What Do We Have Here?

Tonight’s dinner: pizza.

Yeah, it sounded too good to be true: a ready-to-race car for less than a grand. Guess what? Our Lincoln is a piece of poop. On the plus side, it’s our poop.

Let the work begin. After languishing in our pole barn for a few months, the Lincoln has finally taken center stage. First, exactly what do we have? We’re pretty sure it’s a 1986 Mark VII. It’s kind of like a fancy Thunderbird, which is kind of like a fancy Mustang.

The first thing to do was inspect our car and devise a plan. Does it run? Is it safe? Does it need paint? (Answers, by the way, are yes, no and no.)

Safety is always important, because finding new employees is harder than it sounds. While the Lincoln came with a complete roll cage—it had been previously set up for stock car racing—the work was apparently done by someone with low standards. Or, we have theorized, the previous owners were already dead and thus impervious to normal wear and tear.

First order of business: Rip out the cage so we could replace it with a new one sourced from Auto Power. The series rules don’t penalize teams for spending money on safety equipment, and we figured that a prefab cage would be the fast and easy route. We ordered one for a Mustang.

Other things discovered that evening:

The carburetor throttle return spring was installed backward.

The transmission kick-down cable was disconnected.

The front shock absorbers had zero compression and rebound.

The rear springs lacked upper perches.

The brake fluid resembled sewage.

The tires were dry-rotted.

The exhaust system appeared to be fabricated from dryer hose.

The transmission cable was kinked.

On the plus side, the engine did fire and make noise.

Hey, we’re making progress.

Tonight’s dinner: pizza.

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