so i accidently bought a car and started a challenge team last night. have questions.

Nope. 5.0 and aod....

$400.

Dusterbd13 wrote: Nope. 5.0 and aod.... $400.

Oh, well that's better!

Still debating whether or not to use this or the built 302 my buddy has. Guess it depends on how the numbers look.

His would be a 600 fmv engine.

Check the 8.8, i know some marquis LS of that era were optioned with a trac loc. Easy way to recoup some money if it is. That also should be an AODE. Ive had better luck with the earlier non electric versions myself.

If its a 3 position shifter car like most are then shifting it to second is weird. You actually shift from first to drive and pull it back down too lock it in second. Useful if you use the trans.

Run them both at the dragstrip locally and use the faster one!

Major reason for the purchase is the trans.

It's a column shift. And cheap/simple ways of going floor shifter and not having to monkey E36 M3 with double shifting?

Also, if we go carb, will the aode cause issues?

Even floor shifted in my capri i had to use the weird shift technique. There may be a way to do it but it never really bothered me. Unlike most transmissions once in second it wont downshift out.

Im pretty sure it needs throttle inputs too work correctly, unsure if you can run an older style detent. The only ones ive spent time messing with are the non E. 4eyed pride may have a thread about it.

1987 with 127k on the clock. Trans was squeaky clean, engine covered in an inch of grime.

Anybody need some Lincoln parts?

Runs real good. Now we need to decide if we transplant the efi, or go carb. I'm thinking transplant for simplicity.

Are these ecm tunable? It's not a maf car, and we will need more power from it. Other than the nitrous that is.

Pictures of the $410 Lincoln.

Parts available CHEAP.

and I think this has evolved into a build thread. Can I have it moved??

[URL=http://s54.photobucket.com/user/dusterbd13/media/amc/imagejpeg_1_zpss74kzjzz.jpg.html][/URL] [URL=http://s54.photobucket.com/user/dusterbd13/media/amc/Donor2_zpsmfqnzkcv.jpg.html][/URL] [URL=http://s54.photobucket.com/user/dusterbd13/media/amc/Donor3_zpsaawxo3el.jpg.html][/URL] [URL=http://s54.photobucket.com/user/dusterbd13/media/amc/imagejpeg_0_zpsurl0b5hy.jpg.html][/URL] [URL=http://s54.photobucket.com/user/dusterbd13/media/amc/20160831_071128_zpsbnqwstnk.jpg.html][/URL] [URL=http://s54.photobucket.com/user/dusterbd13/media/amc/20160831_071137_zps8efalchg.jpg.html][/URL] [URL=http://s54.photobucket.com/user/dusterbd13/media/amc/20160830_201737_zpseuhv5arz.jpg.html][/URL]

Guy in the last picture is Dallas, the teammate I bought the amc from. Also a very good friend of 20 years.

The Lincoln is in fantastic shape. No smoke, noises, nothing funny. Except for no title. Or keys. Or....

Damn thats clean, it would have already been derby fodder around here. I really need too car shop in the south!

In reply to dropstep:

I got a rust free Lincoln...

In all honesty, we still get rusty cars here in the south. They are the ones that you actually want to keep. Only undesirable parts cars are truly rust free, or appliances.

So, we got a lot done today. And nobody bled.

That must mean that this project is divinely inspired.

We're on a mission from God.....

Ok, so ill link to the thread that I had been updating on the grm forum, as well as the original build thread from 07.

Start of this thing: http://amccars.net/cgi/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1186800979/10#10

Where it all started to go wrong: https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/so-i-accidently-bought-a-car-and-started-a-challenge-team-last-night-have-questions/118042/page1/

Ill pick up the start for this forum where I left off on the GRM forum, so if its somewhat funky, and seems like I copied and pasted from another forum, its because I did. Blatantly. It just makes it easier to cross post to the four forums I am posting on, so I can get the broadest amount of feedback from all areas of the hobby.

Anyway, well start with budget.

Car/parts $200 Donor Lincoln town car: 410 Engine crossmember: 120 Sold transmission crossmember from Lincoln: 10

Current total: 720

Ok, ill pick up where I last left off. We had bought a Lincoln, loaded it on the trailer, and sent it to dallas’ dads barn. This was last Tuesday night. August 30th. By the end of the next day, dallas’ dad had called me with a simple question: when the hell are you getting all your E36 M3 off of my property?

Umm.....

Well, guess that means we stop collecting and start working. At least try to consolidate the accidental junkyard we started under the lean to.

So yesterday, we got 4/5 of the challenge team together for a work day. The two orders of business: gut the Lincoln for all its worth, and take inventory of parts/scrap. well start with the gutting of the Lincoln. We bought it for the transmission, wheels, tires, engine, battery, and scrap metal. Turned out that it still had 4 catalytic converters, the wheels and tires were scrap, but the engine and trans were MINT. 127k on the clock, and got a bill of sale for the titleless, keyless, had to be hot-wired Lincoln.

We start with a little fun. Roof surfing through the field beside the barn after the first round of degreasing. This thing was dirtier than anything else ive ever bought. I'm pretty sure that the Exxon Valdez leaked less....

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Roof surfing, even at 5 mph through a grassy field, isn't the brightest when one of your teammates is an idiot. He did his best to toss me like a rag doll.

Anyway, we pulled it on the lift, and took inventory of how this thing wanted to come out, and just what we bought. Found the water pump gasket leaking, as well as one of the throttle body heater hoses. Oil leaks from everything below the hood. But a great running, driving, shifting 5.0 and AOD trans for 410. We decided that we wanted to keep the serpentine, efi, fuel pump, engine, trans, drive shaft, and wiring harness. The rest was scrap. Except the trans crossmember. Sold that to a gentleman for a t5 swap in a Flathead pickup. So, 10 bucks back from that....

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We decided to gently remove all the linkages and wring harness from the firewall forward to retain all the EFI wiring and sensors. The rest of it was done with a sawzall.

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And a team picture. The bald guy is cousin garret. He is a dyed in the wool ford guy that likes cutting stuff. Dark haired guy is Dallas, and blonde guy is brother Dustin. There's no pictures of me, cause im so ugly id break the damn camera. Only guy missing from the work day is my dad, who also wants to be part of this. Hes working on getting his motor home ready to go to California in the next couple of weeks, and him and mom will be gone until thanksgiving.

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So, we accomplished goal number one.

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We then lost a lot of time to cleaning up the shop because Dallas dad came home a day early, and we had promised him a clean shop when he came home. But we got it done...

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The next goal was seeing what we had to start with. Apparently, when I bought the car, I bought the whole pile of crap surrounding it as well. This consisted of dry rotted tires, a couple of mobile home wheels, a cracked in half automatic transmission from a ford, and 4 of these wheels:

[URL=http://s54.photobucket.com/user/dusterbd13/media/amc/20160904_155118_zpsx03xzqsd.jpg.html][/URL]

We used the backhoe to pull the car out from under the lean-to, and hit it with the pressure washer. Lots of paint came off with the dirt. Crap.

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Then we got to digging through the car to see what all was in it. A bunch of junk. A bunch of useless, unidentifiable crap that would add weight to the scrapped hulk of a Lincoln, and some gold.

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And now some pictures of the good stuff we found:

Headliner with an almost salvageble backer board [URL=http://s54.photobucket.com/user/dusterbd13/media/amc/20160904_172143_zpsyz0sm86k.jpg.html][/URL]

Radiator, shroud, and some 5 inch spotlights. The bulbs are burned out, but the glass is good! [URL=http://s54.photobucket.com/user/dusterbd13/media/amc/20160904_172221_zps7af59fno.jpg.html][/URL]

All sorts of dryer ducting [URL=http://s54.photobucket.com/user/dusterbd13/media/amc/20160904_172223_zpswiz0mp7g.jpg.html][/URL]

Aluminum bumper, painted black, with decent end caps (for sale! Make offer!)

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Filthy, beat up batter box with a hold down and greasy unidentifiable electrical pieces in it (i think I spotted a kill switch, but wasn't about to reach in there yesterday due to the rats nest)

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Full lock cylender set

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Misc interior plastics, and pieces of miscellaneous crap. Choke cable, pcv valve, a fuel filter, pop rivets, some cotter keys, etc. I can bore you all with pictures, but look through the photobucket album for full documentation of your a challenge stickler. Did find two more drivehsafts, a trio of autometer gauges under the dash, rotted rear floors where the spring perches mount, some stainless headers that fit god knows what, plywood, and various other pieces of scrap.

http://s54.photobucket.com/user/dusterbd13/library/amc

So, when all was sorted, this was getting loaded in the crusher car. [URL=http://s54.photobucket.com/user/dusterbd13/media/amc/20160904_173446_zps3tuefuum.jpg.html][/URL]

So, this is the challenge car I bought in all its hammered, forsaken, wrecked, and parted out glory.

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Tailpipes for the 2.5 x-pipe exhaust will take a good bit of repair, and im not sure just what the hell is going on with the ISO-clamp delete. But a rear sway bar and poly bushings are still present, though the rear shocks look like absolute junk. [URL=http://s54.photobucket.com/user/dusterbd13/media/amc/20160904_174116_zpsjepqxd82.jpg.html][/URL]

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Underside looks pretty bad. Very hackish rust repair. And dirt. And bailing wire. And rust. And undercoating. And....

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Up front, we have a seriously bent crossmember, apparently bent lower control arms, ford motor mounts scabbed onto the crossmember, a 1 inch-ish sway bar, more poly bushings, a worn out pitman arm, a leaking steering box, kyb shocks, and cut coils.

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We finished the day by beginning to sort the scrap metal. To get top dollar for wheels, we stripped the tires for disposal. The 4 mags, we decided to keep because they're cool. May or may not use them, as they are awfully small for modern slicks. Worst case, kick ass coffee tables.

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That's it for today. Next work day, we will try to change out the crossmember and mock up the 5.0 AOD.

Those wheels are cool, 25 days right? No problem

There's a lot of good ingredients here. Good luck!

390 days. We're showing up to next year's party.

And a great start.

REALLY good start!

I was just contacted about the mags from a guy on an AMC forum. he offered me $400. ar they rare or something?

Yes, but $400 is good for them. Size issues

In reply to chandlerGTi:

So take the money and run?

Challenge Budget: Car/parts $200 Donor Lincoln town car: 410 Engine crossmember: 120 Sold transmission crossmember from Lincoln: 10 Sold rear axle from lincoln: -50 Scrapped what was left of lincoln: -89 trans cooler: 2 Engine swap: 5.0 plus 300 boot Sold kelstar wheels-200 (cant recoup more than we spent) mustang 5.0 convertible engine mounts: 22 1/4 thick, 10x24 chunk of plate steel 7.50 (.30 lb, 25lb)

Current total: 712.50

Ok, so....

We scrapped the lincoln. Had to get it gone. Still have some cats left to scrap to hopefully all but zero it out. Got 89 for it, which sucks. But, its gone. We also sold the rear axle for 50 bucks. So thats nice.

While researching those nifty mag wheels, found a guy that was looking for a set. We settled on 400 delivered. So I delivered them. I can only recoup 200, as that's what we paid for the car. So, the extra 200 had to be spent somewhere. Cant have extra money now, can we?

So we did the only reasonable thing: found a guy that was changing directions on a mustang build. He decided he wanted our 5.0, and offered us a .30 over 302 with “a cam”, GT40p heads, edelbrock RPM intake, and “Holley carb, and Mallory ignition”. For an extra 22 bucks, he threw in the new plugs and 5.0 convertible motor mounts. Now, Dallas knows the guy pretty well. I've never met him. We have a 30 day warranty from date of install on this engine. All for 322!

When I got to the barn the day Dallas picked it up, I was dismayed to say the least. He didn't get us an engine. He got us a freaking pile of engine parts. The heads and short-block looked fresh, and the heads still had reman badges on it. Since the barn is NOT a clean room, we put a hustle on to assemble the thing and get it sealed.

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So, no pictures happened of assembly. Or unloading the crap from the back of the plumbing van. We were in full on get E36 M3 done mode.

At the end, we had this: [URL=http://s54.photobucket.com/user/dusterbd13/media/amc/20160910_212524_zpsefpipebr.jpg.html][/URL] [URL=http://s54.photobucket.com/user/dusterbd13/media/amc/20160910_212528_zpsc08ps9rk.jpg.html][/URL] [URL=http://s54.photobucket.com/user/dusterbd13/media/amc/20160910_212533_zps2xjoidgw.jpg.html][/URL]

I'm still not sure that we didn't get screwed. But the other guy hasn't picked up the 5.0 yet, and I wont let him till I hear this thing run. The “Holley carb” was an AED 750, and the “Mallory ignition” is some summit box/coil/distributor combo. The pistons are cast, the cam is a hydraulic of unknown origin, and the short-block as been run for an unknown amount of time. But we got a crank scraper! Worth at least 100 horse if we add the sticker. And we got an air cleaner of ford descent. I already plan to cut that up and turn it into a cowl plenum air cleaner feeding from where the wiper motor currently lives. We still need to find correct hardware for the timing chain cover and water pump, pray that they guy gave us all the pulleys and accessory brackets like he claimed, and paint it AMC blue before trying to fire it. Oh, and make the headers fit. They hit the block.

We mocked up the engine mounts on the crossmember, and if the studs were in a different spot, they would make the ford engine a bolt in. We have a plan though, involving countersinking some bolts through 1/4 plate and using it as an adapter. I think I can make it easy and all but bolt in.

Also, picture of the trans cooler. I was told that the key to beating the snot out of an AOD for extended periods is to keep it cool. This one is of unknown origin, with missing parts, but was 2 bucks. So, good enough.

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Feedback and criticism are welcome and encouraged. Im making most of this up as I go at this stage.

Dusterbd13 wrote: In reply to chandlerGTi: So take the money and run?

Sorry I didn't see this sooner; Yes!

I want to say you got a decent deal on that pile-o-302 as long as nothing is too worn out like that distributor and the cam is both in good condition and actually a performance piece. Fingers crossed that nothing is off with the motor. Looks like you're getting a lot of work done fast!

were trying to keep momentum. want to have this thing ready for next season so we can get it shook down good before the challenge.

but next up is my part. this could snowball quickly, as I'm currently debating wether to sandblast the entire car for seam welding and rust repair.

Can I get this moved to the build thread section please?