Thread: Parking my Lincoln here for awhile, nice to meet ya!

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I have lurked here on and off, and I figured I might as well sign up and say "Hello"! My name is Michael and my wife and I live in Sheridan, Oregon. While I have had a love affair with old cars for years, I am now down to just one cruiser. My baby is a 1971 Lincoln Continental Coupe. When I was looking for a project car I was hoping to find a good Chrysler Imperial from the early 70's, but what I REALLY wanted was a 70's Lincoln Coupe. They seem to be very hard to find in this neck of the woods(Oregon).

A friend turned me onto this car, but got confused and thought it was a Lincoln Mark III. I wasn't to interested in a Mark III, but he finally convinced me to go check it out. Imagine my excitement when I saw that it was a '71 Coupe, with the super rare "vinyl top" factory-delete option! I wound up getting the car for $600 + a combat shotgun. She has a white leather interior, power doors and windows and a 460 motor.

Since getting the car, I have had the motor rebuilt and I am getting the tranny done next. We bored the block to 0.60 over, kept the original '71 heads and ported and polished them. The motor has a custom cam and Keith Black pistons, new rockers, new rods, new water pump, double-roller timing set, Weiand "Stealth" aluminum intake manifold and an Edelbrock 800cfm carb. This all dumps into a 2-1/2" dual exhaust with Flowmaster mufflers out back. The Linc is very close to running again, but we are encountering some exhaust header issues.

Possible future mods could include a 3-to-4 inch roof chop(I really want this badly!), a new paint job(black of course), shaved door handles, airbags and powder-coating all the bright work gloss black. I will probably pick up a set of solid aluminum rims eventually as well. Well, that's about it about me and my car. I am very happy to be here and I am sure I will have lots of car questions for smarter folks than myself. Below is a pic of my baby...

Have fun with the Lincoln, chopped a guys 70 once years ago, will look around to see if I can find any pics. By the way, I think the bore is .060 oversize, .600 wouldn't leave much of a cylinder wall!!!!

welcome 2 CHR ! 71LincolnCoupe

neat look'N car .

Thanks for catching my typo Dave, and its nice to meet you. I would really like to see pics of the '70 you chopped back in the day. On my Cardomain site I have a MSpaint-altered pic of how I want my Linc to come out with probably a 4-inch cut. I am awfully nervous about the idea of doing a chop because of the curves involved and also because of the glass factor.

I have heard guys say that the best way to go now for the glass(if you can find a company willing to do it) is to have a 4 axis water-jet machine do the cutting. I would prefer to not cut and lay the windshield posts down because I don't want to change the glass angle. Side windows can be Lexan if needed, and the rear window will be layed down. I am about 6'-2", so I will have to try to find a couple of front seats that sit lower than my stock power split-bench. If you find those '70 chop pics, let me know...

Neat car......I want your car leading my funeral parade........will scare all the bad spirits long enuf to make my last get-a-way..seriously, welcome to club.

Great looking car! The chop would really make it look sinister, are you sure you want to go 4 inches? That's a bunch! One way to do the back glass is to cut it our completely, then put the whole thing back in laid down as you mentioned. For the windshield you could recess it into the firewall then build a false cowl above it to finish it off. That way you can easily replace it with a stoick one if it is ever damaged.

Some of the guys here are real talented with photoshop if you want some ideas on how it would look modified.

Have fun with it and welcome to CHR

Pat

Welcome to CHR 71Lincoln
Nice lookin' Lincoln.
Photochopperz' are at the ready.

Nice looking car 71. Something you don't see much of and you done a great job on it.

Welcome!

Nice lookn car.

I have a 79 Conti 4 door. It is currently in my garage apart for painting - black is too boring, so i am going for a deep navy blue (some 2000 buicks came in a color i like).

I have the red leather interior, and a full vinyl top...which i had replaced when i got the car 6 years ago (did a basic running resto on it). I am now not sure what to do with the top - lotsa work to remove it and make the metal paintable/presentable. It is the same dove grey (i.e. battleship grey) as the rest of the car.

I want to bag it as well. Have you done any investigation along those lines? as far as i know no one makes a kit for mine (or your probably).

I still have a bone stock 400...not enough power. Still thinking over the options.

Thank you, one and all, for the nice welcome. As for the question of a four-inch chop maybe being too much, when I get closer to doing the actual cut, I am going to transfer the original car height outline on to a vertical white wall. Then I will take a couple different rolls of colored tape and follow the car outline, but now with a 2-inch chop, 3-inch chop and so on. Interior headroom is going to be a huge factor in how much gets cut. If I can find non-power seats that sit 2 or 3 inches lower than stock(and are comfortable for my big ass!), my headroom will be increased quite a bit. Below is a side pic of how my car COULD look. The treatment for the rear sail is different in this pic, it is swept back to the rear top body panel.

Here is one more pic. Its a front 3/4 shot and the rear sail here is actually closer to what I would be looking to do on the car. BTW, anyone who wants to clean up my feeble attempts to chop my car with MSpaint, please go right ahead. I have a very hard time with fine-grained lines and under car shadow placement. I probably should just buy a version of PhotoShop, but I would rather spend the money on my car. I do have a request though... could someone PhotoShop the car pics in this thread and change ALL the brightwork to Gloss black? I want to see how the car looks that way, but my attempts at the job with MSpaint haven't worked out. I would be very grateful, thank you in advance...

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Park here as long as you like...there are no parking tickets issued here at CHR....

(Probably a good thing...Streets would have a bunch of 'em!)

I like the full length sail panel look. Gives it a roof line like the fastback Torinos and Galaxies had. Just a thought, but you might want to consider losing the bumpers in favor of rolled pans, and going to a recessed grille. No luck finding pics of the 70 I did, maybe I can track down the guy who owned it and see if he has any. The lowest mounting seats I have found are out of a Dodge Caravan. They recline and are fairly comfortable to ride in. Late model Mustang seats work fairly well, too. I think a chop in the 2 1/2" to 3" range is what the car is going to want. Have fun and keep us posted on your progress.

Tree, the PhotoShop pics of my Lincoln that you did for me look awesome! I like the second pic from the bottom the best, but they all look nice. I like how you changed the Linc's stance and made it drag ass a bit.

Hey Dave, about the Dodge Caravan seats you were talking about... are they normally mounted on some kind of box-like base or pedestal? It seems like they have to sit up kind of high so that a driver can see out. Did you mean that the seats unbolt from a base and then you can mount just the seat itself on the car floor? Just curious if I understood what you meant. I like getting ideas from good car people, so fire away if you think of something that will look good improve my ride...