83 Lincoln Continental

[Adam]

So last week I swapped my 72 Ranchero for a 52 Lincoln Cosmopolitan (Not even close to running (the insulation on all the wiring is bad) - but a very straight body with original paint, no rust, it's all there).

Then I crashed my 2004 Chevy truck, which I'd been using as a driver. The rear suspension is completely ruined, I'm considering just parting it out or selling it as is.

The 83 Lincoln still isn't running, and now the only running car I have is my 84 Firebird with no AC (even the '52 Lincoln has AC! - but it's missing the 2nd radiator), in this 115 degree heat.

I've been trying to fix this '83 Lincoln but I can't figure it out. It runs fine for the first 5 minutes or so until it warms up (it doesn't overheat). Then it starts to miss usually when I'm idling at a stop light - if I turn off the AC it improves it a bit, but it will still eventually get worse, until, if you keep driving it, it will eventually stall. If you let it go on long enough it won't start again. Then if you let it sit for a few hours it starts fine, and you can repeat the process.

If it won't start, spraying starting fluid down the tbi unit does no good, and it appears as if there is no spark - I pulled a spark plug wire and tried to see if I could see it arc. So I replaced the: rotor, cap, wires, plugs, coil, ignition control module, and crankshaft sensor which is mounted hear the harmonic balancer. I tried multiple coils and ignition control modules.

After I just replaced that crank sensor and drove it around a bit the problem reoccurred, and I noticed one of the catalytic converters was smoking. But I had tried removing them and just driving with straight pipes before and it made no difference (except for a slight increase in power - it still started missing after a few minutes).

Since I've had this car I have also replaced the fuel pumps (there's 2 of them one in the tank and one below it).

I can't take driving in this 115 degree heat with no AC anymore. I'm at the point where I'm considering selling the Firebird, just so I can buy another truck with AC (this time I want one of those small trucks). But this would probably take longer than just fixing the '83 Lincoln if I could only figure out what was wrong with it. Anyone know these cars well enough to have a guess?