87 Lincoln TC 5.0 & AOD Donor?

Is the price for the whole car or just the drivetrain? It depends what you want from the engine. If you want an EFI with 140HP, go for it (read the advice at the end, though). If it's for a performance build, forget it. Aside from the speed density EFI, poor heads, flat top cast pistons and lowly cam, this can be a good foundation for a build, but you will use just the block and AOD. It is roller compatible, and can have parts swapped to make it a better engine. The heads and pistons are the real performance limiters, though. I'd not pay more than $100-200 for the engine (from a performance perspective you are buying just a block) and not more than $400 for the tranny... that's about half of the asking price and may not be worth it. You may be able to find them cheaper than that.
Daniel

Too bad you're going automatic. Oh well, good luck.

should just save the money and find a good late 80s-early 90s fox body mustang donor with a V8 and a 5-speed. with that you start with 225hp. I know it's getting hard but they are still out there. also look at 94-95 GTs as well.

My car was automatic and I did the 5 speed swap for 400 dollars all told. You just have to be industrious/lucky/patient. It is soooooooo worth it. Based on your 1000 dollar potential donor car option it'd be comparable in price. Especially since like Born said you're not going to end up with as much goodies out of that towncar as you would like. You could so easily get a MAF engine/t5 already pulled if you looked around for 1000 or less easy. It's your project though, have fun.

Tim65GT said:

The price was for the whole car, that way I can remove all the items I need at my leisure. I could part out the rest maybe and get at least a portion of it back. What are the limitations as far as swapping the heads to performance aftermarket? Worse case, the pistons have to be changed?

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As stated above the block is a roller, probably already has the roller cam, although it's the smallest of the stockers in lift and duration. The heads should be E6SE's which are good bottom end torque producers but short by 25 hp vs the Stang/Pickup/Van E7TE heads. Look for a large "S" cast in the front lower corner of the passenger side head for E6SE's. The E7TE has a large "T" in the same location. The E6SE headed 5.0 has pistons without valve reliefs, reason for this is the valves are sunk deeper by 1/8" into the heads vs all other small block heads. So changing heads moves the valves that much closer to the pistons. The accessories can work in a Stang if you're only using the Alternator and Power Steering, the Vic setup is more compact here, leaving the whole passenger side of the engine free for other accessories if you leave the A/C & smog pump off. The waterpump is a std rotation unit. Both iron and aluminum pumps in low, std and high volume outputs are available from your local parts house, I know, because I use the same setup on my V8 Ranger and have researched all this. You'll need to change the oilpan to a front sump and drill a dipstick hole in the timing cover to mount the dipstick tube there. Then plug the D/S hole in the block. $1000 is a tad high for the car though, the late 80's Lincoln Mark VII's can be had for the same money with the HO 5.0's, many times for half the cost. (I run across running $500 to $1000 Mark VII's all the time)