Parting Out & Wiring Removal

February 29 - March 3, 2016

We have taken great care to disassemble every part on our donor car so we might have the chance to re-sell those parts on Craig's list or E-Bay. We have read in the forums about many builders who have recaptured enough from parting out their donor cars to recoup the purchase of the donor car and sometimes more. I am skeptical that we will be able to accomplish this. My opinion is that on our 1997 Lincoln Mark VIII we will be using the valuable parts - engine, trans, and rear end ( we might have a problem here- more in a further post). We might be able to get a few dollars for the wheels, tires, and maybe a few interior items; but the market for 20-year-old car parts in which less than 17,000 1997 Mark VIIIs were manufactured and much less were pewter grey with a black interior is the proverbial needle in a haystack. My guess is less than 5,000 are still on the road, running and are daily drivers looking to fix something wrong. Hopefully, we will be pleasantly surprised as David and Jacob did an awesome job of being careful during deconstructing without destruction. Destruction is much faster and way more fun!

A few pictures of parts we are trying to sell, and took extreme care to remove with no damage.

All the wiring is out and not a single wire was cut - what a job. Larry tried to cut some, but David and I stopped him :)  The donor car has been picked clean and David got the forklift and a furniture dolly and got it out in the yard. It's full of the all those parts we are trying to sell.

We continue on our plan to hook everything back up now that it's out of the donor car and get the engine started. From there we can remove things not necessary to keep the engine and trans running and remove those wires and connectors. We now have the engine, trans and all the wiring laid out. 

This coming weekend I will be in New York, but Larry and the boys will be assembling the engine, transmission, exhaust, radiator and fuel systems as well as the wiring. We have labeled all the connectors that have a wire that is necessary to start and run the engine - see the tags in the pictures below. Those will be the last wires we will disconnect to see if they are necessary for a fully running with PATS ( passive anti theft system) intact. We want to go this way since it's just costs us more to remove PATS and we have it, so why not use it if we can get it to work reliably. 

BTW we took off the valve covers and things look really clean from the top end, a real good sign along with how well it was running on the drive back to the shop.

Cross our fingers and everything starts up this coming weekend.