Oh Lordy, I now own a Fordy (a Lincoln actually)..

[big gear head]

Beautiful car! I'd be proud to drive that.

[roadster]

Nice car , before you change pan gasket look at selector shaft seal . Common leak , torque converter drain back into transmission causes fluid to get higher and higher the longer it sits the fuller the transmission gets till it reaches selector shaft seal/linkage and ends up on the ground . Not difficult to replace , have to remove pan then selector shaft to access seal . The other most common leak is dipstick tube o ring . Gravity causes pan gasket to appear to be leaking . Brake clean can be very helpful pinpointing leak .Also warm hot fluid thins out and can help locate leak quicker after brake cleaning suspected cause of leak .

[njsteve]

Yeah, I was looking online for C6 common leaks. I think the sitting for 4 years and the resultant draining of the fluid into the main area of the case is what caused the leakage, as you said. There were initially some drip marks around the selector shaft as well as the entire pan gasket. I ended up tightening the pan bolts and brake-cleaning the entire area. Haven't had any more drips since then.

Here's a couple shots after brake cleaning the entire area. BTW, is that black plastic spacer on the selector shaft supposed to have that slot in it? Or is it a crack?

[roadster]

The plastic piece is seldom seen probably a Lincoln item for protecting the o ring behind kick down lever and am sure it came with the split or crack . There is a small o ring on the kick down shaft they didn’t leak very often and very easy to change , if you remove nut holding lever to shaft the o ring is behind plastic piece. If car sits for a week or longer the converter starts to Fill the transmission more and more that is why so common for automatics to only leak after sitting extended period . Factory used cork gasket dry just want to make sure pan rail straight from over tightening pan bolts over the years (torque to 16 ft lbs) The kick down shaft contacts valve in valve body past 3/4 throttle or so and only moves 1/2 inch or so is spring loaded . Those are neat cars , friend of family bought new 2 door like yours , except his was a 74 give or take a couple years .

[njsteve]

Yesterday I brought the Lincoln in for a long delayed front end alignment. I had replaced the entire front end with new parts 7 years ago and assembled it back together totally by eye. It tracked dead straight with zero pull so I never wasted the time to get an official alignment done when I had the old tires on it. Since I just bought new tires and I had a free day, I brought her in. After a few minutes the tech comes in and says "You really want me to charge you for this?"

It turns out that by some miracle I had gotten everything within the green spec zone except the right front toe which was off by 1/16". I laughed and said yes, please adjust as needed and print me out a before and after spec sheet. I was happy to pay him the $129 since he seemed to enjoy working on something way out of the ordinary. I even bought the correct vintage Snap-On WA-171 alignment tool on ebay for $25 but he ended up not needing to use it. The tool has a point at the tip that slips into an alignment hole in the frame next to the A-arm and the claw moves the A-arm in or out depending on what you need to adjust.

[njsteve]

Took Grampa's Lincoln to the local cruise night today. I was able to deliver Kevin's Camaro grill, that I promised him a few weeks ago before the last show was rained out. You definitely know your car is a wide-load when you can fit an entire 69 Camaro grill, flat in the trunk with a foot to spare on either side.

A buddy also showed up in his 65 restomod Vette, so I had some more company as well.

I gotta say, the old Lincoln seems to attract a helluva lot more attention than any of my musclecars. Everyone that came by had a dad or grandad story of having one in the family. I let a bunch of people sit in the back and reminisce on the rear sofa.

[njsteve]

Perusing the interwebs I found some more old historical info on the Golden Anniversary (or more like the Guldens Mustard Anniversary, given the exact color match to the spicy brown condiment). Here you go:

[njsteve]

Took the Lincoln out today and visited one of my friends repair shops. He let me use the wheel balancer and I rechecked the balance on all four wheels. I guess they settled a bit after a few weeks and a couple were slightly off by a 1/2 ounce or so, as I was noticing a slight vibration at 60-65 mph. I removed the weights and rebalanced everything and now this Galaxy Class Battlecruiser gets right up to orbital speed with no noticeable change even as you hit the sound barrier at 600+ mph. Did I mention it has a 2.80 rear gear ratio?

[njsteve]

More tinkering...I bought a set of KYB Excel-G shocks and installed those this afternoon. Used my vintage set of drive-up steel ramps. It's funny: I've held on to those things for 40+years since buying them at Sears back in the late 1970's. They weigh a ton and no car in the last 40 years is tall enough to go up them without damaging the front or rear valance...but a 54-year-old Lincoln sure does!. No problem. I backed it up the ramps and had both rear shocks replaced in about a half hour. The hardest part was avoiding getting covered in the still wet, Woolwax coating on everything. Same deal with the fronts. Unscrewed the top stud nut and the two bottom nuts and they fell right out! Amazing difference in the ride quality over the original worn out rear shocks and Midas fronts shocks that I had as spares from the Firebird (they use the same part number!) This things just floats now. I should rent it out as a drunk-driving simulator. There is no sensation of any road bumps smaller than a sinkhole. Its truly frightening!

[njsteve]

And I was playing with the spare clock I bought on ebay 4 years ago. I started looking on youtube for repair tips and it turns out the best tip is to use brake clean and spray away all the solidified factory oil on the pivot points. I did that and used my old points file and cleaned the two contact points. I then used a tiny needle applicator and applied gun oil to the pivot points very sparingly. I set it up on a battery and then set a stop watch. It runs beautifully. It was a consistent 55.7 seconds between the audible click when the points would contact and snap apart, thereby winding the mainspring for another minute. It got kind of addictive after a while: 55.79, 55.72, 55.75 seconds... for 25 minutes straight. It wound up being more of test of my thumb reaction time on the lap counter at that point. I left it overnight hooked to the battery and this morning it s right on time (actually a little under a 1 minute fast as compared to my Iphone). And the battery was still registering the same 12.7 volts as the day before, so there isn't much of a power drain after all with these factory electric clocks.