u/cartriidge

Hey everyone! Forgive the long story, I don’t have any friends that are into cars so this is my chance to yap lol.

I first got into cars when I watched Breaking Bad and convinced myself I needed an El Camino. At the time, I didn’t even know how to change oil. I owned a 06, v6 powered Dodge Charger at the time that had a horrible lifter tick. I was none the wiser, but convinced myself I needed a 40+ year old truck. I spent the next 2 years engine swapping it, doing general maintenance, spending copious amounts of money, and getting extremely angry. I have many regrets with that truck, mainly buying fuel injection instead of learning how to tune a carb and time an engine, and I began to hate cars. I convinced myself for months that I never wanted to touch anything like that again, and then I traded my purple mini s10 for a Lincoln town car on 22s.

I never really did much with the purple truck, it was a vehicle my older brother convinced me to buy. It was cheap, bagged, and it held me over after my Charger blew the tranny. Was it an equal trade? No, probably not. Even though the truck was CLAPPED, the after market bags and all that definitely held more value over a 08 Lincoln town car with a billion miles and $350 22’s. But I did it anyway because that truck gave me literal headaches driving it everyday.

I love my Town car so much. The first pic is the configuration I have it in right now. I live on gravel and the 22s were a NIGHTMARE! So I bought $250 Facebook marketplace 17inch rims and went on with life. I love the look, although I wish they were 19/20in rims. I ran the stock 17in rims for a period of time and bought new tires for them. So it made sense in my mind to just buy 17in rims again to reuse the tires I just bought. Everyone around me loves the car, which makes me love it even more. I’ve decided this is the car I’m keeping when it shits out eventually. That leads me to some questions.

The Town Car has 240k miles. It’s shown no signs of blowing up anytime soon, but you never know. What can I do until then for some fun add on mods? I’ve done brakes, rims, and some suspension parts. I bought a cold air intake as well. Is that really all I can do as far as simple stuff?

And what should I do when it shits out? The only engine experience I have is with old 350s, which are much different than a 4.6 2v. And even then, I barely did any engine work. The 350 in the Camino is a DOG! It’s about what you would expect for an 18 year olds first truck, loud and slow. I don’t want a race car, I want a nice lope and reliability! Throughout my car guy career, that’s the conclusion I’ve come to. I just want something that sounds cool and something I can do maintenance with on the weekends. I spent 2 years and a stupid amount of money for a truck that doesn’t really sound that cool and isn’t even fast enough to be that fun.

And I’ve been told from my brother (a GM mechanic of 10 years) I have basically one option. 6.0 swap it, because he’s a Chevy guy who swears by the LS and it’s simplicity. I admit it would be really cool and unique to have an LS swapped Town Car. And it sounds like the cheapest option if I find a local junkyard LS.

Or, is it viable to just backyard rebuild the 4.6, depending on how it fails? I don’t know, I just wanted to yap because, as it turns out, I actually love cars and working on them.

Thanks for reading!