A sluggish 62 Lincoln sick with poor compression.

Check the valve adjustment. You may have exhaust valve seat recession from unleaded fuel. It really dosn't take long to eat the valve seats away with a heavy car. Easy way to tell is pull the rockers and lay a straight edge accross the valve stems. If the exhaust stems are higher you have a problem.
Jeff

 

Thanks! I'll give that a shot

 

Im old ?so didnot remember this til later found this on cust car years!!! Ago he had them check every thing....when he brought it to me we rechecked every thing as you are doing finally to satisfy our selves we said we tear it down for free if we did not find problem>>>as soon as the intake was off it was easy to see trouble already >>>the crudefrom stp&other stuff had completly plugged the intake ports from the intake guides so the engine idled smooth but in this case the car had slowly lost power until it's top speed was like 30mph.....was a pont but don't recall year

 

Perhaps not compression issue.
A loss of power..yet still smooth idle..could be a rounded camshaft lobe.
If you have adjusted vales to be "quiet"..then you might still have a lobe or two..or more wearing..rounded..but quiet enough from tightening down on the Hydra lifter..

Just a thought..

 

If you take the rocker arm assemblies off, remember to keep the pushrods in order as rod length is how the lash is adjusted, same as FE.

You can also determine correct balancer indexing with a piston stop (the outer ring may have moved).

Check chain stretch by bringing TDC 0 to the timing pointer turning one way only. Remove the dist cap and slowly turn the balancer in the oppposite direction. When you notice the rotor moving, stop. You can then read the degree of stretch you have in the chain.

The CR is showing engine wear. It is a 1962.

 

pull the plugs an valve covers lossen off all your rockers till all of you valves are slammed shut pull the push rods if you have to by doing this you'l definatly have all the valves shut so maybe you will get better results if the results arint better your best bet would be blame the rings or valve seats

 

Maybe the car is sluggish becaue it weighs about 3 tons? Sorry, couldn't help it...

When I pulled the Cad 472 out of the '48 Pontiac 'vert, it had 90 lbs of compression in every cyl, and like your Lincoln, was "tired". When I pulled the front cover, the answer was immediatly apparant, the plastic teeth were all gone from the cam gear, and the chain had walked a couple teeth off. It still started, ran smoothly, but it certainly didn't help! I wasn't surprised that it had jumped time, but I was surprised that it still ran at all.

It was tempting to just throw another timing set on it, but I went ahead and rebuilt it, we'll soon see if it runs any better now...

 

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Have you put a vacuum gauge on it yet? I quickly scanned the replies, didn't see anyone mention testing, tuning, and timing it with a vacuum gauge.

 

I have done a vacuum test and everything was within normal limits.

 

Compression ain't great but should still run better than you say. Have you comfirmed by using a timing light that the distributor is indeed advancing as the engine is reved up? A non-advancing dist will make for a very lazy engine.

 

The guage is the screw in type and it hold pressure without leaking.

I didn't do the leak down test----I found I didn't have the equipment for it.

About the blow-by. I am a retard and thought you were talking about smoke from the exhaust pipes. I took off the breather cap and there is quite a bit of smoke coming up. There is also a small amount of smoke coming from the valve covers too.

 

I have checked for that and it is advancing with engine on. I have checked to see the difference with the vacuum advance hooked up and then with it off and there is a difference there too. As to if it is advancing the correct amount, I am not sure.

 

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The flow was no where close to 30%, just some light smoke. If the breather cap is on, the smoke isn't noticeable.

Hopefully this weekend I will get to it and do the leak down test.