My pappy said I was gonna drive him to drinkin...

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if I didn't stop buying $300 Lincolns. :rolleyes:

Coworker, old guy, asks me if I collect cars. Told him I've been known to. He said he had a 95 Town Car he was going to scrap. I offered $500. He countered with three, LOL. Bought it and registered it sight-unseen.

Picked it up, only added air to the tires. Didn't even check under the hood. Decent pull to the left. Get it home. Alignment is whack, toed in. Alignment sleeves are rust-welded to the rod-ends so am going to just get a "kit" with everything.

Also found a dragging LF caliper but I took it apart and retracted it, fiddled with the pins, and it seems to have cured itself. Will watch for now.

Seller mentioned a tire thump, no kidding! All the tires are from 2005. Put the spare on for my sanity.



Car has coil springs in the back and electric tape over the "Service air suspension" light. Someone at Lincoln decided to buck the "idiot light" trend and made everything words instead of pictograms. Car went "ding", alarming, but it was only to announce that I was down to 50 miles to empty. It switched from instant MPG to miles remaining for the rest of the drive. Controls are odd-- lots of little buttons everywhere, not something I can jump in and figure out. Driver's seat has heat, lumbar, tilt, height, recline, etc.

Runs and shifts perfectly. Oil looks fine. Coolant is a mud pit. Getting ST AM/AM, but it a lower priority than under-car stuff.

RR window regulator/ motor no good. Radio antenna got disconnected. Headlights dim and could use polishing.

Still has all the OE cats, LOL. Figured the worst case, I could scrap it and cash those in. But the frame's great. Story was it was a Florida car until three years ago. Like the rest of them.

Oh, and the wipers are stuck in the "Ford salute." The fix is to take apart the wiper motor and lube everything, particularly some little limit switch.

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I'd rock it! When I was 16 I worked for a guy that had a gold one I drove to run an errand one day, great driving car but my boss was super morbidly obese and the seat was crushed to bejesus and back, it was like sitting on a pancake.
 
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Is that a driver seat, or a recliner on wheels! What oil and filter will you be using for the first change?
 
I have a driveworks filter left over from my 97 MGM I owned in 2009.

Oil will be a mish-mosh, good excuse to clean up miscellaneous half-quarts.

This seat, like the MGM, doesn't have good outboard bolstering. I feel like I'm going to fall out going around right corners. Other than that, though, the seats are amazing!
 
That is one weird looking dash thing, I didn't even think that would ever exist.
 
Is this the era of the plastic intakes that sometimes crack? not that I'd touch it, if it's just to fix and flip.
 
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Well, time for a coolant changeout. Stuff that came out was slippery but looked like black coffee. ST AMAM went in. Just did a rad drain & fill, got 1.5 gallons in, about half the capacity. I just want some sort of fresh additive package in there until I can really flush it come spring. The overflow reservoir was... disgusting. Managed to plug its big hose opening with a sludge bomb while cleaning it out with Cascade dish soap.

Worked on the wiper motor-- took it apart, greased it, still stopped the blades at 12 o'clock, exactly wrong. Pulled the little crank off of it and put the keyed motor shaft on the grinder so I can install it backwards. Motor started "behaving", sliding in its little park-slider getup, and still parked the blades at 12 o'clock. :mad: Figuring I was home free, I flipped the crank back around to stock and the wipers hung out at the bottom of the screen. For a day. Now they're parking at 12 o'clock again. My fate.

Changed out the rusted out inner & outer tie rods and sleeves, aligned the toe. Doesn't seem to pull and I got the wheel centered, but the car isn't too passionate about being on-center. More research and fiddling required.

Still have to address its sticky LF caliper. Will do this before fighting the alignment any more in case it's causing a pull. Cheapest source was Walmart of all places. Part coming Monday. Used toilet paper to get the order up to the $35 free shipping threshold.

Got 4 tires for $50 from a guy in the Dunkin Donuts parking lot. Two fronts are mounted so far. Took care of the wobbler.
 
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Black coffee? Just what reacts to make it look like that? Any chance of stop-leak in there?
 
Ah, Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen. Saw them perform live in upstate NY in 1971 or 1972. Good luck with the Lincoln.
That was a cover. The original was a 1955 rockabilly hit by Charlie Ryan, an answer song to "Hot Rod Race." Ryan actually HAD the car in the song: it was a shortened 1948 V12 Lincoln frame and running gear with a Model A body.
 
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