1968 Lincoln Limo

[Barry Wolk]

Deconstruction of the parts car is complete. Every nut and bolt and part that can be removed, has been.

Now all I have to do is figure out how to lower the body onto the trailer without it crashing.

[West Peterson]

A come-along attached to a beam in the sealing...

[MCHinson]

Or maybe attach it to the "Ceiling"...

[Barry Wolk]

Ouch!

[keiser31]

Move it outside and lift it with a come-along from a heavy tree branch.

[West Peterson]

Given the time of year, I think doing it indoors would be less harsh.

[Barry Wolk]

You betcha!

[keiser31]

Get a Sawzall and cut a hole through the floor of the trailer. Put a 4x4 vertical through the hole. Put a floor jack under the end of the 4x4. Lift body structure off of jack stands and tires. Pull jack stands and tires out. Lower body structure. Take body structure to crusher. Bring trailer home. Fix hole in floor of trailer. See how easy it can be when we all put our minds together!!

[keiser31]

Yeah....o.k.....I was having a little fun.

[keiser31]

There's always the fulcrum device to raise each end. Sort of like a seesaw type of lever. Use a 4x4 and a log to pry each end up while removing the supports. Might take two guys.

[Barry Wolk]

You nearly had me convinced.

Actually, I own a 3,000# hi-lo. That should solve the problem.

[keiser31]

So...were you just messin' with us?

[Barry Wolk]

No, I forgot I had it in the building next door.

[Barry Wolk]

This is what was left of a 5,000# car. I took it to a scrap yard and got $37.00 for the half-ton of steel that remained. They picked it up with a giant claw and dropped it directly into the crusher. It folded up like a tin can.

I had to do some real soul-searching before I decided to cut this up as a parts car. It turns out I had nothing to be concerned about as the car had some structural problems that were merely patched over. I don't feel badly anymore after looking at how much rust there really was.

[keiser31]

Barry.....I think that you did exactly the right thing with the remainder of the car.

[Earl B.]

Hey Barry, with 37 bucks you having a biiiig party on Saturday night????haha...B

[HarryJ]

I was wondering what was happening on your restoration.

[Barry Wolk]

Slow and sure wins the race.

[Scotts_DG8]

I've only been part of this group here for a short period of time but have come to find some of the posting here highly entertaining and informative. Creative people in the process of creating, it is something to observe. I’ve have a nice garage for warm weather but I just can’t manage to get out much in the dead of winter here. I do enjoy the progress and decisions that you’ve made and because of one comment made earlier I’ve gone back and looked at the trailer project and was just amazed, what a really excellent execution to the really cool looking end product. I look forward to seeing this end product too…

[Barry Wolk]

Well, that was certainly positive feedback. Thank you.

[BamaWildcat]

Barry, Any movement on Mr. Limo? I've been keeping up with the Coke cooler and the boat.

[Guest dwynne]

Great project! I restored a 67 lehman limo this one is very unique qnd longer than normal.. i am currently doing basically same thing to a 79 mahoney stretch.. mechanical finished and going to the rust under the vinyl top.. Will keep up with your progress it has inspired me to get back to the 79.. thanks dennis

[Barry Wolk]

Very soon. I have one more galvanized trailer to finish.

[Barry Wolk]

I acquired the tool I'd been missing to move the project forward. Now that I own a spot welder I can start to reassemble the car.

The first thing I needed to do was to reinforce the "B" pillar. Metal fatigue took its toll on this connection. Since I planned on replacing the kluged roof support anyway I was able to make a permanent repair.

My solution is to install a substantial roof support and add a second "B" pillar salvaged off of the donor car. The nub of the old "A" pillar presented itself as the ideal location for the second "B" pillar, forming a very strong box that wasn't there before.

I may put glass in this opening.

I needed to stabilize the passenger side of the car before cutting away the hack work. I brazed a piece of 1 1/2" angle iron to the two existing "B" pillars and the "A" and "C" pillar. This allows me to cut away the roof support without having a 22-foot car bend in half.

I trimmed away the mangled sheet metal on both sides and the support dropped away.

Trimmed the metal back until I had a clean cross section from the roof of the first car to the roof of the second. I was going to match the exact structure in new sheet-metal but I didn't think that that shape would handle the addition span. The old support had bowed upward, slightly.

Looked around my shop for a piece of iron to better bridge the gap when I noticed one of the Unistrut pieces I used to lift the trailer body. The cross section turned out to be an exact fit. The structure allowed me to slide a piece in that is 6" longer than the opening, slipped 3" into each end. The metal is much thicker than the original structure yet will allow for some flex.

[Barry Wolk]

Welded in the new "C" pillar and removed the braces that determined its location. This new pillar was welded to a new heavy gauge piece of sheet-metal that now forms an edge for the new filler windows to mount to. There will be a similar flange at the base of the fixed panels.

It is very important to get the body lines straight on a slab side. Having an extra 4 feet of body line makes it even tougher. It's apparent now why they made their own center door panel instead of using original sheet metal. The whole center door needed to be dropped almost 1/4" to get the front line up with the back. This was the simplest fix. I simply removed the door and elongated the mounting holes by 1/4" and it dropped right into place.

After rehanging the door in proper alignment I was ready to cut in the filler panel. I positioned the panel in place with duct tape and drew in registration marks and noted the edge of the cut in panel on the center door.

By measuring the distance from the vertical registration line to the edge of the door I was able to transfer those measurements to the inset panel. It was then a matter of connecting the dots to determine what needed to be cut away.

The filler panel fit right in.

That's a whole lot of slab-side.

I'm also helping a friend build a pick-up box for his '40 Dodge. Boy, was steel thick back then.

[Guest Road mister]

Great to see new progress, a fascinating build.

[Barry Wolk]

Thanks. I have fun documenting the progress. As I type up what I've done it makes me think about the next few steps.

There were two critical body shapes that were poorly done before and were beyond my skills. I had the local sheetmetal fabricators make me some panels that made my job much easier. The roof line has a small detail that I could have duplicated in lead, or not duplicated at all if I had gone back with a vinyl roof I'm going to try to avoid that.

Since the center door will be fixed it was important to think about making it watertight. To that end I had them duplicate the curvature of the top of the door with an extension and a flange to hold the base of the fixed side windows.

I trimmed away the original door tops leaving only the flange that has the welded trim studs. The new panel slipped under it. I left about 1/2 of the original door edge on top for a factory finish at both ends of the fixed panel.

This is why it was so important to get those parts right. Nothing worse than crooked lines on a boxy car.

[BamaWildcat]

From means of support to raceway, Unitstrut has you covered!

[Barry Wolk]

Unistrut works for me.

Bought a dozen vice-grip "seconds" for $2.00 from the local junk tool store, but they'll serve their purpose. The salvaged roof is a perfect fit.

Got to work doing some serious spot-welding. Prepped the front fender with a paint that allows for good spot weld adhesion and rust protection. This was sprayed only in the seam area. The rest of the exposed inner fender was painted with rustoleum.

Using Cleco fasteners I attached the salvaged front fender. These fasteners allow for quick panel attachment. It is always best to disassemble, clean out any drilling chips and reassemble, a real PITA with screws.

The new spot welder can be used on the same side of the metal, in pairs of welds. The resistance across the steel creates extreme hot spots, fusing to the metal below.

Once the first set of welds were done the Cleco fasteners were removed and welds zapped into the sheet-metal on either side. The fastener holes were later spot-weled closed and ground flat.

When I went to permanently install the center door I found that the door from the salvage car had some soft spots in the lower corners. Sand-blasting had revealed that I would have had a problem down the line, so bet to fix it now.

Glad I did.

I took some sheet-metal from the junk rear doors and trimmed them to size.

A little sand-blasting and trimming and new panels were ready to weld.

[Barry Wolk]

Driver's side sheet-metal is done.

Now that the center door doesn't open there is a gap between the "B" pillar and the fixed door, front and rear. For additional strength a strip of metal was fabbed and welded in place.

Here's why the doors get all floppy and arm rests fall off. Stress cracks form over the years. Once they breech the designed structure, everything gets all loose. Hammer everything flat and lay on a weld. Door stiffness comes right back.

Look everywhere on the door.

Did some measuring and found that the front car's distance between the "B" pillars is 1/2" smaller than the rear "B" pillar. That's a huge variance. I needed to make the distance the same so I made a Unistrut spanner that I wedged in-between the lateral roof braces. I'll finalize the location based on where the divider goes.

[Scotts_DG8]

Barry,

I’m beginning to go through withdrawals, just to let you know…

I’ve not commented in a while, and I see that you are still up to your usual standards of work so I can be patient for your next update. Besides, I know your day job is not the restoration work, but I thought that I would let you know that your progress updates are missed. When you have time, we’ll be waiting...

Scott

[Barry Wolk]

Thanks, I love the feedback

Decided to fit all the trim before I start with body filler.

The car has 6 "B" pillars, and they're all different. Decided to trim them to fit now instead of scratching up a new paint job.

Got a new shop tool. Threw in some bumper bolts to see what it would do.

After about 2 hours I had to shut it off because the noise was making me insane. I wasn't all that impressed. The sand blaster is certainly faster and more thorough. I'll install it in the warehouse where it won't bother anyone. I'll let the parts run longer and report on its performance.

[Larry Schramm]

I have one of the vibrator cleaners like you have and I like it a bunch. You do need to put it out where you can let it run for 5-10 hours depending on the media used and how rusty the parts are. I have been very satisfied with the one that I have. I usually set it out side running and forget it for the day.

[West Peterson]

Does the vibrator cleaner leave plating alone (if there's any left)? I would think that would be the advantage over sand blasting.

[West Peterson]

Barry

Have you thought of putting a sun roof in... like the ones used on the Square birds of the late 1950s?

[Barry Wolk]

I am hoping to get a roof assembly off of a prototype Ford product that has two sunroofs.

The material in the tumbler is suppose to remove rust. It was supplied with another material that's supposed to polish metal. I'll try it on something plated.

[Larry Schramm]

My experience is that it will not take off the plating and sometimes will not take off the paint depending on the media that is used. The only draw back is it does take some time to get the parts clean. I will say that sometimes depending on how rusty the parts are I will use a wire wheel on them to get some of the dirt out of the cracks or threads.

[Barry Wolk]

Has anyone tried aluminum oxide?

[Barry Wolk]

I'm a freak about door gaps. It's what I look at when I judge cars. The Lincolns of this era had huge door gaps, and I can't figure out why.

When I came up with the idea of using a complete front door with about a foot of the rear door spliced on to the front of it to fill the space between the front and rear doors, I did so because creating a 51" wide panel was beyond the width of my 48" roller.

I wanted to use a complete door as a center panel as welding it in place would add a great deal of rigidity to the center section of the car. Filling the gap with the other door panel turned out to be a bit more of a challenge as the body lines have a very gentle curve that's not easily perceived.

The horizontal body line was the most important aspect to the final appearance of this car so making the body line line up correctly caused there to be about a 1/2" gap near the bottom of the door gap. I used the MIG welder to build up the edge of the door in steel. I rough shaped the opening with a abrasive 1/16" wheel and then used a grinding disc with a plastic backer to make the door gaps perfect. Using the factory edge at the rear of the front door as a guide I sanded away the edge of the mating surface until the plastic backer just fit in the gap. That gave me a 3/16" door gap, matching the rest of them.

I pulled out all the stainless trim. It appears I got two cars worth of stainless when I bought the donor car. Now I have 3 1/2 cars worth to pick from.

I picked the best pieces and installed the rain gutter. The pieces I had were not straight as the window arch peaks and then runs down to meet the top of the front door. I had to straighten the stainless pieces very gradually as none of the were long enough before they took a big bend. That left me with about a 1 foot gap which I cut from one of the excess pieces. I think I'll hire a pro welder to TIG them while they're on the car. I can shape and metal finish them using the car as a jig.

I'm glad I'm doing this now. I would have ruined a new paint job by now.

[Barry Wolk]

I learned a very valuable lesson. I learned that I should have labeled more parts than I did. I also learned that window lift mechanisms can be very dangerous to take apart when they aren't hooked to a door. Ouch!

The biggest lesson I learned is that old car's windows stop working for one simple reason. The grease on the slides hardens and become like an adhesive. The same grease seems to gum up the spiral gears of the drive mechanism. The electric motors go bad when they overheat from all the cumulative drag due to ancient grease. Mineral spirits cut through the grease but I found rust from water that had come in from the failed seals above so I glass beaded them clean. It left much of the original plating, so a layer of proper grease should give me another 40+ years use. Basically a simple cleaning and lubrication brought the window operation to like-new.

One of the window slides acts as a window rest when the window is down. I used a piece of microfiber in place of the worn out felt. It won't scratch the glass.

Installed the wiring harnesses for both rear doors. Discovered that someone had absconded with the unique window switch connectors when the donor car was in storage. Arggggg!!!!!!!!

Now that the doors have all their inner workings they slam with a resounding thud, like a bank vault door.

Found this little contraption in a box of parts I inherited with the donor car. It's a period-correct automatic headlight dimming system sensor that was factory installed on some cars. It's housing would be painted body color or was available in a brushed chrome, which is perfect for this car. It will not work without the other parts, but sure will look cool mounted next to the antenna on the front fender.