1978 Lincoln Mark V Blue Diamond Jubilee, Restored!! on 2040-cars

 This 1978 Mark V Blue Diamond Jubilee has the big five: the right styling, the right color, the right condition, the right options, and the right price.

This fantastic 1978 Continental Mark V Blue Diamond Jubilee may very well be the only one in existence that has the color-matching, Blue hood ornament. All other
Blue Diamond Jubilees I have seen have had the MIS-matched Gold hood ornament.

Can you imagine having the most visible and distinctive Diamond Jubilee symbol, the upfront and center hood ornament, mismatching the color of the rest of the car on a car
that is supposed to be color coordinated?

This fantastic Diamond Jubilee has the best option of them all, the tremendous power moonroof that makes the car a virtual convertible! The power moonroof was not standard
equipment even on the Diamond Jubilee and so many other Diamond Jubilees do not have this option.

Driving in this phenomenal Diamond Jubilee on a summer day with the big-as-the-universe power moonroof open and the huge side windows all open is the biggest rush you will
ever feel!

Here is another major plus: this car is a Texas car and is as rust-free as you would expect a Texas car to be. It has never been in snow or road salt. I bought the car in
the Dallas area from its original owner in 1987, drove it back home to Massachusetts, and have driven it only on sunny, dry days. It has been stored indoors during every
winter.

To finish the list of major advantages of this Diamond Jubilee, I turned this Diamond Jubilee into a low mileage car by replacing every part that has to do with how the car
drives that was likely to fail, based on my experience owning, driving, and personally repairing Mark Vs and Mark IVs for 36 years. I also restored the appearance of the car to
be an 8 out of 10 and that included re-uphholstering portions of the interior with original, factory correct upholstery done just the way it was done at the factory and
repainting the car with paint that exactly matched the paint color code of the car and I duplicated the original pinstriping. The paint was hand wet-sanded. Below is an
extensive list showing all the new and low-use used parts I replaced. All parts I used were correct for the 1978 Mark V. I did not replace parts with aftermarket parts that
look like they do not belong on the car and therefore this car still has, among other things, its original radio, power antenna, wheels, carburetor, distributor, and air
cleaner.

You are getting the right price for this car because an 8 out of 10 for cosmetic appearance is the point where the law of diminishing returns sets in and if I made the car look
any better than that it would have forced you to pay an enormously higher price for very little in return.

I encourage you to come here and inspect and drive this staggeringly excellent Diamond Jubilee. Or, if you can't do it yourself, to hire a mechanic or another person, such as
a member of the New England Lincolns car club, to do it for you.

I've been driving it around my low-traffic, small town only on sunny, dry days to run errands and have never had any trouble with the car.

This Diamond Jubilee has never been in an accident.

This car is so reliable and trouble free that I am willing to drive it to you personally anywhere in the USA except Hawaii once you have paid for the car and my anticipated
travel costs to deliver the car to you and return home.

Take a look at the set of detailed photos below! You can eat off the engine compartment and even the entire underside of the car is near show-car quality.

Here is a list of just some of the options included on this cost-is-no-object luxury car:

   power moon roof

   power vent windows

   tilt wheel (indispensable on a long trip)

   cruise control (indispensable on a long trip)

   driver seat power lumbar adjustment (indispensable on a long trip)

   reclining passenger seat (indispensable on a long trip)

   individually 6-way adjustable front seats for driver and passenger, each with its own fold-down armrest

   miles-to-empty computer (it only has to save you from running out of gas once to to be worth its weight in gold)

   power door and trunk locks

   illuminated entry system which lights up the interior and the door key locks in the dark

   interval windshield wiper system so you can have a streak-free windshield no matter what the intensity of the rain

   heated driver mirror and rear window

And those are just some of the options, the rest are just too numerous to list.

Maybe the biggest luxury of them all is that I can stretch out my legs and my right arm as far as they go without being constrained because the car is too small.

The simulated Ebony wood trim piece at the center of the steering column is almost always damaged in any used Diamond Jubilee. Not in this car! I replaced the original with a
brand new, Lincoln factory original piece!

The only parts that actually move when the car drives a mile are the engine, transmission, wheels, drive shaft, and rear differential. So, I replaced the engine and
transmission with ones I stockpiled 25 years ago from low mileage 1978 Mark Vs that had been in accidents which did not affect their engines or transmissions.

I also installed brand new wheel bearings along with their grease seals.

The only parts whose wear depends directly on mileage are the driveshaft U-joints and the rear differential. It has been my experience in collecting Mark Vs since 1986 and Mark IVs since 1977, that the
those parts never give problems, so I left those alone. I also own a 1967 Jeep which I estimate has 500,000 miles on it and its original rear end and driveshaft are still fine and I sometimes use it to plow and push heavy snow.

That means that I've replaced all the parts that in actual practice wear out and cause trouble when they have high mileage. The engine and transmission now have roughly
50,000 miles on them and the wheel bearings have about 5,000 miles on them. The driveshaft and rear differential will never fail and so this car is now a low mileage car.

Anyone can disconnect the odometer cable inside the engine compartment in less than one minute and just temporarily re-connect it before taking the car in for a state
inspection or for repair work and the car will register low miles even if it was driven a million miles. No documentation can ever tell you that has not been done. Therefore,
mileage figures on an odometer are totally meaningless. All that can be trusted is your own inspection of the car. Please feel free to come here and inspect and drive the
car before purchase or hire someone to do it for you such as mechanic or member of the New England Lincolns car club.

The car does not burn oil and so you will see absolutely no black smoke coming out the exhaust.

My restoration of this car did not stop with just the engine, transmission, and wheel bearings. I also replaced all the remaining mechanical parts that affect the driveability
of the car when they have wear or age.

I did not use any parts that look out of place on the car: no aftermarket air cleaner, no aftermarket distributor, no aftermarket radio, no aftermarket power antenna, no
aftermarket wheels. The original owner changed the vinyl roof. It looks 95% identical to the original. It is in such overall good condition that it would not make sense to
replace it and increase the price of the car by probably about $1000.

Here is a list of just some of the parts I replaced with brand new parts that now have about 5,000 miles on them. These are the parts on a used car that are the ones that
almost always cost you money and I've already taken the financial hit to replace them so you don't have to.

   brake pads, wheel brake hoses (and I turned all the brake rotors in a lathe) WARNING: ALMOST ALL USED DIAMOND JUBILEES HAVE THE ORIGINAL WHEEL BRAKE HOSES. JUST 
   AND SO JUST WHEN YOU NEED YOUR BRAKES THE MOST, WHEN YOU HAVE TO SLAM THEM ON HARD IN AN EMERGENCY PANIC STOP, IS WHEN THOSE HOSES WILL
   BURST AND YOUR BRAKES WILL FAIL!!!

   tie rod ends, steering idler arm, steering column "rag" joint

   lower ball joints, all upper control arm bushings on both front wheels, all wheel bearings and wheel bearing grease seals

   Note: On almost all used Mark Vs, if the upper control arm bushings are original, they cause loud creaking noises, especially when you drive slowly with the steering
   wheel turned most or all the way to one side, such as when you back up in a driveway in reverse then put it in forward gear and start going forward.

   battery and all high current cables used in the starting system that go to the battery and to the starter motor

   distributor cap and rotor, spark plugs, spark plug cables

   entire exhaust system other than catalytic converters

   all engine belts

   heater hoses, radiator hoses, radiator thermostat, radiator cap, water pump, heater water valve

   fuel pump and all fuel hoses

   rear tires

   I rebuilt the carburetor. Not only did I soak it in chemicals and use a rebuild kit, I also used special small diameter cleaning rods to clean the internal passageways.
   Most shops that rebuild carburetors cut corners by not doing this critical step. A number of times I have taken carburetors that were rebuilt by others who skipped this
   step and made them work much better by using the cleaning rods on them.

I very recently replaced these critical parts which now have less than 500 miles on them so the car's new owner will have extreme piece of mind:

   both front tires which now have about 300 miles on them

   starter motor is only a few months old

   driver's power window gear assembly (I rebuilt the couplings with new parts)

   oil filter, fuel filter, air filter

Here is a list of critical parts or assemblies that in my experience owning a number of Mark Vs and Mark IVs (virtually identical to Mark V) since 1978 have never once failed
on any Mark V or Mark IV I've owned and for that reason I did not replace. As expected, these parts are showing no signs of impending problems on this car either:

   rear end

   drive shaft and drive shaft U-joints

   shocks

   upper ball joints

   alternator

   starter relay

   wiper motor

Here is a list of non-critical parts that are often bad on Mark Vs that I re-conditioned and which work as-new. Unless these items were rebuilt properly on any
other car you may be thinking of buying, and on many such cars they have not been, you will probably have trouble with them within a short period of ownership if not right away:

  power door locks: they move quickly and powerfully with no sign of hesitation, straining, or sticking

  power antenna: goes up and down fast, mast is not bent

  power windows: they go up and down fast and hard

  power moonroof moves fast and powerfully and it does not leak

When I replaced the engine, I had to disconnect all the air conditioner hoses and therefore the air conditioning system lost all its coolant charge. Rather than recharging it
with R12 and risk wasting it because maybe the new owner of this car will want to convert the system to the newer R134, I am leaving that up to the new owner to do so he can
make the choice to use either R12 or R134.

I have driven this car a few hundred miles per year since 2010 and since 2010 it has been registered and insured. It has passed all state inspections and has a current
Massachusetts inspection sticker.

Because I have replaced any driveability parts that had high mileage that were ever likely to fail, this car is being sold with no stated mileage which is why the mileage is listed as zero. Let me repeat
that this car is so reliable that I am willing to personally drive it to you anywhere in the USA other than Hawaii (see above). My Ebay feedback rating is 100% and so you can be sure that what you
get is what I stated it would be.

The headlight autolamp/autodimmer system does not work. I have not fixed it because this option never worked well on any Mark V even when brand new. The manual foot switch to
select low beam or high beam headlights works fine, so you are not going to have any problems using the low and high beams.

Please note that in some of the photos I left a green bath towel over the driver seat. When I drive the car, I always temporarily cover the driver seat in a towel so I don't get the driver seat dirty.
Also, the photo selection is heavy on photos of the underside of the car and the engine compartment because those are the areas that separate the great cars from the not so good cars and I
wanted you to see how clean, shiny, and new those areas are on this car.

IT IS TRICKY TO VIEW ALL THE PHOTOS. IF THE BOTTOM-MOST PHOTO, GIVE OR TAKE, IS OF ONE OF THE REAR TAIL LIGHTS, YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO
USE THE BOTTOM SCROLL BAR OF YOUR BROWSER TO SCROLL TO THE RIGHT. THAT WILL EXPOSE A VERTICAL SCROLL BAR THAT IS WITHIN THE EBAY LISTING.
THAT SCROLL BAR WILL BE TO THE LEFT OF YOUR BROWSER'S VERTICAL SCROLL BAR.

YOU SHOULD THEN SCROLL DOWN USING YOUR BROWSER'S VERTICAL SCROLL BAR, BUT AT ANY TIME THE EBAY LISTING'S VERTICAL SCROLL BAR IS ABOUT TO
EXIT OUT THE TOP OF YOUR VIEW, PULL IT DOWN TO KEEP IT IN VIEW AND KEEP REPEATING THIS PROCEDURE UNTIL YOU VIEW ALL THE PHOTOS. IF YOU HAVEN'T
VIEWED PHOTOS OF THE ENGINE COMPARTMENT AND UNDERSIDE OF THE CAR, THEN YOU MISSED SEEING A LOT OF PHOTOS.

THE BOTTOM-MOST PHOTO YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO SEE IS THE BACK OF THE REAR DIFFERENTIAL CASE. IF YOU MISSED THAT PHOTO, THEN YOU DID NOT SEE
ALL THE PHOTOS.

IF YOU HAVE PROBLEMS VIEWING ALL THE PHOTOS, FEEL FREE TO CONTACT ME DIRECTLY AT 78MARKV AT G9MAIL DOTCOM (REMOVE THE "9") AND I
WILL HELP TO ENSURE YOU GET ALL THE PHOTOS.