After a week off work spent with family and friends over Christmas and New Year’s, it’s time to get back to the reality of everyday life. This past week has been very cold as an arctic air mass has covered much of Canada and some parts of the USA . There is no doubt that winter is set in and here to stay. Here in the great white north, driving a classic car during this time of year is just not a viable option. I have grown up with the tradition of putting a car away for winter to keep it away from that nasty salt and snow. It is disappointing to not live in a climate where I can enjoy a classic car year round. However, looking on the bright side, it is also a great time of year to do projects on a car to help pass those long cold winter days.
No doubt winter is here, this was the ambient temperature on New Years eve according to my car.
I have been lucky enough to have a large heated attached garage, so working on my Torino through the winter has become an annual practice. Every year I will do a little something on the car, some years it might be just a little upgrade or detail job and other years I will do more major projects. Well this year it falls into the major overhaul category, maybe my biggest yet.
The engine removal was trouble free, no surprises or broken parts
After years of setting aside money I have finally decided that it was time to pull my original engine and have it rebuilt. While it still runs fine and doesn’t show any significant signs of oil consumption, after 150,000 miles and 46 years of service, it’s time to freshen things up. Why you ask if it runs fine? Well, I have always been a bit of an engine nut, and this is finally my opportunity to build my engine my way. It will give me the opportunity to freshen up worn out parts, while increase performance and efficiency. Ford didn’t exactly put its finest engineering into the 1972 400, and now is my opportunity to remove some of the design compromises that Ford did. These include the excessive piston to deck clearances, low compression, mild camshaft and oil system improvements.
My engine ready to be shipped to TMeyer Inc
So about a month ago I removed the engine for the first time since it was placed there almost 46 years prior at the Oakville assembly plant. I decided to have my engine built by one of the finest 335 series engine builders, Tim Meyer owner of TMeyer Inc in Fairmont Minnesota. He is in my opinion the best and most knowledgeable Ford 400 engine builder and has been responsible for some pretty amazing engines builds from an engine most consider a boat anchor.
The engine read at TMeyer Inc. The teardown will being sometime in January 2018.
While the engine is out of the car, I plan to remove the front end sheet metal to clean up and detail the engine bay. While it has no rust, the car was undercoated when new and has seen numerous Rust Check and Krown rustproofing treatments over the years. Anyone who has used these oil spray based rustproofing can attest that they work, but they also make a huge mess. I also will freshened up and overhauled my C6 transmission. While it still is solid as a rock, with a new stronger engine going in, now is the time to have it rebuilt to match the new engine.
I plan to do a detailed post about all the engine build and other work later in the year when I have the car back on the road. In the meantime though, tell us about your winter project? What project, car related or otherwise, are you doing during these cold winter months?
I’m in total shock over that cover photo.
On the bright side, the body won’t rust…
It’s official: I have now seen everything.
This came from a Corvette forum and the owner actually did do this (or so the claim was in the forum). He has since returned the car to stock condition.
I have to get the cylinder heads done on my 71 Road Runner and tracking an electrical problem in my 87 Grand National.
But right now it’s ridiculously cold in the garage so I’m curling up in front of the fire until further notice
Wow, I look forward to reading about your progress. You have been quite an evangelist for the much maligned 400 and it will be interesting to see the results.
While I have an attached garage it is not heated. I have a small electric heater that will take the chill out of the air when temps are in the 30s but it doesn’t take the chill out of the concrete floor. Any projects are going to have to wait until things warm up a bit.
I got a bluetooth code scanner and look forward to getting acquainted with all of my vehicles through it.
Thanks JP. I do like to stick up for the 400, partially because the one in this car has been so good. While the engine got pretty poor in terms of driveability in the mid to late 70’s, these early examples are great engines even in stock form Like so many things Ford did during this era, the 400 had the potential to be great when new, but Ford just half assed some little details to save a few pennies.
You won’t believe how much better the 400 will feel to you. I had some similar work done on the 400 in my 73 Galaxie. Be sure to get a better cam, as Ford retarded the cam in order to reduce emissions just that much farther.
I could pull a fully loaded U-Haul trailer at 90 after I got it back. That work, done by some rebuilder in Washington turned the 400 into a sweet motor.
The 1972 400 didn’t have the retarded timing set yet, ’73 was the first year. The 72’s also had basically no emission controls on the 400, while that changed in ’73. While my 400 engine was no muscle car engine, it was always strong from day one. Compared to our 350 Malibu or my friends Olds 350-4bbl, the 400 was in another league. I did upgrade the carb to a 4-bbl, did some ignition/distributor work and put on some decent exahust. Those upgrades made the car run pretty strong considering it’s a low compression mild cammed motor.
I agree, the upgrades should make a big difference. It will be a full overhaul, which will include a modern profile cam, and proper pistons to bump the compression. TMeyer seems to be able to easily make 400 hp out of a 400 with 2V iron heads, while still being very mild mannered on the street. He’s more about power under the curve and streetable engines than just going for peak power. Aluminum heads push well above that figure, like this one below:
But what do you do about the bad combustion chamber design that leads to excessive pinging?
Our family had a 1971 LTD with the high-compression 400 2-bbl. It pinged at medium throttle from day one and never really completely went away. Sure, you could retard the ignition timing, but that killed most of the power. Are you using the lower-compression heads from a later year?
We put over 200K miles on the engine, and it got sold in the 1990s in a 1971 wagon that I did a drivetrain swap with to get the 429 in the LTD.
In the 1980s I was running leaded gasoline (76 stations in the PNW still carried it) in it which helped a bit. Also helped when I re-jetted the stock carburetor from .054 to .057 jets sometime in the 1980s.
I think we’ve discussed this before. As I have stated, the detonation problems that some 400’s had have nothing to do with the cylinder head design. The heads on a 1971-74 400 Ford are for intents and purposes identical to the heads on a 351C-2V from that era. Both use the small 2V ports and valves, an open combustion chamber and are about 76-78cc’s in volume. They are actually an excellent head design, which is why those so called “smog engines” can make great power with stock heads.
The detonation issue with the 400 actually comes from the excessive deck clearances on the pistons. The longer stroke of the 400 combined with the flattop pistons using the same wrist pin compression height of 1.65″ as the 351C resulted in an excessive high compression engine for the 1971 400). Ford chose to save money by reducing compression not by making a larger combustion chamber, not by dishing the pistons, rather by increasing the deck clearances (how far the piston sits down in the hole). A 400 piston deck clearance is double that of a 351C. In doing this, it made the engine more prone to detonation. Of course, Ford ended up dishing the pistons in 1972, and more so as time went on and compression dropped but it never corrected the deck height issue.
TMeyer has worked with Keith Black to design a custom piston that not only increases the compression of a 400, but also reduces the deck height to near zero deck. He has built many of these engines that make serious horsepower and can run on 87 Octane. Obviously modern aluminum heads allow for even more detonation resistance, but the stock head work fine with properly design pistons.
And as for the combustion chamber design? It’s actually one of the better ones from the era. Many people think that a 351C (or 400) open chamber head is more prone to detonation, but this is not true. George Pence, widely regarded as one of the most renowned experts on 335 engines, has written much about this cylinder head design, and has clearly stated the open chamber heads are no more prone to detonation than a closed chamber head. To quote George:
“The combustion chambers are either the “open” style or the “quench” (closed) style. The quench style chamber encloses the valves more tightly in order to reduce the volume of the combustion chamber. There is no power advantage in using the quench combustion chambers over the open combustion chambers, both combustion chambers have the same thermal efficiency, and both combustion chambers are equally resistant to detonation as well. ”
Here he speaks of the thermal efficiency of the heads:
“The small inclined angles of the valves enabled the engineers to design a very shallow combustion chamber which promotes good turbulence within the combustion chamber. The turbulence promotes good mixing of the air and fuel, and prevents the formation of pockets of stagnant air and fuel. The final result is high thermal efficiency and high resistance to detonation. This description applies to both the open chamber and quench chamber versions of the combustion chamber. The quench combustion chamber was designed to reduce combustion chamber volume and increase the compression ratio; the quench combustion chamber is not more resistant to detonation nor does it improve thermal efficiency. “
Sadly no car related projects planned beyond playing the 4car shuffle with a 2car garage but plenty of house projects…
Exhibit 1: Small house in Laramie, WY that needs to be refurbed with new kitchen, updated baths, egress windows in basement bedrooms and much deferred maintenance and prior handyman (crappy) fixes, then rent. Hopefully ready in February sometime.
Exhibit 2: Even smaller house on same lot as Exhibit 1 that was built 26 years later (1960 vs 1934) and needs new roofing, wood floor refinishing, siding, HVAC, and lots of interior love along with a set of steps. That being said, tons of character, may use it as a ski cabin for a while but eventually also rent it.
And Exhibit 3: A much more modern (2005 vintage) 4bed 2 bath ranch-style house much closer to home that needs updating and wear items replaced or upgraded for a new buyer – carpets, paint, cabinet refinish/paint, counters, hardware, some character…At least the prior owner is renting back for a short while but all three projects will overlap to a fair degree. This one just ideally needs to be back on the market around the end of March.
All three were acquired last week. I’m gonna be a busy boy for a while…
Built in 1960?? Sure looks like 1920s or 1930s to me. Nothing about it says 1960s. Of course Laramie was maybe a bit behind the times?
Either way, you’ve got your hands full. Reminds me of my projects some years back.
Yeah, the city and insurance have 1960 in their records but a lot of it does seem older than that. Some aspects even seem older than the front house- while it has a real foundation a lot of the rest of it seems cobbled together using leftover materials or perhaps even repurposed ones. The floor plan is narrower than what a real house would be with a kind of weird and way too narrow full bath. But it’s funky and cool and can be made good again. And yes, Laramie is WAY behind when it comes to stuff like this. There’s a strong time-warp feeling in much of the housing stock that you just don’t see in bigger areas.
Are those mineral fiber siding shingles? If so, some of them are made with asbestos, some not. You might want to check that out.
The open rafter tails, the windows (with real divided lights), the trim, and everything screams 20s-30s.
One of my houses was cobbled together from a tiny cottage from the 1890s and then several additions, also using old recycled lumber and such.
It may well have been either moved in, or possible part of a house cut down to make it narrow thus easy to move or fit onto the lot. Or? People were creative in creating housing.
In any case, it’s a vintage tiny house. 🙂
No it’s an asphalt product like a roof shingle, then someone painted it. It bends a bit but doesn’t break, not brittle like those cementious ones.
My contractor friend who grew up in Laramie was over at it with me today and thinks it was an old Railroad house and as you figured likely moved to the site in 1960. It’s solid, just neglected. Laramie has a dry climate so not much moisture damage thankfully beyond some of the rafter tails. I’ll be putting a metal roof on it and re-siding it eventually.
My other house in Laramie was built in the later 1800’s, one of the oldest houses in town. It’s know as a “Bath Row” house, there are several in a row; there’s a short Wiki entry on them and some other info on the web, a few of them at the far end of my block are now historic landmarks that most of the stories focus on but Mr. Bath built the whole block, it’s an interesting story. Mine has been somewhat remodeled but looking into the attic and seeing the whole gable built of fairly small stones is amazing. Also fairly tiny at 800 feet but palatial compared to this one. I bought it from a very interesting 80year old that actually grew up in it, his mother stayed in it until she was almost 100yrs old a few yrs ago!
Was it converted to a house in 1960, or moved to this site then? I’ve seen those used as the yr built in county records.
The moving theory is possible, I suppose. The foundation is concrete with the rear part of the house having it full depth (i.e. you could add a room down there, the only things in it currently are a water heater, laundry hookups and stairs down). The front part has more of a slab/crawlspace in which the furnace lays on its side and the ducting/piperwork is under the floor of the house. The visible door and the small entryway is a later add-on, it did not have that protrusion originally.
Wow, Jim lots of work ahead for you. I do have some house projects planned, but not until later in the year and nothing near this scope.
After getting the engine out, rebuilt, and back into my VW last winter I’m not much for automotive projects this winter.
What with the -25C temperatures my little unheated garage is more like a meat locker anyway. I did put a new battery in the 2013 Focus last week and the 2007 Caravan has developed a coolant leak of unknown source. I’m not looking at that one until it warms up a bit.
So I plan to keep myself amused with guitar projects. My son’s Yamaha RBX170 bass is getting new tuning heads, my Fender Telecaster needs a new neck pickup and I acquired a free Harmony acoustic that is defying my increasingly extreme efforts to bring the action down. Could be belt sander to the bridge next.
Anyway, all this can be done indoors which is crucial this year…
Automotively, I’ve got a few projects on my Van that didn’t get done this summer. The tie rod ends are a little on the loose side so it needs those and an alignment before a set of new tires. I also need to get the E-track I’ve purchased and installed so there is a way to actually tie down items that might slide around, other than screwing them to the floors or walls.
House wise I’ve just started on a full gut and remodel of the master bath in my primary residence.
Sigh, no major automotive projects to do in the garage this winter. I will be polishing and waxing four wheels I bought for my wife’s Fusion. This will be done in the warmth of my basement. The factory wheels I bought locally will hold summer rubber. I’ll clean up the winter wheels during the summer.
One task I am taking on is to finish and build some model cars this winter. There is a Revell Thunderbird SC Coupe on the desk right now. This kit and a few others have been gathering dust in the basement for a few years so now would be the time to complete them before the grass turns green.
Good luck on your engine rebuild Bill.
It’s really cool that you remain dedicated to that Torino. Hope the engine work comes out great!
This winter, I’ll continue working on my VW van. It needs a serpentine belt assembly/pulley and a new water pump. Of course, before I can do those jobs, I really need to buy the Bentley repair guide.
Just changed the shocks on my wife’s Honda Civic, and plan to do the spark plugs on her car and on my Prius when they both hit 100k, which will be in the next month or two.
Unfortunately, I have no auto-related winter (or for that matter any) projects now or in the foreseeable future. I’m pretty much done with that sort of thing, being retired, there’s no resources to waste.
Sure wish I did, though!
My winter projects are a jigsaw puzzle of sorts. The basement needs to be organized and stuff filtered through. In turn, I need to finish hanging drywall as I removed all the old paneling. Putting higher R-value insulation in, the drywall is going slowly and I’ve been using my downstairs garage (I have two bays up, one down, all attached) for storing and cutting drywall. I have now used up my stash despite there being more to do.
When it isn’t -8 Fahrenheit of a morning, I will clean out the lower bay and park a vehicle inside. At this time the pickup and van are parked outside with the VW and Galaxie sharing floor space in the upper garage.
But the end is in sight. This is my first attempt ever at hanging and mudding drwall; it turned out okay but I’m also my worst critic. And we don’t use white paint anywhere except the ceilings at Casa de Shafer.
Day-um! We always knew you were a colorful fellow, but not this colorful. 🙂
Yellow kitchen, sky blue laundry room, master bedroom in “spun sugar”, dark blue hall bath, and purple girl’s room. Now orange game room.
We still need to do the living / dining room but are thinking a two-tone blueish gray and a dusty orange, but not as vibrant as seen above.
I’m not fond of white on cars or on walls.
My bedroom as a teenager had three green walls, a purple ‘feature wall”, a yellow ceiling, with white cornice and skirting boards, and gold carpet to go with the orange bedspread. Because seventies.
Broncos Orange, I like it! Once you add the blue trim, it’ll all come alive (unlike the team itself this season…). 🙂
I hadn’t even thought of that, but I also live a bit further east! We wanted something playful.
Love that orange.
Home Depot had that color listed as “Kumquat”!! 🙂
Sherwin Williams calls it Osage Orange.
Home Depot sold that color to me, listed as “Kumquat”! 🙂
Looks good, Jason. I’ve learned to let someone w/ more experience mud my drywall work! When I purchased that color at Home Depot, it was listed as “Kumquat”!! 🙂
Despite the cold I put brand new shocks on the front of the beater rally car for next year. Rear shocks are next. Then some brake work and hopefully clean out the gas tank.
I really ought to figure out why the 2 barrel 289 V8 in the Mustang doesn’t want to start when the engine is hot. (It will start but not without a fight – when cold it starts pretty easily.)
Slow cranking when hot was a failure mode of Ford starters of that era. If it cranks OK, then ignore this and move on to the fuel system, I would think. Modern fuels with alcohol are quite a bit more prone to vaporization than the stuff from when the car was designed so perhaps some fuel line insulation?
Our project cars are in locations not easily accessible (the Lincoln’s 90 minutes away in a friend’s garage, the Thunderbird’s 2 hours away in my mom’s workshop). Besides, I don’t have access to any heated garage space, and it’s way too cold to work on a car. My project remains this little gem I picked up in Detroit. I’ve taken it from an abandoned shell to something one could at least stay in, albeit in no sense of luxury.
Next up I think is rebuilding the upstairs bathroom from the joists up-new subfloor and all. The bathroom floors were originally oak hardwood, then were covered over with additional layers as subsequent renters went through. Now, after decades of water getting trapped, the floors are pretty spongy. Plenty yet to do overall, but it’s a fair sight better than it was when I got it.
Did you say in another post that this house had gas lights at one time? Do make sure the gas is not still turn on in those capped pipes before cutting them.
One of my hobbies is Victorian gas lighting and love visiting old homes and seeing if the home had gas laid in. The last 2 homes I visited not only originally had gas laid in but the lines(though capped) still were active.
Car projects include a just-completed upgrade to my Miata–new adjustable Koni shocks, Flying Miata performance springs, Fat Cat Motorsports bumpstops and SuperMiata sway bar end links. Made an already fun car way more fun with just a little rougher ride.
The 1965 Galaxie is getting a rebuilt/upgraded Saginaw steering box and an adjustable combination valve.
The non-fun work includes painting one of my rental houses. Winter in Florida is when we do this type of work since summer is so hot and rainy.
This was a fun project–getting to understand the miata suspension a little better and seeing a couple of other items that are going to need some attention.
The Torino shares a lot of parts with your Galaxie’s chassis in the front end. The saginaw steering box is a great upgrade over a ford box. I replaced mine with a ’72 Mustang core and 12.7:1 internals with high effort. It is one of the best steering recirculating ball cars I have driven now.
Is the ’72 Mustang box still a Ford box? I kinda assumed that Saginaw boxes were only used by GM. My ’81 WS6 TransAm that I commented about a few days ago had the fast ratio, high effort Saginaw box and it had great feel and accuracy. Quick too, I could autocross the car mostly with one hand at 12 o’clock manage most turns with +/- 90 degrees turns of the wheel. Throttle steering helped too.
The 71-73 Mustangs used a Saginaw box with a Thompson (Ford) pump. They are the same as a GM box except that they have a three hole bolt pattern to mate to a Ford chassis. The only Mustang box that was good was their quick ratio box, SPA-T code IIRC. I sent mine to a steering box builder who installed the 12.7:1 ratio inside which was the fastest Saginaw gear. But even a stock Mustang quick ratio box is a big improvement over the super slow Ford boxes.
Torino and other midsized Ford’s used a combo of Ford boxes or Saginaw built boxes. All of them were slow ratios but they can be used as cores.
Thanks, it turns out that the WS6 Firebirds used 12.7:1 so that’s probably the fastest Saginaw gear set. I never would have guessed that Ford would use GM parts at least in those days, as always CC is such a learning experience. Good luck with your venture! I’m in California so my big winter project is outdoors, irrigation and some other landscape work.
Ford used both Saginaw and Ford style steering boxes in the same models even in the same year in quite a few cases, including Mustangs and full size fords. The Saginaw are regarded as superior in every way–really the best steering system of the recirculating ball type.
I guess we were posting the same thing at the same time. In any case, like I said, you should be impressed with the quick ratio high effort Saginaw box. The box you’re getting built is pretty much what I have in my car, I just had it done by a different specialist. One note though, the 71-73 Mustangs P/S cars only used Saginaw 800 boxes, none used Ford boxes. The cars previous to this didn’t used an integral P/S system.
My car has a Saginaw box from the factory but it has a relatively slow ratio and very light feel. It was OK, though, until some spirited driving up to the redline a few years ago that somehow damaged the power steering box. I am going with a custom steering box by a company called Redhead Steering Gear–they are building it custom with a 12:1 ratio.
The 1970’s intermediates do share most of the front suspension with the 1965 and newer full size Fords. I upgraded the front brakes with some from a junkyard 1978 Tbird. This is a popular upgrade since you can take the spindle from the later car and more or less just bolt it on in place of the drum brakes. Unfortunately, I have been unable to find a good used combination valve from a junkyard so I am swapping in an aftermarket unit that also incorporates rear brake bias adjustment so that I can fine tune the bias for my particular car.
Yeah lots of stock Saginaw boxes were slow and had no road feel. I had mine built with 12.7:1 internals and the largest t-bar for maximum road feel. Lots of Torinos came with Saginaw boxes too but they were slow and had no feel just like the Ford boxes. The biggest difference is that a Saginaw box can be built or modified to be a quick ratio high effort while Ford boxes can’t.
Count me also among those with ongoing house projects to complete over the winter…
I finished siding and painting the three-season porch I’ve been rebuilding from scratch (right side with sliding glass door) just before the temps dropped below 50° for good.
Drywall is hung (by the chimney with care) and ready for mud & tape. To add a little interest to the room, I did a barrel-vaulted tray ceiling. There’s just enough room for a cafe table for two with chairs, and I ran a heat/cool duct so we can sit and enjoy a cuppa while watching the sun rise.
I framed the room out in the machine shed and used the Boomer 8N to transport and set the walls.
The dining room is on the other side of the porch (window facing Beth’s van in the pic above). The reason I had to build the porch was to be able to punch the duct through the wall without having various wildlife camping out therein. The duct is hidden behind the cabinets I built from scratch last year. I still have to finish out the area above the cabinets and hide the last section of ductwork. That door needs stripping and staining, too (to match).
DougD is being kind and not needling me about my VW projects. In order to get to them, the shop and machine shed need a thorough cleanout and organize project.
Long-term readers may remember my shed was ripped apart by a tornado in 2013.
I have a heated shop inside the shed, and use the top for storage. A lot of stuff has been tossed up there since this 2013 pic, and as it took almost two years to get the shed rebuilt, all of that was exposed to the weather all that time.
Here’s what the rebuilt shed looked like in 2015 when I finally was able to move everything out of the east side and spread out on the new concrete floor. Two years later, it doesn’t look anywhere near this neat, and the VWs are buried behind piles of other stuff.
So the week after Christmas was spent cleaning out all the stuff on top of the shop (2/3 of it is getting tossed). Once it warms up a little (say, above zero?), I’ll tackle the ground-level stuff. Once that’s organized and I’ve made a few landfill and scrapyard runs, I think I may finally be able to do some work on the VWs.
Don’t hold your breath, though, Doug!
That’s a lot of work, and it looks very nice too, Ed. I should have you come out west, it’s been almost tropical out here in the 20’s during the day 🙂
Isn’t it weird how after it’s really cold for a long time when it finally warms to something still completely NorthPole-ish, all of a sudden that’s perfectly acceptable to go out to the street and check the mailbox in a t-shirt and flip-flops without feeling it at all?
I am jealous. Due to a move (and a baby), I’ve had to downsize to a one car garage and a tiny shed. Its only for a few years, I’m telling myself.
Wow, what space. Heated shop. Luxury. I’ll send you a photo of my garage sometime..
Love that vintage wringer washer though, that would look good in Herbie livery as well.
Oh, I’ve done my penance on dirt and gravel outdoors in all kinds of weather, Doug. I’ll never forget changing the water pump on my Vega in a snowstorm out behind our house in SC. Or doing the front wheel bearings on the ‘64 Beetle in 30 degree weather out in the apartment parking lot.
Eventually finding the source of the horrific screech coming from under my hood that comes around when it’s cold (which is constantly right now). I’m fairly certain it’s a warn out bearing in the timing chain assembly or it’s my useless A/C compressor, and for my sake I hope it’s the latter but I doubt it.
What’s with all this whingeing? 29C? Bah, same here tomorrow, I’m going to have some beers outside with a mate.
Say what? Oh! MINUS 29C! Oh for the love of god! Oh that’s…that’s… simply incomprehensible. That’s inhuman. Stay inside, do nothing!
Going to be 41C (106F) here the day after, which is kinda the other end of the spectrum for also doing the nothing I planned to.
I go ice skating outdoors when it’s minus 35C with a windchill of minus 50C and do 17km in an hour. I do this for fun.
ok guys, don’t laugh, in december i purchased a 1986 chrysler lebaron turbo convertible. the guy was nice enough to drop it off from long island to queens. i paid $800 for it and realize it needs lots of work on the interior, windows and other things. the mechanicals seem to be in great shape. soooooooo while thinking what to do. i saw an add on craigslist for an 85 lebaron convertible. went to see it and bought it for $1000 one owner car really great shape i’m very happy with it. my problem is i dont know what to do with the 86 i’d hate to see it trashed it runs great, maybe make a beater out of it. was thinking of switching motors, but the one owner car is all original and i dont want to mess with it. say what you will about the k cars,,,, but i know the convertibles will increase in value as the years go by. but i bought it because i like it,i like the styling and the way it rides.
I never laugh at anyone who is enthusiastic about any old car. I am all for anyone preserving any old car, regardless of whether I like it or not. And an ’86 Lebaron convertible is pretty neat. After all, John Voight drove one right? 😛
No heat in my garage so this time of year I just collect parts for my projects so I have less hunting to do once the weather starts to warm up. Hoping to start working on the unicorn, my ’85 Marquis LTS.
A Marquis LTS?!? That is one rare car, with only134 made? That’s quite a cool and unique car. Would love to see a picture and hear more about it.