As most of you already know I have a grey Lincoln Mark VIII, with some 237,000 mile on the ticker and a long history of being raced, and hard at that.
Well a few weeks ago while at the track to pick up an air ride compressor from my buddy Tom and the Ghost's previous owner Tiff, they told me about a guy whom had another Mark VIII for $600, that had been hit in the front end.
So after talking with him and discovering that this $600 Mark VIII has only 69,000 miles and that the poor lil Ghost was getting tired in more than one way, I sent Stang Girl over to look at it for me and make the final decision about the purchace.
After a short look over and using her best judgement she knew this was not to be passed up and paid for the car, took pictures and call me to let me know what was the scoop.
Well after a few weeks of doing other thing around the house, and then finally the transmission goingout in the Ghost it was time to make arrangments to bring the donar Mark VIII home for it second to last journey.
Mind you I have never ever seen this car in person, you all know as much as I do about it, I have only seen the same pictures you have.
So at 11:00pm lastnight it came home on a roll back and was dropped off in the street, with a jump box attached she jumped right to life and was ready to go to it's new lounging spot, and me off to bed (4am comes around pretty early)
So after work today I decided I would knock the 1 1/2 years of dust and dirt of of her and she what was really to be had.
Mmmmmm Here's that tasty good stuff, 32 valves of screaming terror
Although you'll say it doesn't look to bad, it did take a pretty smart hit diagonally to the front end and tweeked the forward section of the frame rails pretty good.
All the interior (steering wheel, door panels, carpet, seats, console, misc trim, dash trim) except for the headliner, phone and dash assy will be used, the headliner can't be used as this car doesn't have a hole in the roof (might if it was in the north Texas area, or mabey even roofless)
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So the idea here is that I am also going to remove ALL of the drivetrain and put it in the Ghost, that includes the rear to.
So to do it in a so called easy fashion, I'm going to drop the whole K-member with the motor/tranny/front suspension at once and out from the bottom of the car.
I did a similar repair New Years night to Tom's Mark VIII, but only to the K-member, the problem was that the hoist legs got in the way and hampered a little bit, the hoist was used to hold the engine and tranny in place while I did the service.
This time I brought home a piece of "C" Channel iron and I'm going into the attic and placing it accross the rafters and punching two holes in the cieling and dropping a chain through it, and then attaching a Chain Fall (block and tackle).
Similar to a tree saver, a heavy duty short strap around the front frame rails, while setting the engine and tranny with complete K-member still attached onto some funriture dollys for easy mobility.
then taking 2 short pieces of pipe and welding them to the frame rails with casters on them to move the car out of the garage, the rear section of the car will be the last part done.
Jeff -
The chain is hooked around the 4x10 beam in the attic. It will be used for the come-a-long to lift the car bodies up so the Dr. can do this transplant. I'll take a pic of it when I get home and post them.
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