[njsteve]

It's been a while but I recently started playing with the Lincoln because I'm bored. :-)

Last week I pulled the doors panels off and cleaned out the petrified grease from all four window track systems and regreased them all with a tub of chassis grease and PB Blaster. It's amazing how they all now actually will go all the way up and all the way down without having to rev the engine to 3000 RPM to give it extra juice.

I also sprayed the door lock mechanisms and they work nicely now too. The Lincoln uses an vacuum/electric door lock mechanism. There are solenoids in the dash which send power to relays when then allow the vacuum to push or pull the door lock button up and down. So instead of simply having a single solenoid like a modern car, they have 100 feet of vacuum line, 12 gauge wires with heavy amps and several relays involved. All so it can have some satisfying "ka-chunk-a-swish" sound when the switch is depressed.

When I was in the front doors, it appears that the dealer had been in there once before - all the weatherproof paper was shredded and missing in sections and there were several drilled holes at the bottom where they removed the power window motors to replace the plastic gears inside that crumble with age. This is actually the factory recommended repair procedure instead of removing the entire window and regulator assembly to get to the power window motors. Of course they didn't bother greasing all the moving parts of the window tracks properly at the same time. They just greased the main slider which just allowed the regulator to bind on itself when half of it was old grease and half was new. Sigh!

I found the speaker problem - the right rear door speaker was blown...and the left rear was never installed. I was lucky enough to find two NOS Ford speakers on ebay. One for $63 and the other for $85. After reading all the factory manuals my grandfather bought back in 1971 it seems that the AM radio only used three speakers though the car is wired for all four. So all I had to do was screw the left rear speaker in place and all four worked nicely (or as nice as 50 year old NOS Ford speakers can sound).

The best part was while searching for the speakers I found a 1971 AM/FM stereo radio from a 1971 Lincoln Continental on ebay as well. It's a unique one year only radio. And it was only $84 and already checked out and fully working.

Today was the fun part of removing the AM and installing the AM/FM. and getting the wiring to match up. You have to remove half the dash just to get to the three screws that hold the radio in. Two hours of labor to get to the radio and 2 minutes to install it.

Now everything actually works - the AM/FM radio, four speakers, four power windows and four power door locks! YAY