1964 LINCOLN RESTORATION PROJECT

HERE SHE IS, ready to drive home from the transmission shop. Well, almost...

I guess I hadn't had enough difficulties yet. Turns out that the tune-up joint -- right next door to North Seattle Transmission -- that I had asked to to set the tuning, start the car safely for me, hook up the exhaust, and mount the rear shocks... didn't. The car idled fine there in the garage, although it was really loud (they "couldn't" get the exhaust hooked up) and the shocks hadn't been mounted. But the instant I took it out on the road, it seemed to be starving for fuel or something -- it just wouldn't keep running when going faster than 20mph. Odd. I fueled it up, just in case. No good. I increased the fuel pressure allowed by the regulator. Nothing. I brought the car back to the tune-up joint, but they didn't have time to do the work. I went home.

Well, the next day, I decided I'd do the work myself, so I rode up there after the place was closed and tried to drive the car home. "Tried" being the operative word. I removed the fuel regulator to avoid any fuel-starvation issues, hooked up a loose vacuum hose, and disconnected the PCV vacuum line, just in case that was the problem. On the way, I found that the engine would stumble when the car was going faster than 20mph or if it was under any load at all. I limped the rest of the way to the garage where I've been restoring the car, and left it there to work on later. It was now really late, and I was not only frustrated but damned pissed off at the tune-up joint, so I went home.

A couple of days later, a mechanic friend of mine went to investigate, armed with a strobe light. He found that the timing was off, so he set that. He was able to hook up the exhaust using only my hand tools in the garage. But, most important, he hooked up the vacuum-advance on the distributor. The tune-up joint had neglected to do so, apparently thinking it wouldn't matter!