project Lincoln Mark V, we wanted to address the super scary handling.
I rebuilt the frontend and added a better spring/shock/sway bar package.
It had a 3/4" front swaybar, 5/8" rear bar and super soft front springs.
I'm not trying to make this thing handle like a slot car, just take the wallow out of it and have a little more control. The body roll can get kind of scary..... The goal is to make it feel close to a late model Crown Vic.

Turns out 78 Tbirds had a 1 1/8" front swaybar that is a direct bolt in.
Also 99 police crown vic shocks share mounting and size and are cheap with stiffer valving.
The stock front spring were whipped! So I rebuilt the front end with a new set of springs with a little more than half a coil cut off.

Just this little work made a major change in the handling! Very firm. Not uncomfortable, but noticable. The springs in the seat are now very noticable! Big dips actually give two rebounds of your ass in the seat where the car just soaks it up. Before everything moved together. A lot more confident at speed, the wallow is almost all gone.

[Hottrucks]

Shhhh Don't tell but I'm a closet Mark freak myself.....I'm lookng for another as we speak...even the mark 8's are bad ass...My last one ran till 275k till the compressor on the air ride crapped out I parked it and some guy came by and had to have it more than I did....I love them..well maybe except for the 7's there pretty ugly