About September of 96, right before I wrecked project RR, my brother who had helped me mightily since the start of RRR decided it was time for some old car fun of his own. Learning from my mistakes, He chose more carefully. He got a 66 Thunderbird Town Landau. He is the fifth owner, but the owner previous to him was a Thunderbird collector. He had bought this car for his son to restore, but his son lost interest and went out and bought a Honda instead. Only in America...<sigh>.
My brother's blue, actually Silver Mink, Thunderbird is a good unrestored original. It needs some freshening, like a new coat of paint and some chrome work. We have to date: replaced the carpet, had the front seats reupholstered and replaced the top. We also rebuilt the motor. What an experience that was. We did that in the winter on 98/99 and it was a project and a half. The FE big blocks are nothing like my lil' ole small blocks.
Aside from the fact they are both OHV engines and made by Ford of course. Upon disassembly, we found lots stuff we didn't like. For instance the nearly plugged oil return holes in the heads, to the sludge coating everything. It looked like the previous owners had never changed the oil. Once the crud was hot tanked off, the parts were all in good shape. It was rebuilt to stock except for the cam; it is an SSI (super stock industries) stage 1. It's a high torque grind, 204-214 @.050 and 473 -510 lift. The only other mod is the removal of the thermactor system, so it can be detailed and used for shows if the car ever makes it that far. The Blue bird is currently awaiting the rear end work on RR and the paint job for White lightning/Green Ghost to be finished. Then it is the Bluebird's turn to shine.
(1-22-2K) Well if you read the section on Green Ghost, you know not much has happened to this car. It is just being driven in nice weather, but some spots are starting to get light rust on them where the old paint flaked off. I need to get on Tony and get my green ghost done....
(5-9-2K) Well, not much to report on this front, we got the carpeting for the door panels on, so the interior is finished for now. The current project is the brakes. They have always acted kind of strange, like sometimes you get no brakes till you keep pushing, then all of a sudden the front wheels lock. Other times you lightly touch the brakes, and they try to grab. We have replaced the booster master cylinder the front brake hose, the calipers and the rear shoes. Our current project is to make sure the length of the booster pushrod is correct, and test to see if the rear brakes are working at all. Once all that is finished I am in search of a decent bodyshop that won't charge an arm and a leg to fix the two dents in it and spray it...
Some Pics of it are below. They look a little funky because I cropped them so much, they were huge...
More to come...
Update 6-22-00:
Well, not much is going on with it... It runs, drives, and looks decent for the price we paid... It will get some much-needed TLC on the exterior once GG is done... We re-adjusted the brake booster pushrod, and that solved the little brake problem we had, it now stops as well as can be expected.
Update 7-14-00:
Again, not much is going on with it. I am looking for a bodyshop for it, and it has its frustrating moments. For instance, right now it's got an intermittent sputter, I think it's sediment in the fuel tank, and we are looking into rebuild kits for the front end, and a spring kit for the rear end.
Update 10-19-00:
The Bluebird is disassembled again. This time it was going in for a dual chamber Master cylinder upgrade. Then we had it about finished, when we found out that the prop valve we had used was junk. We couldn't get the brakes bled correctly, I think the problem was the safety switch inside that is designed to shut off flow to on the side the of system when it senses a pressure differential. Anyway, since we had to tear it all apart anyway, and my brother's B-day was near, we decided to spring for a new front end set up, new springs, shocks, sway bars, bushings, everything. My brother decided to augment that with a new rear end setup also. So the parts are coming, and it will be riding in style :-)
Update 12-3-00:
Well, its is still apart. We have the new parts, and have the old parts stripped off. We have run into problems getting the springs compressed far enough to get them back in. The springs have been a serious pain in the ass. First we used one of the hook type internal compressors, like we used on my Mustangs. As we compressing the first one, the compressor broke. One of the hooks snapped right off. It was a brand new tool, and if we had the spring compressed any further, it could have been a catastrophe. My dad fangled up a tool similar to Ford's design, it compresses the spring against the top of the shock tower. I don't really like the design, because you have to get under the car to unbolt the control arms and break the spindle free with the spring compressed above your head. We had the new spring compressed about as far as it would go, and it will still take a crowbar to get it into place. I am confident we can get it into place; it just won't be easy...
Update 1-8-01:
Well, we got them in. It really wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. We redesigned the spring compressor, and them it went right in. The car is now back on all 4 wheels, all the suspension and brake hardware at the wheels is in. We still have to mount the M/C and distribution block, and then bleed the brakes. The surface rust is getting worse; it really needs a paint job...