LINCOLN CONTINENTAL
RUN BY Julian Balme OWNED SINCE 1991 PREVIOUS REPORT January
In my previous report, I left the Lincoln broken and abandoned in a yard near Calais, where it remained for three weeks before being repatriated courtesy of my insurer. Another week passed, then I received a call to say the car was on a trailer and would be arriving that afternoon.
The repair turned out to be fairly straightforward, which was just as well because I had to perform the task out in the open on my driveway. The first item to remove was the radiator, which had suffered a hefty whack from the blades of the jettisoned fan. Looking for specialists in the West Country led to ERA expert David Morris recommending Exeter Radiators. The core was deemed a write-off, with a new one required – all of which happened super-efficiently and quickly, but not cheaply.
The water pump was removed and sent to my regular guru, EP Services in Wolverhampton, which turned around the repair in 10 days. After repainting it in the correct Lincoln green, I set about refitting the whole lot one dry Saturday morning, with the process taking less than an hour. Wooly had been sitting outside in the open for five weeks, so I was keen to start the car up and return it to the storage facility I rent, half an hour away.
I should have been more suspicious, but instead I put the white smoke at start-up down to condensation and thought no more of it. Indeed, the clouds soon cleared and the engine temperature remained rocksteady along the A38 and on through Totnes. It was only at my destination, after opening the shed door and restarting the engine, that I realised something worse was afoot: the cloud of steam from a single exhaust pipe signalled a blown head gasket. Once I had parked up, I pulled the dipstick to find creamy goop confirming the worst.
Its home being only a storage facility and not really conducive to working in, Iʼve paused the idea of doing anything about it until work on my Ford Galaxie is finished. I did drain the Lincolnʼs sump, but aside from that Iʼve closed the door and chosen to forget about it for the short term.