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1936
Lincoln Model K LeBaron convertible sedan
I saw this
car for sale eight or nine years ago.
It had been purchased in the late ‘50s by a fellow up in
Massachusetts. At the time, there
was a Cadillac V-8 in the chassis.
The car was restored sometime in the late ‘80s. As part of the restoration, the owner
acquired a purportedly rebuilt 1935 K engine from someplace in California. Apparently, the engine wouldn’t hold
oil pressure longer than ten or fifteen minutes. I recall seeing ads for this car appearing in various
publications in the mid-to-late ‘90s.
A friend from the Boston area told me about this car at the time, saying
that it was a magnificent restoration, but the engine had “an oil-pressure
problem”. The end result is he
couldn’t find a buyer for the car.
I heard that a friend of mine
purchased the car when I was at the Ford Centennial in 2003. At the time, I asked him what he
planned to do with the car. He
said he was going to keep it.
About three months later, I repeated the question, and was told that he
had found a ’29 L dual-cowl phaeton, and he was now going to turn the car over
when the engine was done.
He said
that when he got the car home from Massachusetts, it sounded like a threshing
machine, and was only running on six cylinders. The other block had similar issues. At the time, I told him that I was interested
in the car, and to let me know when the engine was done and he was ready to
proceed. When he tore the engine
down, he found oil in the water and water in the oil. One of the cylinder blocks was holed in three places.
The engine
almost completely gone through, except for the crankshaft main bearings, which
were reported to be within tolerance.
I went to Connecticut to look at and drive the car in late July of 2005. We took the car for a 40-mile drive on
a 90+-degree day. Partway through
the drive, the oil pressure at speed dropped from 20 pounds down to 7. More work was clearly indicated here…
The engine
came back out of the car. A check
of the main bearing tolerances revealed two bearings had a vertical clearance
of .010 of an inch. No wonder the
oil pressure went away.
There is a company in northern
California that manufactures bolt-in overdrives for the Ford Model A. Last year, there were two articles in
the Lincoln Owners Club Newsletter advising that this company was now ready to
begin making overdrives for early Lincolns. The article specifically said that they could manufacture an
overdrive for any Lincoln, but they would need a driveshaft and torque tube to
get measurements from. The stock
rear-end ratio is 4.58:1, which results in a very busy engine at highway
speeds. Since I want to drive this
car, an overdrive was exactly what I was looking for. I called the company and asked questions. Receiving what I considered to be
positive responses, I made arrangements to have the required parts dismounted,
crated, and shipped to California.
When the parts arrived at their offices, I called the company back, and
told them I was ready to send them a deposit. I was told to wait.
I waited more than six weeks while they apparently only looked at the
contents of the crate. In various
conversations with someone at the company, I heard comments like: “Gee it’s
awfully big”, and “We don’t want to get into making one-off assemblies”. After having my parts for almost seven
weeks, the company then informed me that they felt that the research and
development time would be excessive, and they had decided not to proceed with
the work at this time. I told them
to ship the parts back to Connecticut.
The crate was shipped back freight collect. At this point, I have invested something in excess of
$600.00, and all I have to show for it is a bad taste in my mouth…
A postscript to the overdrive
fiasco: A member of the CCCA in Michigan
made a number of high-speed ring and pinion sets for late Ks a couple of years
ago. When it became apparent that
the overdrive wasn’t going to happen, I called him to ask if he still had any
more gear sets. He said that the
previous run was fully subscribed, but he was able to do onesies and twosies,
for a bit more money. I was
prepared to order a set, but then found a Lincoln club member in California
with a 4.23:1 set of gears already mounted in the carrier. I put a check in the mail immediately…
In July, I went to Connecticut to
attend a Lincoln Owners Club one-day tour. While I was there, I got to see the car for the first time
in almost a year. Here is what I
saw. The new rear end parts
arrived a couple of days before I got up there.
This is
the partially disassembled engine.
I’ve never seen the bottom end of a K motor before. Have you?
And here
is the new rear-end gearset, fresh off the truck from California.
Work on
the car continues. I hope to have
it sometime in October. Details at
Eleven…
May, 2007
Well, I was wrong. The engine started going back together about the middle of March. The car was running again by the end of the month. There were a few residual teething problems, but I was able to get up and drive it late in April. It was delivered early this month.
June, 2007
The first show we went to was GOF 39 up above Uniontown, Pennsylvania.
Here we are parked in front of Fallingwater.
September, 2007
We were invited to attend the
inaugural St. Michaels Concours, held in St. Michaels Maryland. This was a three-day event, which
included a 40-mile tour on Saturday, and the concours on Sunday.
Here we are in front of the hotel on
Saturday, and on the Concours field on Sunday.
