1988 5.0 Ho Build Advice Needed,

I actually have a Lincoln MK VII with the HO engine. Here is the story. About ten years ago I put a 347 stroker with Kenne Bell blower @8psi and all the suspension tricks in a 1991 LSC and that car was very very good. However, I traded it out at 190,000 miles and got to missing it lately. Found a near show-room version 1988 with a blown head gasket.

However, since one of the heads needs to come off anyway why not swap out both for aluminum, and maybe add mild street cam. Probably no blower this time though. I am open ears on all opinions. The car needs to idle OK and will be shifted at about 5,500 rpm.

Noobz347 said:

@LaserSVT

He's your one-stop shop for all your Lincoln Mark VIII needs.


BTW.....

Pics of the KB-LSC! That's one of my dream sleepers.


Oh... and welcome aboard!

Click to expand...

Hi,

I don't have a photo of the actual car but here is one just like it. I had 2.73 gears in it, a truck torque converter, transco shift kit, and could smoke the tires with a bit of torque braking. It would hit the speed limiter at 130 mph and 3,000 rpm. That was BEFORE I put the 347 stroker and mild cam in it. I am sure that one was a 13 second car but never got a chance to get the numbers.

The tall gears and the low stall speed converter let me floor it from a stop light and just simply be GONE by 3,500 rpms. And I had quiet exhaust system too! I really really miss that car. The new one looks just like it but is near show room. We put a KB 1000 on it just like the old one and blew a head gasket. And it did not even run well. Then my local wrench SOLD the supercharger.

I have many options. The guy who has the old 347 stroker will sell it back to me. But the car itself has 195,000 miles on it. It actually still looks like a good used car. I will probably buy it back. But if the computer in my 1988 LSC won't run a KB TS-1000 I am not sure I would chance a transplant. So I am looking at crate engines.

My 1988 show-room car is a very very strange vehicle. Everything in the car looks new except the steering wheel and drivers seat. They look like 300,000 miles, seriously, but can be fixed. Another very very strange thing about it is handling. I spent half a decade dialing in my old 91 LSC for the handling I like [sub frame connectors, stabilizer bars front and back, upper strut mount modification, steering rack mounts, specific front to rear shock tuning and half a dozen mix and match mounting bushings.] I was never passed going up blood mountain! ...don't ask...]

But the strangest thing about this 1988 is that it handles like a great big Ferrari. And I should know because I HAVE Ferrari! 1986 Mondial 3.2 QV. I told my mechanic there was something seriously wrong with the Lincoln suspension. Probably something very dangerous. He said it is in FINE shape. All I did to it was install larger stabilizer bars and some serious brake stuff. CryoDipped rotors, and custom made brake pads [I added higher friction rear pads because the butt end just was not doing its requisite share of braking.]

So here I am after almost two years trying to get another MK VII. I may end up with two of them! jeeze.

Chuckman said:

its a mkvii (7), NOT a mkviii (8).

.

Click to expand...

VERY good info! I was hoping to keep my stock port injectors but there is plenty of room under there for a quad of some sort. One thing I have done is email Summit Racing on the matter.

PS: The photo of the MK VII got scrunched in the transfer. I don't know about these technical things.

LaserSVT said:

Ha! I hade a 1986 Mondial. Probably the worst car I ever owned and I used to have a Festiva and a Ford EXP with a blown head gasket. But the Mark VII is no corner carver but does almost as well as a bone stock Fox Mustang. Their suspension did not get advanced enough until the VIII arrived and it too needed lots of help. You wanna feel a Mark that handles like a higher end Ferrari (think F355/F430) then stop by and I will show you a Mark that actually can handle like a Euro car.

But back to the topic on hand. I am a Mark VIII specialist but I love the Mark VII cars a whole lot. Mods to make it fun yet somewhat tame is i would add some AFR 195 heads, Edelbrock plenum, larger TB, delete the TB cooling lines, FRPP alphabet cam, mass airflow conversion, 355 gears with a Trac Lok (forget if they had them or not), fresh plugs with a hotter coil and better wires as well as a new cap and rotor, new fuel filter, service the trans, 24lb injectors and a Walbro pump. That will give you a solid 300-320 at the crank allowing for a little fun but also be low enough stress to not worry about driving the car anywhere.

Click to expand...

The guys at Summit told me my Speed Density unit would not be compatible with their cam and so I am interested in mass air conversion. However, none of it makes sense to me because the 1991 had SD with a fuel management unit and that Kenne Bell just bolted on and ran like factory. Same thing when I dropped in the 347 stroker with street cam. Both ran like factory.

So it was one hell of a downer when the 1988, that seems to be the same fuel injection system, was a total failure. Very weak and very rough. And not only that but seems to have been responsible for the blown head gasket. That seems hard for me to believe since it never came close to detonation, at least when I drove it.

An easy option is to either do a build like you recommend or crate engine and just top it off with a carb. I would need to check hood clearance but I think there is plenty of room. In the old days some guys did convert to mass air but several of them had lots and lots of trouble. And even so there would be all that rewiring and of course you lose your cruise control I think.

As for the Mondial, I tell people it is very theatrical and includes a lot of smoke and mirrors and you get a Disney Land E ticket ride. Then I tell them the manual steering is out of a Mac Truck, and the Tranny out of D9 buldozer. Its faster then I expected though, probably low 14 and does about 90 mph in the 1/8th. The handling is quire responsive and very forgiving. Except in the snow where it becomes Mr Toads Wild Ride! But with the manual steering I am not sure Arnold Schwarzenegger could parallel park the thing. I thought about electric steering as some have done but it would reduce the overall effect.

And of course I have the only anyone has ever seen on the road, which is nice. And it is a good conversation piece. I put about 13,000 miles on it in the last three years and have never been towed in once. And of course the engine torque curve and sound effects makes everyone feel like boy racers. I live in the N. Georgia Mountains and wore out my first set of tires in 5,000 miles!

But this Mark VII fiasco gives me indigestion.

Hope to hear from you some more!

LaserSVT and everyone else. WOW. I will give Neal J. a call in the near future.

It will take some time for me to decide what to do because I have so many options. For instance, I can buy back my old 347 stroker LSC with KB TS-1000 for nearly the price of a new blower by itself and do a transplant. The guy I sold it to ordered a matched custom AOD for the car [I smoked the original Transco practicing my torque braking]. That car was fast even with a large 5psi pulley. Eight psi is available. It has 9.5 compression ratio and 21 lb matched injectors.

I had a complicated timing system in that car. Twelve degrees btdc with a boost timing retard at 3,000 rpm. It was all adjustable with switches to retard timing if I could not get 93 octane.

We were talking about handling and here is the weird thing [one among many] with the 1988 LSC. It handles better then my highly prepped 1991. The 1991 had sub-frame connectors, boxed rear suspension arms, meticulously tuned stabilizer bars with six different combinations of bushings. My goal was always stability and a lift throttle tuck in.

The 1988 actually has initial mild oversteer with minimal rear end drift under power. In other words, an entirely natural mild power slide without any hint of snap oversteer. I replaced the front and rear stabilizer bars, of course. However, because of the initial oversteer I selected the intermediate ADDCO rear bar instead of the full one incher. The only difference is the car corners flatter then before.

The Mondial. I HATE the brakes. They are soft and spongy and the fronts lock up at low speeds without much notification. Not bad at high speeds though. I think it has a front/rear adjustable proportioning valve but everyone says to stay away from it.

You know what is the best braking car I ever owned. And still own? My 1965 Corvair convertible. It has drum brakes, but since its top speed is only 90 mph that is not an issue. It has a very very hard pedal with lots of warning on lock up. But the fronts always locked up to soon. So for decades I considered it to have marginal brakes.

Then I put in a new master cylindrical AND a proportioning valve. Drove hard around some curves for adjustments under braking to keep the butt end in place. That car will suck your eyes out. Further, it will not dive. It will not swerve. It will not lock up. It just puts very very big negative G forces. Of course the weight distribution is perfect. But the hard brake pedal is a serious plus.

Anyway, I am on my second Busch 25 ounce Ice and should probably close.

LATER.....

Bobs88lsc said:

I have the same 88. Yours is the lsc,right? What did you do to enhance the ride performance?

Click to expand...

I did several things to my 1991 LSC, not all of which I have done to the 88 LSC. The very first thing is to make sure you have the largest diameter stabilizer bars. You can get the front one from a site that hot rods the T-birds of the era. I think it was 1 3/8 inches. However, the rear stabilizer for the T-bird is of a different design.

I got the rear bar for both cars from ADDCO. For the 91 I picked the only one they had at the time which was 1 inch. Now they have a slightly smaller one that is intermediate between stock and one inch. For some reason the 88 is naturally much looser in the rear end then the 91 - in a good way. so I selected the intermediate. Unless you have done some auto crossing or track days and know about roll-stiffness I would stick with the full one inch.

The upper strut mounts on my 91 were soft and fancy and very much sloshed up the steering feel. The 88 does not do that. Either because it has a more basic design or the rubber just got hard in the last couple of decades. You can tell easily enough by simply driving briskly on a back road a legal speed of say, 40mph. Choose a rather tight curve where you need perhaps 1/4 lock or so.

In the 91 the steering wheel would find a point at which there was about at least 0ne inch of movement that did not turn the tires at all. What seems to have been happening is the upper strut bushing met its cushy limit and started to deform and then stopped started to turn the wheels again.. The upper strut mount for the 91 was an exact swap for a simple T-bird mount from 1988. The Lincoln has a bit more suspension travel and some of these mounts have a metal bushing for compensation but I don't think that matters.Perhaps even a Mustang might work, but make measurements in that case.

Auxiliary to the upper strut mount I firmed up the steering rack mounts as well. It is held on by two bolts and the bolts go through four identical bushings. One inserted on each side of the mount, one set for each mounting bolt. I simply cut a couple of shock absorber upper bushings in half and installed one half in the middle like a sandwich and simply thightened the bolt down to normal final tightness. Never needed to mess with it again.. But you can get polly.

Speaking of bushings. There is a large selection of front stabilizer end link bushings but standard poly is the best. However, some people provide poly for the front stabilizer to frame mount as well. Back in the old days I had three to choose from. Stock MKII, 88 T-bird super coupe, and poly. The poly seriously harshend the ride and I used the one from Pep Boys super coupe. All the bushings sent along with the recent T-bird front bar were just fine.

You MIght be able to get the larger front bar from a bone yard but they were rare. Super coupe, of course, and also the handling package on some of the v-8 models which is where I found mine. Took a caliper to the bone yard and did a half day sweep and found it!

I never had any complaints about the air suspension. I believe the ride hight sensors can be moved to adjust the ground clearance. On the 91 they were intermediate, but with the big stabilizer bars I never felt overly soft. The 88 is jacked up quite high which means much firmer air bag inflation. In my case it is almost uncomfortable on some roads. But the car looks better with its high stance.

Normally you LOWER the suspension for better handling but I like the 88 as it is. The big stabilizer bars keep it flat. You can also install a wide variety of coil springs. At the very end of my ownership of the 91 I did this and regretted it greatly since I chose lowered and stiffened units that were hell. If I buy that car back again I might reinstall bags, or switch to T-bird springs from the era.

The rear suspension pieces can be boxed. For the 91 I did this [and I am not making this up] setting short thin black water pipe pieces directly from home depot with no cutting, and set them into the U section and packed them top and bottom with high quality epoxy. For for safty, just incase they ever got loose, I used cable ties going around the whole thing, or you could use very small through bolts.

However, I ran that Mark VII at full max around every sort of curve and switch back for about 15 years and nothing even cracked. I did both upper and lower trailing arms.

One caution. There are advantages to leaving the softer Lincoln rear suspension bushings in place. The entire geometry of these arms depends on deformation since the system is trapezoid shaped. I have heard that Mustangs with poly bushings, for instance, can reach the high end of their deformation in a hard turn, or especially in a slide recovery. They more or less lock up the movement and can, I have heard, cause snap over steer.

This was discussed widely on the old Ford v Chevy forums and the Mark VII guys always insisted a prepped LSC always handled the best of all the Fox platforms. Problem was they also weigh at least 500 lb more.

Feel free to ask anything at all about Mark VII. Its one of my favorite cars of all time.

PS: I also had subframe connectors but they did not add all that much. I experimented with various shocks and mixed and matched them on the 91. I think it has KYBs all around now. The 88 has ordinary Gabriels. I suppose there are ways to install KONIs and some such but front to rear adjustments can be touchy and I never went for adjustable..

PPS: I keep thinking of thing! This time tires and tire pressure.
1) Lower profile. I believe the optimum is aspect ratio 235/45/17. I have 235/55 on the original 16 inch wheels because there simply are not a lot of choices in 16 inch anymore.

2) Sidewall stiffness. This is a big one and is hard to predict ahead of time. For instance, my 86 Ferrai came with all season Pirelli P Zero Neros and they were very very stout tires. Made the Ferrari actually a bit more jiggly then I liked. The front to back widths are different but aspect ratio is 205/55/16 front and 225/50/16 rear.

I wore the Pirellis out in 5,000 miles. The front INSIDE edges was worn down deep because in very sharp moderate speed cornering the Ferarri presents its very high camber angle against the curve. I switched to Continental ExtremeContact summer DWS. These are easy riding tires with a bit softer sidewall, but great tracking and wear evenly. However, they do not have as much aggressiveness in the steering and introduce a hint of 'Ferrari' under steer. I can live with that, and liked the DWS so much when the Michelin Super Sports wore out on my 87 Malibu I replaced them with the DWS.

The MAXX, by the way [with upgraded upper strut and steering rack bushings] is one hell of an autocross car. I took it to a Skip Barber two day training session at Road Atlanta and in the autocross it ate every piece of expensive machinery alive - on the autocross. It is the only front wheel drive vehicle I have ever driven that will rotate [over steer] under full power at sub 45 mph turns. Above that it is neutral.

The Porches were out and out trucks at those speeds. Both the Caymen and 911 introduced sever under steer at these speeds with tight tuck in at lift throttle.

I had Eagles on my Z-28 and was quite satisfied.

stykthyn said:

I would be the first to agree that a 17-18" low profile would be a great move. I'm running nitto tires and absolutely hate them. They have worn exceedingly fast just like your Pirelli ties and this is with regular street use. My next purchase will be back to Goodyear eagles.

Click to expand...

I had Eagles on my Z-28 a couple of times and was satisfied with them. I also have cheap Khmos on my 1965 Corvair Convertible. They are very surprisingly sticky but are worn out after about 5,000. But only on the side where I have a very long downhill left hander at about 90 mph [top speed].

After observing the severe edge wear and pondering the survival odds of a 90 mph roll over I decided to start acting my age. The Corvair is very very good given its very low center of gravity and rear weight bias. But a convertible is just not the right car for that sort of boy racer activity! The Ferrari can do that same curve at about 100 mph but I just can not bear the cost of a whole new paint job.

And so I have mended my errant ways. I can not say I have regrets. But thats simply because nothing ever went wrong.