Lincoln V12 engine needs a car build around it

I started a thread about a decade ago but the purpose has changed and its in the wrong section
https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/v12-lincoln-build-thread.734309/

So new thread here where I'm told the letters EFI is not an offence.

 

The "engine" is really just parts waiting there turn but its day is getting close, I hope. The plan was a boat, but I don't live near water so that makes little sense.

Then the plan was a full fender '26 roadster and that's fine, but I'm really not the sharpest tool in the shed so that plan just doesn't seem stupid enough (see https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/f.../frankenferrari-v12-ferrari-308/148959/page1/)

Another guy suggested "why not build a 30s mid-engine super car kind of thing" ...hmmm....that does sound stupid enough to be right up my alley and I have spent the last 18 years working on an 80s mid-engine V12 car.....that could work!

 

Subscribed!!

 

I got 2 pages into that link out of 142 pages.
I can't type all the stuff that applies to that madman's work!
If this is the type of stuff you are using as guidance, I'll have to follow along, just to be shocked into silence and awe.

 

I want to NOT do frankenferrari type work to the engine.....some flow work, cam, blower. But how can you have a blower without an intercooler? and flatheads love to detonate.....direct injection sorts that pretty well. So it will need decent rods which I was on about on the other thread, I'm thinking 300hp@4500-5000 is the engine goal. Nothing too crazy but I am wondering if I could adapt mechanical diesel injection to make it look more correct than electronic would look?

It will likely get a modern transasxle....no real decision there but (avert you eyes) it might be an audi unit because they are cheap, light and work good. Again nothing crazy happening here...unless I can figure out how to make paddle shifters look 1930s

What I really want to do with this project is a car that drives and handles well, competitive at an autoX well and the lowish hp mean it has to be light...I'm thinking 1500lbs is do-able if I do a birdcage style space frame. I built a few of these years ago for fsae cars so I feel pretty comfortable I can do something decent for this build



It will be a no-door step-in because the frame can be WAY lighter. The frame in the pic is plenty strong for a car like this and is made from 1"OD x x0.028" wall tubing...24lbs iirc? this is bigger and 2 seat, so the target bare frame is 80lbs I think.

Then the layout and body...for years now I've been thinking classic front engine full fender roadster. but last night I got thinking about maybe being a bit more creative. mid-engine race cars started to be a thing in the 30. The auto union cars were winning races in the late 30s but I'm not thinking race car look and having running boards to make stepping in easier would be helpful I suspect so off to google land.....





and right now I'm here concept wise.


It still needs a ton of work but the the lincoln V12, audi transaxle and 2 people should fit. as drawn its 4" off the ground, the body is 24" tall (so 28" off the ground) not counting the windshield or scoop. I'm not very artsy so this stuff is a struggle for me....its feeling like a workable direction though.

 

where's the center of mass? that engine is heavy, so I think you'd want to scoot the rear wheels back or the driver forward as much as possible?

If you want to get 50% more hp out of an engine with a positive displacement blower, and you put carbs on top of the blower, then you don't need to mess with intercooling. If you want to run a centrifugal blower, and efi at the intake, then an intercooler would be helpful.

looks like you could spend a long time thinking about this problem.

I wanted for years to make something with the engine in front, single seat. The bird cage construction is a neat way to go if you don't need doors. Worked for airplanes.

 

OMG, just realized YOU are the madman!
Bravo, Sir!
Up to page 9. Stunned, amazed, gobsmacked, all the superlatives!

The only thing I could possibly mention as far as the Lincoln project is that the 30s cars were function, then fit. Aero at that point was voodoo. Layout the components and make them happy, then worry about draping a body over it. Of course, with what little I've read so far, you will be going 10 levels further than that, even if it never goes faster than 60 MPH dodging cones. May I offer this.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFdCohr2ijg

 

As draw, if you look close you can see the brake pedal just ahead of the front axle so there ins not a lot more room to move the driver without stretching the wheel base, which as drawn is about as short as possible at 110. I could probably pull the front wheels back a bit but just guessing the f/r split is probably 35/65?

That sounds about spot on. Stock these things are 125hp and the blower engines I've seen are about 200. A bit more is probably possible on that path but...rods. And its still a long way from where I'm kind of hoping to land. I'm thinking with flow, compression, cam 150-175? so I need (ok, want) a 70-100% boost bump meaning 10-15 psi on an engine that loves to detonate so just planning for a cooler seemed wise.

This is the last blower setup I built. Cooler in the intake, 24psi. The lincoln has no room in the V for anything like this so I'm kind of thinking side mount the blower.....I don't know.....

 

Only on page 13. another mentioned truing the lathe for the guides. Probably in the next 130 pages, but if not, look at Inheritance Machining on youtube. He had to tighten up his lathe. 2 tenths might be asking a lot, but you might get closer.

 

No need to read all that, watch the tach an listen in this clip and you'll get all important stuff
https://youtube.com/shorts/F7cemj3oyik?si=8nK0yKaIYk6d51WN

I'm playing with chatgpt for the first time ever trying to get usable images.....so far it's a battle of wills and the machine is winning

 

up to pg. 33. wheels in transit, engine mostly apart. Can't stop now!

 

I spent some time messing with chatGPT and copilot image generation...worthless really unless you want a 1950s jag, they both pretty much always spit that out.. ...that or a random bares no resemblance to the sketches race car. After the first few failures I thought maybe take something and edit but even simple instructions are ignored. It looks I'll need to draw what I want.

 

Artificial Imagination isn't like the real thing.

 

Glad this is back on.
Is the Ferrari about done? I was following occasionally, and it looked like a supremely painful process. Mad respect for getting it working.
You can ask for styling suggestions on the photoshop thread. If you have wheels and tyres and wheelbase in mind.

Maybe this would be something to consider...

 

So...I keep thinking the ferrari is done and it keeps telling me its not. I set the intake valve to piston clearances too tight and broke a valve so its apart to sort that mess out. It was running great though until the failure so I'm hopeful.


That is kind of interesting. Between chatgpt and copilitot spitting out literally random sketches, then and cut, past, and paint I have this roughed out as a starting point....still too roundy but I think going in s useful direction...kind of a bug/speedster feel at the moment so that flavor needs to go away

 

Starting to look like a Lincoln Zephyr speedster, which I have never seen but could be interesting and a perfect match for the power plant.

 

Interesting thought and google popped this
https://bringatrailer.com/listing/zephyr-custom/

Take the roof off, section it .....8in or 10" maybe? Drop hood line a bit.....




But my mind is still saying the k-model roadster should be the inspiration, same *-10in section treatment


I think the earlier k-model fender lead themselves really well to let me do a sort of GTP flavor



I need a lot more art talent than I have to sort this out

 

Just goofing off here, but I like the Lincoln Zephyr speedster idea. I feel like you're after more of a race car look than this.

 

Wow!

 

This could inspire... also mid engined...

 

Ahhh...some one with talent

I was thinking pre war but the engine is a '47.......could you shorten it a bit behind the seats a bit and section the bajesus out of it?

 

In the pre-war cars, the 25 Rolls would be a good inspiration, but it seems to me that going rear engine loses some of the class and starts to make them look like a bubble... they need the long hood and set back grille...

 

again rough due to my skill limits but.....

 

I'd be slightly cautious about too much of a section. It's all well and good until you climb in and it looks like you're sitting on it, rather than in it. Your head sticking out is one thing, but shoulders and upper body, less so.

 

Idioms. I think the ideal image informing the late-Vintage idiom (i.e. c.1930) is the ocean liner, with its gallant prow, and the steam locomotive. The former makes sense of why the tall front fenders are trying for all the world to be ocean waves; the latter gives an idea of travelling in the wake of something massive and urgent. That manifests in an image of a car of which the entire front half is engine, which is why that idiom is at its best when the A-pillar is somewhere around the midpoint of the wheelbase.

There were of course exceptions in that era. GWK, its layout dictated by the friction drive attached to its mid-mounted engine survived into the Vintage era:

By then, efforts had been made to disguise its unorthodox layout and impart a more conventional appearance, compared to late-Edwardian iterations, e.g.:

Stumpy-looking cars were not all that unusual during those earlier years, when the front-engined Mercedes 35hp layout was still only one option among many. Early Lanchesters, with their engines between the front seats as on a Bond Bug or Humvee, spring to mind:

I think that we agree that these cars are a bit weird-looking. The fact that I have a fondness for the weird stuff doesn't make that any less so.

Likewise, the mid-engined supercar, the quintessential Pointy Car as in the posters which grace the bedrooms of many an adolescent boy, arguably found its ideal image in the jet fighter aircraft. It is a general manifestation of flatness driven forwards by an exploding bomb at its backside. And again where the idiom has been applied to a front-engined layout, the results have been a bit weird-looking. The example which springs to mind is the 750 Formula car of the Reliant-powered era:

Like the early-Vintage GWK, these later Fiat-powered examples have, through many years' wrestling, lost some of the awkwardness of their predecessors. They still aren't the iconic mid-engined open-wheeler.

The point I'm making is, there are two ways of approaching this. Either embrace the Lincoln K idiom as definitive; or embrace the weird, awkward, and/or downright Group B ugly-purposeful. Both are valid, but I fear that trying to do both at the same time would end in tears.

I can actually see something magic in the former, which might achieve what I think you want, if you go the '50s Indy car offset front engine route.

 

Also, look at Burney Streamlines: https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/automotive-weirdness.944738/#post-10627435 — not so much for their overall design, but the way they dealt with the front end etc.

 

Couldn't resist...

 

This whole project sounds crazy enough to be cool. Think I will follow along. I got a pair of 12 cylinder heads about 50 years ago in a truck load of parts. Had to just about give them away at Hershey to get rid of them.

 

Yes!

This boondoggle all started the other day when I was sitting fixing a broken tig torch and looking at the engine in the corner....I was wondering if I could sneak my feet along side the block and got out the tope measure.....but somewhere between that thought and the CAD sketch the engine was in the back. Here is the general about the smallest I can do layout...obviously it can grow in any dimension (sorry the numbers are odd, I was working in mm and converted to post). The really important piece here is a space frame means butt on the floor plus some foam (I drew 2') not butt on the floor+4" of frame. Any, sitting on the floor leaned against the wall backboard as shown, my shoulder are 22", up. I added 2 for foam and set the min height at 24". The engine can also be fit in a 24" tall body I'm pretty sure and this also shows the audi trasaxle I was eying I've not given any thought to front a-arms, the lower in particular so that could cause a design wrinkle

 

That is exactly my fear. What I can build vs what I should build...........

The original plan was a simple been done 1000s of times front engine roadster with the only slight twist being the space frame. A guy over on grassroots put this midengine nonsense into my head...he took a subaru 360 and made it into a GP looking thing ( https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/articles/2000-subaru-lmp360/ ) and basically pulled a "come on in, the waters fine!". Its a low budget to compete in an under $2000 class so a little roughly finished, but you get the idea



So right now I'm really appreciating all the input from everyone as I try to sort out in my head what a 30s (or maybe 40s) era midengine supercar would even be. Last night I was thinking the front grill is an absolute must and side vents on the engine bay pretty common, soooooo....i guess I could duct the air around the foot well to exist on the sides....2 or 3 but I might need 2 or 3 narrow radiators to fit it unless I really stretch the front. I'm only targeting 300hp but cars that run hot are miserable to live with, I hate worrying every drive.