Strangest Features of the 1969-71 Lincoln Mark III (460-4V Engine)

[Music] thank you well hey this is Adam and welcome back to rare classic cars I thought I would detail for you today some of the strangest features of this Lincoln Mark III this is a 69 Mark III they didn't necessarily get to you in the video review let's start out under hood and this car does have the premium fuel 460 cubic inch 4V or 4 Venturi this Ford would call it not four valve that's four Venturi four barrel and GM lingo it just denotes the carburation produces 360 horsepower really peppy car for as big as it is especially this one which has the high torque rear end which is three to one as opposed to standard 2.75 to 1. and this car does still have the original air conditioning compressor charged on R12 only has about 36 000 miles in the car and it's getting cold here so I just unhooked this compressor if you want to unhook your Ford compressor just separate that one connector there and it gets plenty of use in the summertime on AC I just don't like it turning all the time when it's colder out and then when it's a hot day I just plug it back in if I want to use the AC but the first thing that's strange about this car is I'll say where is the power steering pump and if you guessed that that is it you are wrong that is just a reservoir for the power steering and also we're going to get to it the wipers so where is the power steering pump on this car it's actually driven off the end of the crankshaft and Ford did that for some time even the Mel V8s in the 50s did that 69 was the last year for it though then they would go to the more standard power steering pump in some cases the Saginaw GM Saginaw power steering pump but in these cars it is on the end of the crankshaft so kind of funky the second thing that I think is pretty funky on these is as I mentioned the hydraulic wiper system so you can see here that's actually for the wipers and those metal hoses Etc come down and go back hey actually go in you can see to the power steering gear there so it's totally driven off of the power steering pump not electric and why do they do that well these can wipe a continuously variable speed and you can see they're off the park position here and I'll show you why in a second and if you don't quite believe me watch this so in order to operate these you rotate this dial here the outer portion you close it or you open it so I'll open it all the way and I'll turn the key to accessory once I have the key in okay let's try that again with the keys now so I'll turn it to accessory and I've got the wiper switch on and you notice that nothing is happening but watch this I will turn the steering wheel and watch what happens to the wipers you ready see that isn't that crazy so yes they are driven I can go to the full cycle here so if you ever want to operate your wipers when the car is off just turn the steering wheel there you go there you have it and I'll close it off it's in the park position and it'll go and Park and end its cycle and there we go other interesting thing about these is this rear vent perfect for cigar smokers you turn this outer ring you see it says open or closed and it opens this vent on top of the rear and it exhausts out the back of the trunk so that you get flow through ventilation even with the windows closed pretty cool other Fords did that of the era GM had these louvers on the trunk but didn't have that vent opening so this is where it exhausts out right here other funky feature of this the bypass feature if you want to operate the windows with the car off you can see the key is off right now nothing's happening when I touch the window switch if you want the window to operate hold the bypass down and then push it and it operates pretty cool and handy that would go away by the time the mark IV came around other strange thing this window does not retract down into the car it retracts backward into the sail panel so you can take a look so it does go all the way back I immediately get a little leery about operating these because on the window Drive mechanism the gear system is hard to find and replace but you can see it works fine on this car both windows no issues other funky things this is the auditronic eye that senses oncoming headlights and automatically dims them I shouldn't say autotronic autonic eye I added extra syllable there and then you can adjust that here do you want it to be near or far other funky thing about all fours not particularly to the Mark III but on the tilt steering wheels you tilt it by pushing this forward the turn stock forward it almost feels like you're going to break it but that's how you operate it see it tilted there these classic Fords were all like that and sometimes you feel like you're going to break them but no that's just how they were turning back under hood here this car has hidden headlights obviously and they're not operated by electric motors they're operated by these vacuum diaphragms here these vacuum actuators one on either side Ford love vacuum in these years and the power door locks are also vacuum so lots of vacuum accessories these tend to go bad and they The Originals have a very heavy duty spring in them which cause them to fail open or after some time you'll see that they'll kind of gradually pop open but these have been rebuilt and the Springs taken out so they'll stay closed indefinitely also puts less stress on the internal diaphragm next over here under hood voltage regulator this car has an external voltage regulator where is it where is it hiding no it's not there it's on the back of the alternator this little black thing at the bottom that is external and removable separate from the alternator it's hard for the camera to focus on so if your Mark III is over charging or forward product of the era check to see if you have an external voltage regulator on the vehicle that might be your problem it wasn't this car when I got it it was overcharging I kept trying to figure out where in the world is the voltage regulator until somebody pointed me in that direction One Day and last but not least kind of funky this Dash is 69. was faux wood grain in 1970 they would go to real wood grain Ford was worried about the durability and how it would hold up but they found it could hold up just fine and they also redid the door panels these 69s have one year only door panels but this in spite of being faux is pretty convincing it's got a little grain to it it's not the GM did the worst faux wood grain in Chrysler did I think this one is pretty gosh darn good and at least trying to convince you that it's real does have this mold in stitching here as my designer friends would call it cut and foe as opposed to cut and sew it's supposed to be a French seam but nonetheless this car the material quality is really excellent in the build quality I mean look at the stainless steel edge here over the window glass I mean everything is just beautifully trimmed out look at how thick the door is in the hinges I mean this thing is just super solid super well built and it does have this has the am 8-track radio with the retractable antenna and it's got really nice stereo system it has two rear speakers this center speaker and a speaker in each door so it has five speaker sound system it actually sounds really really good pretty shocking for 1969. and of course most of you will know that these cars have automatic climate control rear window defogger Etc but the five speaker stereo that is pretty amazing for the era and that leads me to my last quirky feature of these look at where the key is way down here another anti-theft feature in 70 it would move up to the steering column lock here it's an anti-theft feature because nobody can find it and if you ever want to steal one of these forwards it's just about the easiest thing in the world doesn't take much you want it to crank over just pull this off ground out these two Terminals and the motor will crank over it's handy for setting points I actually have a little starter button that I put on there or if I want to make a mark on the harmonic balancer or something to better see the timing mark just keep bumping the little switch just connect it here and here and the motor turns over it won't stop it'll start but it'll die instantly because the coil won't have 12 volts once it runs so you'd have to run a 12 volt wire to the coil but I do think it's pretty funny there's no steering column lock on these cars either so super easy to steal hopefully nobody does that to mine in any case hope you enjoyed that look at some of the quirky features of this Mark III thanks again for watching thanks for watching this video let me know if you like the strangest features of various cars quite a few things to talk about until next time check out the video thumbnails at bottom left and right and thanks again for watching

Channel: Rare Classic Cars & Automotive History

Views: 422,550

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Id: wuD-ENpVLSg

Length: 12min 19sec (739 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 29 2022