Leland Lincoln V8 rebuild

[Leif in Calif]

Over on the "not mine" forum there is (or was) a '30 Lincoln that appears to be quite a nice car for not much money ($19K) but with low compression. There was a lot of talk about how difficult and expensive these engines are to rebuild. I know they are an older design with fork and blade rods and that they were obviously built to a much higher price point than Ford's '32 design, but what makes them so difficult and expensive to rebuild? 

[John Kelso]

In my humble opinion it is mostly when you have to rely on someone else or pay a shop. I think Ed posted

removing the blocks honing the cylinders and installing new rings. I'd probably add do a valve job. I've done this

with a couple L Lincolns with good results. I am fortunate to have had my equipment for many years. These Lincoln's

are great cars, go for it.

[Rusty_OToole]

Suggest you check oil pressure cold and hot, idling and at a speed equal to 30MPH in high gear, also do a compression test.

If oil pressure is good and the engine runs without knocks or bangs chances are the bearings and bottom end are ok. Low compression suggests a ring and valve job needed, this is pretty common on prewar cars.

JAK has the idea. Even if the cylinders are slightly tapered new rings and valves will restore performance for quite a while, 20,000 to 30,000 miles which could be many years given the limited use these cars see.

[Rusty_OToole]

Here's a tip from the motorcycle world. If you remove the cylinders from an engine that has separate cylinders and crankcase, stuff rags into the hole below the cylinders. This is in case there are broken rings they won't fall into the crankcase.

[m-mman]

2 hours ago, Leif in Calif said:

but what makes them so difficult and expensive to rebuild? 

I will address this point.  

The people who know them and know the tricks, hints and shortcuts are few and getting fewer. 

 

How do you even dismantle one?  The block (cylinders) unbolt from the crankcase.There is a thread going on now about a person who is  assembling a 34 Cad V8. The rods dont fit thru the cylinders, pistons are inserted from below(!) and the rods have to be cocked and angled to go into the crankcase. In other words you "Cant insert this until you insert that, and that wont go in until this is in place".  Imagine holding a heavy 4 cylinder block above the crankcase while you insert the pistons and rings from below? Then lining up and angling each rod for it to insert into the crankcase?

 

Skills, tools, and practical experience are needed. JAK above seems to have these, but if you dont, where are you going to get them? 

 

My 1929 Cadillac has the crankshaft counterweights BOLTED to the crank. No it is not a one piece cast/forged crank. The weights must be removed to machine the journals. To insure that the bolted on weights never fly off, the nuts are WELDED to the studs on the crank. You cut the welds, remove the nut, machine the crank, attach the weight, reweld the nut. Then rebalance the whole thing. 

Easy, if you have done it before. Daunting if you are discovering it the first time. 

 

Removing the engines (complete) on these cars is no easy task. They are H-E-A-V-Y and cumbersome. They dont just pop out. You remove the entire front of the car then do things like unbolt the steering gear to allow the engine to pass by as you lift it out. 

Read Matt Harwood's thread about his woes and travails working on his 1935 Lincoln. It is an eye opening experience. ("Our cars and restoration projects") These cars can and have brought even skilled and experienced individuals to their knees.  

 

To just start digging into one a novice will naturally make mistakes. Novices will do things wrong. The problem is, that mistakes are costly. 

Parts are non-existent and expensive when you find them. Break something and guaranteed, it will be expensive to replace. (if it is not made from unobtainium) Nothing is reproduced. Another thread here about timing and other chains on a Chandler. Odd sizes and lengths, owner working to find replacements. The Lincoln has chains. There is an adjustment but if you need replacement? Start looking. 

 

Matt bought the gasket set for his 1935 V12 - $1000. Yup a grand for the gasket set. I haven't priced a V8 set, but on Full Classic cars there generally are few economy alternatives.  So, install your heads and then for some reason you have to remove them again (opps, the novice forgot something) Do you reuse the gaskets or buy another set? 

 

These are the things that make big heavy Full Classics so expensive.

I had long heard about how revolutionary Henry's 32 V8 was (one piece block) but in my lifetime and experience that was how all V8s were made, it wasn't anything special. Then I exposed myself to these early multipiece V8s and their complexity.  It gave me a new outlook on what Henry accomplished in 1932. They are worlds apart. 

 

 

[hidden_hunter]

My Cadillac is a fork and blade type motor and it’s not so much the motor itself that’s problematic it’s as much the “features” that they added that make it complicated (like the carby or distributor setup)

 

If you’re doing the work yourself and you are patient then it’s entirely doable, read up not just on service manuals but also tradesmen guides for repair techniques from back in the day. 
 

Paying a shop to work on this stuff will always be very expensive but I enjoy the mechanical work as much as driving 

[Matt Harwood]

Well, there's the quickie way that might solve the problem and there's the right way. I don't mean to be derogatory to a ring and valve job, which is a perfectly acceptable way to keep an old engine running. But if you're like me, will you ever be confident in the engine? And why spend a big pile of money (but not a HUGE pile of money) and still have an unknown bottom end? Here's a picture of the best main bearing when they finally tore my engine down (and remember, it was running and would have gone back in the car had I not bent a bunch of valves doing a compression test). Frank, my machinist, believes these were the original bearings and that only the top end had been freshened at some point with a ring job and .030 oversize pistons. 

 

 

Anyway, the bottom end will still be an unknown. If you do pull a bearing cap or two "just to have a look" you may find this, at which point there's no going back--that's exactly how I ended up where I did. We started with a simple valve job and ended up with a full rebuild.

 

 

If you spend a pile of money fixing the top end and the bottom end fails, you'll be doing it all twice. For me, at least, the risk:reward wasn't worth it. I like a reliable car that's safe for my family more than I like money. And neither option is cheap, one is just relatively less expensive than the other. You may also discover that very few machine shops are willing to do one part of the job without doing all of it. There's no way Frank would have put that engine back together even with new bearings.

 

A big part of a rebuild like this is parts. I bet a ring pack for whatever pistons are in there will be challenging, if not impossible to find. Original pistons are likewise unobtainium, but you'll need a fresh set if you can't find rings. The custom-made .030" oversize JE forged aluminum pistons in my Lincoln were a little over $550. EACH. That included ring packs and wrist pins, but yea, that was eye-watering. Nobody carries them "off the shelf." Obviously 8 will be more palatable than 12, but it's still a big number.

 

Then I needed bearings--mains on at least on the later K V12 are insert type, while the rods are still babbit. If you need to go into the bottom end, you need bearings and/or pay someone to babbit all the bearings. I got lucky here in that Ford 7.3-liter diesel main bearings are exactly the right size for the Lincoln V12 with an .020" undercut on the crank. They're NLA but I found a set on eBay after a few months of searching (and I bought a second set when I found it). Frank has the ability to babbit the rods in-house, which was a plus.

 

Then there's the valvetrain, which uses roller lifters, unique cast iron valve guides, and unique valves. You might recall that I bent a bunch of my valves and rather than straighten them or use the ancient, pitted ones from my parts engine, we bought new ones which were also custom-made. They were about $70 each. The upside was that I could get lighter valves with a deeper undercut so they flow better, and working with the slightly re-profiled camshaft they open faster to improve performance and efficiency. Several of my valve guides were damaged and we had to replace them. Fortunately, I had a parts engine so we could make a complete set. However, that parts engine cost $3500. Without it, where would I be? Still looking for valve guides, I bet.

 

There's the aforementioned gasket set, which, yes, cost $1000. I actually bought two of them because I tried to get my old engine working and had to strip it to stitch the cracked block. Then I had to buy another set when the engine was rebuilt.

 

Timing chain? Where the heck do you get one of those? Several places advertise them, but when you call, they're NLA. If you can't find a usable used or NOS one, there are probably places that will make you one for a price.

 

Add in basic machine work like decking, boring, honing, turning the crank, sizing the rods, line-boring, balancing the rotating assembly, plus hot tanking, shot-peening, magnafluxing, and maybe installing new valve seats. Even basic, standard machine work will be a few thousand bucks.

 

And as I learned from Frank, my machinist, there were a TON of little jobs on my engine that were hilariously difficult. Pulling the timing gears off the front of the crank? Make a special puller. In fact, Frank made three before one of them worked. How many hours was that? The Lincolns use an internal harmonic balancer on the front of the crank but inside the crankcase and it needed to be rebuilt. Again, special tools needed, which, also again, had to be made. Removing the flywheel and special studs? Yep, special tool. Frank said that if he had to do another one of these, he'd charge extra just for all the little jobs that were 10x harder and more time-consuming than expected.

 

I'll also wager that if you tear down an old engine, you'll break at least one head stud, probably several. Good luck getting them out and if you do it wrong, well, it's a trip to the machine shop to drill them out and install some inserts. 

 

What about hot-tanking the blocks to clean them out? May as well do it while you have them off the car. That costs money.

 

What about painting and detailing? May as well as long as it's apart. That costs money.

 

What about the accessories, fuel pump, and carburetor? Going to put questionable old parts on your fresh engine? Fittings, wires, hoses, clamps, belts, and all that other little stuff adds up pretty fast, too.

 

What about a wiring harness? Fuel lines? They're surely ancient, will they be damaged while you're working and are they still viable?

 

What about getting the engine out and back in? It took three of us four hours to get it back in there, never mind hooking it up and making it run. Even if you just do a top end job in the car, you're still removing the radiator, hood, grille, fenders, and other little stuff, as well as putting it all back on.

 

I honestly don't know the final cost to have my engine rebuilt. I stopped looking at the invoices after we crossed the $30,000 barrier. I keep tossing around the $35,000 number that Frank quoted me two years ago, but Melanie (who actually paid the bills) says the real total was considerably north of that. And that still doesn't include all the subcontracted work. Radiator was $1800. Clutch was $1000. Starter and generator rebuilt, $700 each. Water pump rebuilt, $300 done by a retired friend. Rebuilt oil pump, $350. Rebuilt fuel pump, $150. Fittings, tubing, hoses, hardware, wires, Loc-Tite/RTV, spark plugs, motor oil (I probably went through 15 gallons of oil during my trials and rebuild), and other little extras added up to hundreds if not thousands. Hell, I probably have 20 or 30 McMaster-Carr orders that were $75-100 each.

 

And remember, I did a lot of work myself. I removed the engine, disassembled it, chased parts, detailed it, handled subcontractors, installed it, built the test stand, and did a lot of other stuff like wiring and will do final assembly and tuning.

 

So no, it is definitely not "just a flathead."

 

 

Edited March 13, 2023 by Matt Harwood (see edit history)

[m-mman]

The other thing about Full Classics.  
They became collector cars in the 1950s when they were just 20-30 years old.  
 

Some were low mileage unmessed with cars. Some were tired old cars that “just need a little work”.  Parts were available. Old time parts houses still had some replacements on the shelves. 

But they still weren’t the super cars that they are today. Collectors  back then often did the minimal repairs that some vehicle that went through the war would need.   (Ring & valve job) Their work wasn’t always first class but it made the car usable for the time. Then it was parked for 50 years.  
 

The 50s-60s collector knew that it was basically a good car (body? Interior?) but he parked it because…..?

it needed much more than the ring & valve job that he had done. 

He dies, car changes hands several times. Somebody gets it running.  The 21st century buyer looks at it thinking that “All it needs is a ring & valve job” UNTIL they find low quality repairs given to a low value car half a century earlier……now the parts and craftsman that can do those cars are in a different situation. 

[Leif in Calif]

Thanks for this excellent information!  Very much appreciated.

[hidden_hunter]

3 hours ago, Matt Harwood said:

Anyway, the bottom end will still be an unknown. If you do pull a bearing cap or two "just to have a look" you may find this, at which point there's no going back--that's exactly how I ended up where I did. We started with a simple valve job and ended up with a full rebuild.

Funnily enough my car still had its shims in the main bearings, so I guess not everything is always doom and gloom but there does feel like there is a lot of “may as well” type jobs on these motors 

[m-mman]

20 hours ago, hidden_hunter said:

there is a lot of “may as well” type jobs on these motors 

This also is related to changing times.

Drive into a collector car event in 1960 with a car that has a little blow by and maybe some blue smoke in the exhaust. No problem. Nobody is going to say anything because a few of the 5-7 year old daily drivers in the parking lot have blow by and smoky exhaust. 
 

That’s just not acceptable today. People are used to modern emission controlled cars and any smoke is deemed as serious as a bad rod knock. Sure a car might run with a rod knock but you wouldn’t drive it very far. 

We see the same thing with oil leaks. How many posts from people who are new to the hobby asking “Why is there any oil leaks under my 20s to 50s car?”

 

Modern drivers/owners have become accustomed to a certain degree of performance standards and they expect their old car to meet the same standards. The only way an old car can come even close to that is a quality rebuild to modern standards.
 
That type of work doesn’t come cheap.