1929 Lincoln coupe Judkins, not mine.

[Xander Wildeisen]

https://m.facebook.com/marketplace/item/276719581431855/?ref=search

[Gearheadengineer]

Thanks for this find! When I saw the subject line in your post I was really excited. 
 

Less so when I saw the pics and the ad text. And the asking price. Lots of potential, but lots of needs. 
 

Is the seller’s implication that the current engine was installed by the Hercules engine company in period? I suppose that is interesting but it’s still a modified car. I can’t imagine that six improves performance in any way. 
 

Still, it’s a cool car. 

[John Kelso]

I like this car, I have driven another car identical to this with the correct engine and what a great tour car, I'd be interested but this is way over priced, in my opinion

[28StutzCabriolet]

This is a great car and I like it. I would own it. We can also agree that the car is overpriced considerably.  I would take it on, but there are

a few things to consider:

1) Missing engine. Large bore later engines with good blocks are hard to find. You need every single part and some are very hard to come by. California will not register the car unless there are two matching serial numbers. There are ways around this, but more work.

2) Missing transmission and gearshift knob (?) Transmissions are around, but the gear shift knob is not. 

3) Missing greyhound radiator cap. The ones you find are often bent or broken.

4) Broken front bumper. Those two bars on the front are part of the repair. You can weld it, but it will likely fail. Seen it before.

5) Cut off horn. The horn and screen in the front of the horn are hard items to find. You would need the harder to find later horn.

6) Likely that the radiator was mangled to accommodate different locations of radiator hoses. New cores for these cars are astonishingly expensive.

7) How was this engine mounted? Did they alter the frame?

8 ) Was the torque tube and driveshaft altered to accommodate the transmission?

9) If you find the missing parts and engine, the engine rebuild itself is non-trivial. I am a hobbyist but I work on cars every weekend.  Expect 12 months and $15,000 in outlay for the engine rebuild if you can do everything except the bearings and machining yourself. Professional shops are getting $60-$100K for this kind of work. No foolin.

10) Floorboards are likely cut. 

11) Cost of transporting the car. Figure $2500 to $3500 to California for me. 

12) Drivers side door bows out at the bottom. These Judkins coupes are famous for bad wood in the roof and door posts. The doors are incredibly heavy and they sag. The leather on the back and the fabric on the roof where they join leak water. The result is dry rot even on a car that appears to be solid. 

I say these things to myself. The car would need to be very modestly priced for me to jump. The market is soft for these cars too. I have four of them.

Brian

Technical advisor to the Lincoln Owners Club

[John Kelso]

Agreed but I've dealt with all these issues in the past and they don't frighten me, I need a winter project. Price is all that scare me.

[Billety]

I'd give it a home. But not for that price.

[alsancle]

This is a great car. Engine swap is too bad.

[wayne sheldon]

On 11/4/2023 at 3:54 AM, alsancle said:

This is a great car. Engine swap is too bad.

 

Yeah, that engine swap just doesn't make sense to me. I can understand someone being afraid of the early V8 engines, how to work on them (that fork and blade setup can be scary, although I have worked on a friend's engine a fair amount), reliability issues? The Lincoln (and most big 1920s V8s!) have frames designed for the shorter V8 engine. Trying to "shoehorn" in a typical flathead six can be really tough. And a bigger straight eight no way! Any too small engine is going to make the thing a complete dog to drive. And those model L Lincolns are great drivers when properly sorted! I often drove my friend's 1925 home from busy weekends because I had serious insomnia which made me able to drive hours longer than most people were able to stay awake. I drove his seven passenger sedan hundreds of miles!

 

I remember fifty years ago Jack Passey's place had at least a dozen model L Lincoln engines sitting around on half frames. He had collected them for spare parts for his collection, and would make them available to other owners if they needed one. But Jack has been gone for awhile now, and I have no idea what happened to all those engines. The recent thirty years, much of this country has gone nuts for cleaning up the environment, and sadly a lot of valuable old iron made a long trip to overseas iron furnaces. I imagine that there are still a number of model L engines scattered around? But what would it take to get one, I don't know. And the cost to rebuild one these days is (YIKES)! I could probably still do most of the work to rebuild one, IF I had the time. But I do not have the time to work on anything like that right now.

I love the Judkins coupes! I have been up close to a few of them over the years. I sure would like for someone to get this car and restore it correctly. But that engine swap pretty much ruined that car. And going to a modern engine would only make the car worse. I sure hope someone with enough knowledge, and deep enough pockets, will step up and take this one on.