Page 2
A lot has happened since I last updated the website ..I was able to find and purchase the air cleaner, Bumper, and won a hood on E-bay for 25 dollars. My first project was to clean out the inside of the car and remove all the carpeting that was rotting away. The floor underneath, in the back, was soft with only a couple of holes rusted through. The front part of the floor also had a couple of holes no bigger than a silver dollar. This will be no problem to fix. I'm going to buy one of the POR-15 floor kits that has the Aluminum strands mixed in with the fiber glass to restore the floor, then give it a good coat of the POR-15, this should really seal it up good. The next step, I purchased all the mechanical brake parts from a local auto parts store that had them for a heck of a lot cheaper than the mail order specialty parts shops.
I started on the driver side rear brakes, thinking that all I would have to do is pop in the wheel cylinder flush out the lines and in no time be rolling . The lines were all crusted up and would not disconnect easily also the rubber hoses just crumbled away. Going to have to replace the lines and hoses. When I removed the front wheel to replace the front cylinder, The front A-arm caught my eye...it was bent as you can see from the pictures above. I can't figure out how that happened..a wreck, towing, or pulling out of a field some where? When the car was sitting in the open the weight of it caused it to sink down into the soil. These sink holes filled up with water and rusted the heck out of the brake system. The bolts holding the backing plate were rusted pretty bad and had to be drilled out and hacked up with a dremmel tool. I spent three hours on one bolt. I removed the backing plate and sand blasted them then painted them with POR-15. I'm waiting on some A-Arm pics to check to see if they are bent before I give the OK to ship. After the A-Arms arrive I can go ahead and finish up the brakes. The steel lines still need replacing and I was able to use Ford rubber brake lines which I got for 12.95 a piece (go to PARTS link for part information). The wheel cylinder were replaced with brand new ones.
While I wait on the A-Arms, I decided to jump over to the fuel system. My friend at work recommended that I pull the carb and intake and clean out the critters that might have moved in. The Carb removal went very well with no surprises. It turns out that the carb on this car belongs to a 54 Mercury and not a Lincoln. Even though these tea pot carbs all look alike I found out that the difference is in the pump plunger assembly. How I found this out was that I ordered a kit from a company that had a pictures of a carb that looked like the one I have and tried to save 10 dollars...WELL!!!! that 10 dollars I saved will cost me 43 dollars more to order the right kit for that one part. The correct carb I have is a Holley 804-5... LIVE and LEARN!!!!! There was sooo much crap in the carb I was worried that I wasn't going to get all of it out. I soaked it overnight and blew it out to get all the sand out of it. The car did not have an air cleaner on the the whole time it was stored and it was contaminated pretty bad.
After the carb was finished up I pulled the intake to flush out the critters, cleaned up the linkage and painted it up. The intake was the gathering place for the rats wire insulation feast. There was tons of waste in this area and I had to vacuum out so not to get it into the heads. I'm fighting the sensation to paint and sand every part I come into contact with. Once you start doing that, it will be years before the carb ever gets any gas into it. For right now I'm trying to focus on just getting the car moving and the rust stabilized. I'm beginning to see why the Y-Block guys are crazy for this engine, they are extremely easy to work on. I really like the valve cover setup, only 2 bolts to lock them down. The Chevys I have worked on always require you to do it twice..:) They always seem to leak the first time for me.
This motor only has about 2000 miles on it since being rebuilt.. I was told
