Leave the car alone unless you have a butt load of money... Once you start down this path -- you're going to have to have 1000's of dollars to throw at a car like this.

If you think buying a chassis is out of your price range.... Or you don't want to do a front sub frame because of lining up the grill... I'm sorry to be the one that will tell you the HONEST response... LEAVE THE CAR ALONE. Put some decent shocks on it -- maybe add front and rear anti roll bars... Try to find some front coil springs that would stiffen the front but still give you a decent ride (that's all done with math!).

And forget getting into the rust repair! That's a road you don't want to travel unless you are going to be prepared for what you're really going to find when you open that can of worms. If you can SEE rust -- there's way more of it where you can't see.

Do yourself a huge favor and just live with the car for awhile and enjoy it for what it is.... and when you have 50 grand saved up then you can think about doing some minimum modding to it.

Sweet lincoln. I'm starting to lean towards a mustang II front swap. Nothing is made for the front of my car so I'm thinking it'd at least be somewhat of an upgrade.

Alex

I don't know what the right answer is but Mustang II is definitely the wrong answer.

I'm with Weld on this one.

It isn't so much that I don't know how to get the grill to fit or that this all is expensive..(I've done a frame off before 100% in a home garage) it's that I have a timeline being in the military.. projects can't sit around for 5 years in pieces. I move, a lot , so I have to be able to have some sort of a realistic timeline. So I try to do stuff that makes the most sense for my time avaiable and money . The rust has to be fixed.. when water runs down the cowl and out the rear of the floor pan... that's a problem that needs to be addressed. I do understand what your saying on keeping it simple, I'm trying to mostly do that.

Ya mustang II might not be the best decision. I'm hoping to find a place that could build tubular control arms custom. I'd like to run coilovers I'm pretty sure and if I could get custom control arms built that'd let me do that. Maybe i could build my own? Looking at a parallel 4 link right now for the rear.

Alex