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I don't know much about the original history of this car, but what I do know is that it came from a gentleman who lived in Schulenburg, Texas who passed away from cancer. This Gentleman had two cars in his collection. One car was this Lincoln and the other car ,now resides down in Kemah, TX on the board walk, is painted up as a Police car. From the license plate, the last time the Lincoln was registered was 1988 and has spent its time in some tall grass in Houston Texas by Hobby Airport. The story how I had come to acquire this beauty is as follows. A co-worker (Tom) and I were talking one day about old cars, and I had mentioned how I would love to own a project car that was drivable. He said that he knew someone that might have something. Weeks later, Tom showed back up in the lab and said that he located a 47 Chevy Coup with a motor and tranny. WOW!! that would have made a great project...but it was beyond my skill level with all the rust holes in the sheet metal. I turned down the car and decided to look around the property and I noticed this clean car in the weeds. It had the complete interior and trim. Now this I could handle!!! At the same time as I was working on purchasing the Lincoln, my parents had bought a new car and wanted to put it in the garage. Well...In my parents garage is my other project, a 68 VW bug. So I had to go and pick up the bug. The original plan was to buy the Lincoln and slip into my old boat storage...Two things were wrong with this plan: (A) I didn't have any cash and (B) I made the mistake of telling the Girls I work with in the lab about this car I was going to buy and not tell my wife..BAD MOVE..caught so much hell for that..all I heard was," if my husband bought a piece of junk, he would be in deep (you fill in the blank)
Every day my wife went to work and complained about her fear of our house turning into Sanford and Son. I told her not to worry. I was very lucky and the only reason I was able to pull this off, was that a co-worker of my wife told her that I will only live once..THANK YOU GOD!!! and Happy New Year!!! I hope Santa will be good to her this year. The owner of the property where this car was found was also gracious enough to allow me to make payments on the part that I was to come up with. My wife only agreed to the project if I promise not to take any money from our checking account. Scrounging around the attic and the house, I gathered up everything I could sell on eBay to raise the funds. Textbooks, Lacrosse gear, fishing gear, if it wasnt used in six months ..up for bid. This gave me plenty of time to locate parts and supply houses on the internet. Also I searched the the Yahoo groups for Lincoln egroups to join to help me answer any question I had.
When the car was first pulled from the weeds, I got a phone call letting me know that the right front tire was not spinning. I became worried that the bearings had welded themselves to the spindle. I headed out to the location to work on the car thinking that this is going to be a Aw-shoot job, but luckily it was only a stuck wheel drum. The plugs were pulled and the cylinders coated with marvels mystery oil. The rear seat was removed for restoration of the frames that had been severely rusted. The window seals are very badly dried out from the blistering hot summers here in Houston and that rain has been getting in for years. Almost forgot..at the same time that this has been going on. Channel 11 News came out with a story where the City of Houston and Home Owner Associations have the ability to call in a Tow Truck to have non-registered and non moving cars removed from owners property. They feel that these vehicles bring down the image of the city...They must be driving with there eyes closed and not notice the hundreds of Nudie bars and abandoned strip malls in this city. Ok, back to Lincoln...what this means is that I now have two project cars, a house with a one car garage and a Lincoln that happens to be 6 in shorter than the length of my very full one car garage. Let the cleaning begin!!!
