Automobile Forum

I bought a 1981 ford ltd coupe for an upcoming gambler 500 rally.

I mainly bought the car because it's ugly and not that rusty, but it has a trans leak and bad head gasket. It runs and sort of drives. The rally isn't until April, do I exceed the dollar amount and just replace the engine with a 302 off CRaigslist. It has a 255 in it now and it's a miserable 120 hp so it's not worth putting a head gasket on imo.

I kind of like the car, and wouldn't mind keeping it as my official ghetto cruiser/lemons/rally car. My thoughts about the car:

Option 1: sell it and get a different car for the rally

Option 2: keep trying head gasket in a bottle and see if it survives the rally as is

Option 3: replace engine with 302 and fix the trans leak while there and have a car for the rally that is probably a bit more expensive but still awesome because it's a 17.5' long 2 door

I never realized they made Crown Vics in anything but V8s.

i would put some sort of chemiweld/liquid headgasket in it, and use it daily for a couple of weeks, if that goes wrong, swap the engine

Awesome. I did a similar rally over the summer in a K-car - at least you will have some V8 torque. Looked at their site - hard to get any real info off it. What is your budget? The builds in the forum make it look like you have a little to play with.

I'd be tempted to swap in a 302 if you can find one cheap enough - you could re-use the existing accessories for parts savings. Surely someone has a block they want gone. Put out a wanted ad.

Otherwise I'd put some stop leak in and keep finding fluids as required. A few minor breakdowns make the rally more fun!

You are supposed to spend less 500 on the car, I picked this up for 400.

A guy I know has a 302 that I'm probably going to swap in. Altogether I'll probably end up with about 1k in it, but will keep it after the rally for fun/commuter

On my rally I was on of the very few who actually stuck to the budget. We had 700 but I spent 310. Won this spiffy trophy.

If you don't mind bending the rules a bit I am pretty sure not many people could tell visually what engine was in there 255 or 302 ...

Those cars were pretty cool back in the day.

I never quite understood what Ford had going on though, there was a Ford Crown Victoria, but also a Ford LTD just like it, an "LTD Landau" (which seems to be the same as the LTD), *and* also an LTD which was a totally different, smaller car, and then the Grand Marquis which was just a Mercury badged grille swap....

does anyone know the difference?

Depends on the year, this is an ltd crown Victoria, panther platform. Some other years the ltd went to the fox body but the crown vic stayed panther

What Arthur said, hardly anyone really sticks to the budget, and half the time the people who do stick to it are running the nicest cars....

I've done a few shitbox rallies, and I've always had shitboxes yet we've spent well over a grand per car, even if the car was free (well, I think we were in budget once....)
And then there were people who managed to snap an 8yo luxo cruiser for 950, ready to go
There were years where they had a stripper pole, and if your car was deemed to be over budget, you'd have to dance on the pole for a little bit. One 70yo guy did it in his undies...

As a different rally I've done said in their rules, "we encourage you to not spend more than £250, but we can't go round scruteneering everyone, so as long as your car is on the spirit of the event, we don't care. And even if it isn't, your punishment will be in the form of mockery by everyone else on the event for the entire duration of the event"

as said, as long as the car's in the spirit of the event, i doubt anyone would really care....

Lemons rules say that you can comp the difference by selling parts off of the car. For example, a car bought for $2000 can be a $500 car as long as you have invoices to prove that you parted out at least $1500.

Here is a washed picture

Sold it, now to get something more my style.

coughfoxbodymustangcough

What did you get? A beater rally is not supposed to be about style. Hopefully you found an oddball heap. I'm casually looking for one too but my rally isn't until August.