Rip Van Winkle Lincoln

[CMP-Phil]

Merry Christmas Eve

Little off topic but with a tie in, with the kids early this evening talking about what I've been up to lately. An told them I had started restoring the Lincoln which non of them had ever seen out of the garage. My son asked why the Lincoln instead of one of the 190SL Mercedes I got stashed away? Well my response was because the 49 Lincoln is most comfortable highway cars I have ever owned. The other reason is that the Lincoln is much more alienable to grand children than the 190SLs we've got 5 grandchildren under the age of four. My son and his wife have three now all under 3, I thought I had that conversation with my son but maybe not. Anyway back to the Lincoln and the challenge my son and his wife have had recently is finding a car which could take 3 child seats across in the back seat. So I just looked up the Cosmopolitans rear seat hip room 62.5 inches, yup three car seats should fit, that and a trunk that you could hold a dance in. More space than their VW Passat Wagon.

But strangely one of the reasons for restoring the Lincoln is that it is probably most practical of my antique cars for either of my grown children because it is something that could be enjoyed by their whole family. Also as an un-restored antique the Lincoln had a low practical value to the family and a low monetary value. As a restored ready to drive antique car it would be more likely to fit in to either my son or daughters family life style. Well as to monetary value how many of us could actually get back the $ we put into restoring a antique car, breaking even is a noble goal.

Cheers Phil

[CMP-Phil]

Hi All

Well I celebrated New Years Eve Day by pulling the engine out of the old girl, basically everything from the firewall forward has been removed. I've had the Time Lapse Camera working in the shop most days, of course Murphy's Law kicked in at time and a couple of things that I really wanted to capture the camera decided to not work.

One month of activity in 2 minutes of time lapse video.

Medium Resolution Video 7.6 MBs file size http://canadianmilitarypattern.com/Reso ... adband.wmv
or
High Resolution Video 12.4 MBs file size http://canadianmilitarypattern.com/Reso ... 012%20.wmv

Taking the time to do time lapse photos of project like this are interesting but the serve a more practical purpose, I use them to know order of dis-assembly to aid in putting the car back together. On my other projects which in the course of doing the same thing such as engine pulls on several trucks meant that my time to have an engine out and on the test stand dropped by several hours.

Above are the two engines sitting side by side, and it is becoming very clear that the engine form the Town Sedan is an early engine in model year while the one from my fathers 49 Coupe is a late model year engine.

Visible progress will slow now as I clean and determine what needs to done to each part. On the body parts I plan to clean everything and mark repair work.

Cheers and Happy New Years Phil

[autostick]

Phil:
Great idea and slideshow, thanks for posting it. Just wondering why it alternates from color to B&W? Two cameras? Is your garage heated? Looks well organized.

[CMP-Phil]

Hi

The camera is actually a game camera, that senses motion and has an adjustable time delay, the reason it keeps shifting back and forth between color is it has low light black and white and normal light color. It actually will take no light pictures in total darkness using an infrared flash.

As the camera has gotten older it shifts back and forth on its own, I think it is being tricked by the combination of halogen and florescent light in my shop. But it may just be wearing out think its total picture count is up around 500K.

Glad you enjoyed the video.

Cheers Phil

[sauceman]

That game camera is a great idea, going to have to do that as well when I start on my Town Car.




cheers

[CMP-Phil]

Hi All

Glad people have enjoyed the time lapse, may have figured out how to stabilize the image, hung shield so that camera could not see the nearest Halogen flood light.

Today's project was to get the engine that I removed unstuck.

How do you un-stick a stuck engine one that has been sitting for 34+ years. First I've been squirting the witches brew of acetone and ATF into the engine for a month to let it soak. I'd tried the normal simple stuff like car in high gear and winching it across the floor, tires just slide.

So I tried something new for me and it worked.

First step was making a 4" thick wooden plug just slightly smaller diameter than the bore of the engine, then mounting my biggest wheel puller on the engine so that it was pulling straight up and square to the head. Then with a large socket to spread the load on the wood plug. Slowly then turning in the screw, once it started moving I went to the impact wrench to drive the puller which seemed to work even better. It was then a process of moving from one cylinder to another start moving the pistons up and down the stroke. As I think about it probably should have used the firing order of the engine to so as to get a full revolution of the engine, instead of just moving the pistons up and down.

ADDED Information 3 days later One point I should have made in the first post is pick a cylinder that is NOT at TDC. As I think about it the best ones to start with are ones that are about at half stroke so that you have more mechanical advantage on the crank. If you pick one that is all the way up the connecting rod is in line with the crank so all the force is in a straight line on the crank instead of trying to start rotation.

Has anybody tried something like this on a really stuck engine?

I'll try the firing order approach on the second engine, I've got to get them both moving so I can figure out which is the most logical one to rebuild.

Before I started on turning the engine I had to remove the other cylinder head. Used the old tried and true approach of wooden wedges driving them in around the head and just giving each a tap and going round and round until the head slides up the studs. Interesting the other 49 engine I have has bolts instead of studs so removing the head on it should be much easier.

[rld14]

Philip,

I dont have experience with Lincoln flathead V8s, but if they are anything like the Ford/Merc ones (And I'm told they are), your biggest concern is to make sure that you have a block without fatal cracks in it.

[CMP-Phil]

Hi rld14

Good point, before I spend any serious money on rebuilding, I always have them magnafluxed look for hidden cracks. Yes some of the early 49s had problems with cracked heads.

This Lincoln was sold by English Motors down in Red Bank, NJ.

Cheers Phil

[CMP-Phil]

Hi All

Been making progress on the car, in particular the engine. When you last saw the engines they were both on test stands, which with something that weighs around 900 lbs is the only way to move these things around. According to the manual the complete engine less transmission is 854 lbs, well I wasn't happy about trying to put that much weight up on the engine rotisserie because they generally just bolt up to one end of the engine which puts a lot of load on just 4 bolts going into the cast iron. So it was time to fully support both ends of the engine. The photos shows what I came up with an adjustable front support, now the engine rotates very easily as it does not have the bending load on the single pipe swivel used in the standard commercial unit.

One afternoons work and now I wonder why didn't do it earlier. The only real time consuming part was making front adjustable in height because the commercial units actually have a 6-7 degree up angle in the swivel to compensate for the bending force when the engine is bolted on. So it can take a 6 cylinder or a V8 you need to be able to raise/lower the front swivel so that it is line with the rear at the correct length.

After posting this picture on another forum on WWII Canadian Military Pattern vehicles one of the guys in Australia pointed out that the Flat Heads were easy to work on if you mounted them cross wise in the rotisserie so that you can work on the engine in a vertical position. This morning made up the mounting plate adapters to grab the engine crosswise. The cross axis rotisserie I think will make it easier to work on the V8.

At my age sometimes the time to make the special tools is well worth not having to man handle parts around.

Now a question do post like this belong in the vehicle thread or in the Engine Drive Train thread? Were best to post restoration tools?
Cheers Phil

[CMP-Phil]

Hi All

The engine is now completely disassembled and cleaned and is turning out to be in surprisingly good condition. Known problems, three valve guides that stick, I have not measured these yet to see if the problem is guide or valve. I've miced (how do you spell the past tense of mic) crank, cam, pistons bore, no visible or measurable ring ridge, and so far they are all inside the manual numbers for installing standard bearings and rings and putting it back together. Actually everything is measuring so close to stock that I think I may order digital micrometer to confirm the accuracy of my 40 year old vernier caliber.

I was very pleasantly surprised by the lack of sludge in the engine, obviously that during its 62K driving life it must have had regular oil changes and have been treated to detergent oil.

Other activities for the last couple of weeks included removing the 6 studs from the exhaust manifold pipes got lucky and was able to remove 5 of the six by welding nuts on the studs letting them cool and they hitting them with the impact wrench, couple of them took 2 or 3 tries either the studs broke off or the welds broke. Only one of them broke off flush and had to be drilled. Only problem was that one I had squirted with penetrating solution after I welded the nut on to it and accidentally hardened the surface of the stud. So standard drills would not touch it, but it did drill with a cobalt drill.

Other activities include lots of parts cleaning as I'm to stick to my new restoration philosophy of cleaning as I disassemble instead of disassembling everything and then starting to clean. Makes dis-assembly a lot slower but hopefully it will improve the process as a whole. So far it looks like this approach will identify parts that have to be replaced or rebuilt earlier in the process.

Other work included removing the gas tank which I thought I had drained completely 30+ years ago to discover that it had several quarts of the what might be called gasoline, but more aptly be called a caramel colored very stinky liquid, which still burns but just barely. Took nearly 2 hours for the two quarts of this stuff to burn off. (I burn stuff like this in a chunk of 10" well casing with 1/4" walls and bottom.)

Good news is that from the outside the tank looks good and it doesn't leak. But the true test will come once I boil it out by filling it with 170 degree water to clean it. Why a 170 that's what I have the shop hot water system set at, amazing how good really hot water cleans parts. Obviously hot water like this needs to handled with care. I'm hoping that filling the tank with really hot water will help with the removal of the old tar type undercoat. Which in places is nearly 1/4 thick, some of the thin area have scraped right off taking with it the tanks original black paint and leaving bare steel.

Cheers Phil

[sauceman]

Good job so far. And if you do harden a bolt or stud you can torch them red hot and after they cool off you should be able to drill them.

And I believe it's mic'd



cheers

[John Mc]

Phil,
Your updates are really enjoyable, please keep up the good work and when completed, you will amass quite a document.

[rld14]

Phil,

Great work. Before you go crazy with that engine though, have the block magnafluxed to check for cracks.

[CMP-Phil]

Hi All

I'll post this here because the car pictured is a 49 Lincoln Cosmopolitan Town Sedan, the source is a British Automotive Cartoon Book of the 1960s, which gives an interesting perspective of how the British viewed American autos.



I could not find a Lincoln Humor Tread on the Forum should we start one and under what heading?

Cheers Phil

[ANDY FENTON]

phill, havent spoke in a while, looks like your project is going very well!!! reminding me of my project!!! as you know i just got done with my town resto. if you need anything please dont hesitate to contact!!!! good luck

andy fenton