Builds 66 Lincoln Continental build thread (1 Viewer)

[Gumby]

Passenger doors went first. The door ding bumper had transferred a lot of damage to the doors and it took a lot of metal work to get them smooth. I watched hours and hours of metal work videos and learned a lot. I would highly suggest the following:

Cold War Motors - Just a dude in Alberta having fun with junk cold war era cars. Former pro body guy goofing off with his buddies.
Make it Kustom - Canadian Carl Fischer dong tutorials and building cool stuff at Japhands Kustoms
Bellos Kustoms - Excellent videos of one of the best current low rider builders just working. He doesn't talk a lot about how he’s doing things, but watching him work is very helpful. His shop radio sounds like my Pandora feed.
Paint Society - more paint than body work, but really well done.
Fitzees Fabrications - Another Canadian from PEI. Great accent. Does rust repair with a grinder and a welder. Where Bellos and Japhands use a lot of cool tools most of us don’t have.
Trevs Blog - A guy from England who does good metal work tutorials. Very helpful.
Carter Auto Restyling - dude from Saskatchewan does great metalworking
Nathan Wilson - Great Slab restorer who makes great videos about Lincolns. When you forget how to get the door put back together, his videos show you how. Pornographic Lincoln restos.
Sylvesters Customs - New show with good car show level body stuff. If you want to see how to spend 100 hours getting gaps right, this is the guy.
Project Binky - how to not finish a car. Spend 10 years making an epic YouTube channel and rebuilding every inch of a mini to fit a Celica gt4 drivetrain.

 

[Gumby]

Doors got metal work as best as I could do. Skim of Evercoat gold blocked down to 240. Evercoat high build blocked to 600. Then a quick coat of an epoxy sealer primer to keep moisture out for the year or so until paint. I had some DP90 left over for the left side.

 

[Gumby]

The DS rear door had a lot of rust damage. The inner wheel well was gone. The dog leg was gone and the hinge side (rear) corner of the door was gone. Stripping the paint showed there was a repaired hole in the door skin as well. MIce had gotten in through the wheel well and built a big nest in the door. The previous repair was all rusted.

 

[Gumby]

The dogleg hole required a lot of work. I ended up ordering a patch panel because of the wheel arch lip that fades away on the dog leg. I’m going to have to form part of the arch anyway. My plan is to use my bead roller with a custom turned roller. The inner wheel well was gone about 12” around the lower hinge. The hinge bucket was gone. The lower part of the door jam was bad. There was 4 layers together all needing repairs.

The outer door patch on the left is unfinished because I can't do gaps until the dogleg is repaired
Dogleg with the loose rust removed.

 

[Gumby]

I'll put some pics in of the inner door and inner wheel well repaired

 

[Gumby]

I also bought the patch for the DS quarter rear. Basically, for the same reason on the front. The wheel arch lip faded away. Unfortunately the rust continued up the arch past the top of he patch. The patch was also fairly poor and needed work on the shrinker stretcher to get it anywhere close to the stainless trim. I can't say I would recommend.

 

[Gumby]

The floors were pretty rough. The front was far worse than the rear. The DS much worse than PS. Pretty common here in MI where the driver gets in with snowy shoes more often than passengers.
I did not put the holes back in where the channels support under the car. I built new channels and painted them inside so they should be in good shape and sealed. I did bead roll a stiffener that no one will ever see.

 

[Gumby]

Rear wasnt as bad at all. A few little holes and one seat belt mount. It got grey epoxy primer instead of the POR 15. Then everything got sound deadener.

 

[Gumby]

In order to fit the restomod air unit the firewall has to be moved. I bought the biggest air unit sold by Restomod. The Haymaker unit. There is a ton of room between the engine and firewall with all the old equipment out so my firewall is about 1” forward of the most forward part of the stock firewall. The cowl vent fresh air passage is not easy to move and I’m thinking about using it for engine fresh air. The bulkhead connector goes through where something went through the firewall before so it was cut out where the footwell come down.

I bought and modified a bead roller for this job. I used it on the floor panels too.

 

[Gumby]

The trunk was in pretty good shape. The only real rust is in the wheel wells. The floors of the trunk only required small patches. The biggest were in the corners by the floor drains. big clue as to why that fender surface rusted so bad in the first pic. I'm not sure what I'm going to do about the 70s era repair in the last.

 

[Gumby]

primered

 

[Gumby]

The vinyl top was no fun at all. Heat, scrapers, wire wheels, DA sanders and chemical stripper were all used. The knotted wire wheel on the cordless 4 inch grinder worked best for removing the bulk of the material. DA with 36 grit removed most of the contact cement. Chemical stripper took off the rest of the paint and primer.
The staples in the channel need to be cut out with a grinder. I wouldnt try to get it all out with the windows in. The window adhesive is a whole ‘nother mess.

 

[Gumby]

On days I don’t want to go out to the shop and get it warmed up, I’ve been working on the stainless. Its very tedious but rewarding when it comes out nice. Lots of tapping and sanding and tapping and sanding and going back to tap some more.

 

[Gumby]

The support channel on the DS was lace. The headlight support was rusted and water had gotten in behind and rotted out the support The fender on that side also had a good dent. I chose to remove the fender to better repair the brace. Had about a million holes to weld shut in the inner fender too. lots of spot welds

 

[Gumby]

The panel behind the headlight was bad too and now its not

 

[thabruiser]

Glad to see someone else who enjoys learning how to do things like this just for the heck of it. And what a cool car to pick. I have always loved those suicide doors. Reminds me of the car they drove in the beginning of The Matrix.

 

[Gumby]

Once I took the seats out I needed to repair the seat motor. The seat went back when I first got it. That's it. It's a 6 way bottom. fixed back. It's a lot for 1966. The rear seat on my LS600 has more adjustments.

Nathan Wilson has a great series of videos on rebuilding the seat mechanism.



It's a pretty cool piece of engineering with solenoids and screw jacks. Prone to failure after 50 years. These cars were built in the planned obsolescence time. I was at a Toyota training yesterday where they were concerned with how much OBDIII was going to cost on warranty work up to 150k. Lincoln was an industry leader in 1966 with 2 years 24000 miles. The cars were built to be done at 100k an 12 years.

Took the solenoid block all apart. Cleaned all the petrified grease out. Re-lubed. Replaced a nylon gear that had stripped. I think there's probably a market for brass seat gears for old Fords. They charge enough for the nylon ones. Lubed the cables. Cleaned and repainted everything. Gotta find the pics. Pretty much the same as in the Driving Dreams videos.

 

[Gumby]

Thanks. It took a while to get that I like the process even better than owning the finished product. I dont think I can pick a car that will make me try harder to get right than a 20' slab sided black paint job.

 

[gnob]

Cool build. Love me some suicide Lincoln

 

[Gumby]

There wasn't a lot of rust under the vinyl top. A little in the DS rear window corner, a little on the trim edge of the DS sail panel and a bigger piece on the DS A pillar. Very little of anything on the PS. A few pinholes. I took care of the rust on the trunk gutter at the same time. These cars didn't get paint between the seams and they rusted there. Being a giant unibody that was built to be topless there's a lot of sheet metal seams