I have a government tank in my possesion. It is a huge sturdy troublefree ex cop car called a crown victoria. Its' 351 never skips a beat. Its' 2 barrel carb is as reliable as my fuel injection. It's big chrome bumpers don't take any crap from SUVs. Just give it some oil and grease twice a year and get in and drive. It's hard on gas but everything else is paid for.
 I repainted the doorjams ford midnight blue with a light blue top and let a maaco give the outside a spray.
 The car used to have one of those variable venturi craparetors with the square throttle bores. I never could tune it, so it was replaced with a junkyard 2 bbl off of a 400M truck. It looked freshly rebuilt and has run fine ever since. The carb starts and runs better with more mileage as well.
 I also started pulling off the pollution overburden under the hood. It had a EEC III computer with all the sensors, but removing things didn't affect the car at all. The only thing left is the Duraspark 3 distributor hooked to the EEC. I could go to a duraspark 2, or HEI or Chrysler module, but it runs okay as is.

 One of the things it didn't have was air conditioning.  After sweating for several summers I spent several hours digging one out of a newer 5.0 LTD and cleaned it up. I had to use the special 5.8 brackets which are stamped '5.8'.
 The spacing of the water pump must be slightly different because the pulleys almost touched. It was very difficult to get a belt in between upper and lower.
The wiring was already in place, and everything plugged in and worked, including the inside control panel.
  The stereo wiring was also there, and I got a nice system out of a newer Lincoln.

 It has no rust except for the 2 front fenders. The LTD has 2 layers of sheet metal, which makes a sturdy design. However, when water and dirt gets in they get trapped, and so rust eats the fender inside out. I did a bondo job at first but it soon ate throught the new paint.
 I then did it properly by cutting out the rot and mig welded in new metal. I was lucky to have the chrome edging to use as a pattern, and used hardware store sheet metal to build a fender. A hundred spot welds later I ground down the metal, puttied, primered, and painted it with a spray can of midnight blue.

   The right side wasn't as bad. The inner layer was intact and I decided to try out POR-15 rust coating. A heavy coat was sprayed on the inner metal and then fiberglass mat was placed in the opening dry, and then soaked with POR-15. Use gloves.
 I then cleaned the spray gun several times with lacquer thinner.

The next day it was all bonded together. Let's see what side lasts longer.

 The other spot was at bottom right. It was cut out leaving the door edge in place. The new piece was made from flat sheet metal which was bent and beaten into shape in about 15 minutes. Tabs were welded on and the piece was screwed onto the fender before being spot welded with the MIG. I wasn't too fussy as this area is undercoated and covered with a trim piece.

 A vinyl top was added by someone and it split and cracked to a horrible extent. A new top was quoted at $500.00, so I ripped off the old one myself. Underneath was the copcar colors and various holes for equipment. The glue was also tough to remove.
 The solution was a can of white undercoating and a paint roller, and then a coat of light blue paint. Looks just like a vinyl top.