A Story About Patience

One night in the garage I was looking into the engine bay on my Lincoln, and I noticed something on top of the intake. The substance was dirty and slightly wet. I smelled it and it was coolant. That was not a good sign. It was almost as bad as a day on the beach when it is raining. My make and model car, a 2001 Lincoln Town Car is known as a very reliable car to many people out there, with minor maintenance you have to do throughout the life of the vehicle. These cars will go 400,000, Plus miles when taken care of correctly. But, this one day I ran into the single biggest issue, a bad leaking intake. These cars came with a plastic intake manifold and over 20-plus years of heat/cool cycles, it will go bad and crack open, and leak coolant through the coolant passages. Knowing all this I understood that it was going to be a pretty big job for someone who had never done it before.

Fast forward a week later when the brand-new intake comes in. I and my dad get to work stripping everything out of the way to get to the intake. Everything was going well until one bolt, hidden way in behind the motor down by the firewall. It was like trying to fit your arm down a wicked tight hobbit hole. We were probably trying to get that bolt out for 3 hours before we decided to take the whole cowl and windshield wipers off to get to that bolt. When it came time to put the new intake in something was off. The new one and the old one did not look the same at all. The new one was totally the wrong part. We were both spent. It felt like a million years were going to pass before I get to drive my car again. First, that stubborn bolt now wait another week for an intake to come into Darlings Ford in Bangor. Fast forward and now I have a smooth-running Lincoln. It took a lot of patience from me to wait that time. It really just goes to show how hard things are when you don’t have transport whenever and wherever you want.

“2004 Lincoln Town Car” by aldenjewell is licensed under CC BY 2.0.