need advice on car buy

hey new to the lincoln forum but hope you will still help i am looking at buying a 78 lincoln towncoupe the interior is near mint, but the engine will need some work.any ideas to help gas consumption and or boost horsepower.thanks

Those cars are relatively rare, the 4 doors were much more popular, and the 2 door buyers would buy the Mark V.....although the town coupe has MUCH more room, especially the trunk.

You may have a 460 cid V8 or a 400 V8. These are quite different engines. The 460 is somewhat easily modified to produce substantial amounts of power, with virtually any performance part avaialble. Most parts are pretty expensive, though.

The 400 was never popular for performance so few parts are avialiable for it.

Some basic work will help, including a really good tune up, plugs, wires cap& rotor, etc.

Get an ignition timing light and set the initial timing. Make sure the distributor advance works well.

These cars had a thermally operated vacuum switch on the intake manifold. It is intended to provide manifold vacuum to the distributor when the engine is cold and change to ported vacuum when warm. These switches usually get stuck in the 'manifold vacuum' setting which kills power and mileage. Bypass it and run straight ported vacuum to the distributor.

If you can, remove the air injector (smog) pump. It's at the front of the engine, on the 460, passenger side, driven by a fanbelt.

Also, if in doubt, rebuild the carb. It may have 28 years of dirt, crud, worn parts etc that can reduce power and mileage. It shouild be a 4 barrel Autolite 4500 series. These are excellent carbs and are easy to rebuild. Unlike a Holley carb, there is little in the way of performance tuning but they are excellent for a stock or near stock engine.

Finally the 460 camshaft drive chain has retarded cam timing, for emissions reasons.
Try replacing the chain with an aftermarket performance type that is designed for cam timing adjustment and set the cam up at zero degrees.. This will wake up an otherwise lazy engine.

Don't bother with any kind of stock or ordinary timing chain set. They all have retarded timing too.

the engine was taken care of farely well by the man who owned it but he died ten years ago and it has been sitting with out proper storage for all those years, but i will check evrything out thanks

btw it is a 460 i believe

.....ten years .... it has been sitting with out proper storage for all those years .....

Carefull!!! Don't just fire it up and drive away!! Check all the engine fluids carefully. Make sure the oil is circulating properly.. If it hasn't been started in all those years it would be best to add a few teaspoons of oil to each cylinder with the spark plugs out, and crank it over a few times before replacing the plugs.

i intend to completely rebuild the engine was just looking for advice on performance or gas mileage before doing so, but keep the info coming it is helping