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

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 three .

This is a 69 mark three .

They didn't necessarily get to in the video review .

Let's start out under hood and this car does have the premium fuel 460 cubic inch four V or four venturi Ford would call it not four valve , that's four venturi four barrel in GM lingo just denotes the carb operation produces 360 horsepower , really peppy car for as big as it is , especially this one which has the high torque rear end , which is 3 to 1 as opposed to the standard 2.75 to 1 .

And this car does still have the original air conditioning compressor charged on our 12 .

It has about 36,000 miles in the car and it's getting cold here .

So I just unhook this compressor if you want to unhook your Ford compressor , just separate that one connector there and it gets plenty of use in the summer time on AC I just don't like it turning all the time .

When it's cold or 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 guess 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 crank shaft .

And Ford did that for some time .

Even the M B L V eights in the fifties did that .

69 was the last year for it though .

And they would go to the more standard power steering pump in some cases , the Saginaw G M Saginaw power steering pump , but in these cars , it is on the end of the crank shaft .

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 , et cetera 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 .

Ok , let's try that again with the keys now .

So I'll turn it to accessory and I got the wiper switch on and you noticed that nothing is happening .

But watch this , I will turn the steering wheel and watch what happens to the wipers .

Are 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 , I'll close it off .

It's in the park position and it will go in 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 and 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 he can flow through ventilation even with the windows closed .

Pretty cool .

Other Fords did that of the era G M 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 is 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 four came around .

Other strange thing , this window does not retract down into the car .

It retracts backward into the sale panel so you can take a look .

So it does go all the way back .

I admittedly 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 Aron I that senses oncoming headlights and automatically dims them .

I shouldn't say auto tronic Aron , I add an extra syllable there and then you can adjust that here .

Do you want it to be near or far ?

Other funky thing about all forwards , not particularly to the Mark three but on the tilt steering wheels , you tilt it by pushing this forward , the turns 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 gonna 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 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 spring is 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 .

It's 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 three is overcharging or ford 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 in 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 69 s have one year only door panels , but this , in spite of being Fox is pretty convincing .

It's got a little grain to it .

It's not the G M did the worst fo wood grain and 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 so it's supposed to be a French theme .

But nonetheless , this car , the material quality is really excellent in the build quality .

I 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 eight track radio with the retractable antenna and it's got a really nice stereo system .

It has two rear speakers , this center speaker and a speaker in each door .

So this 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 , et cetera .

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 and 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 Fords , 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 , it'll start , but it'll die instantly because the coil won't have 12 volts once it runs .

So you 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 three .

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 .

Till next time , check out the video thumbnails at bottom , left and right and thanks again for watching .