As promised, here's the new entry for my "time capsule" '85 LTD LX.

Again, as for the black LX, I went on eBay to see if searching "LTD LX" turned up anything. There it was. A one-owner, 102K mile, all original except paint, sitting for over six years, complete with acorn shells, diamond in the rough. I placed a bid and went into waiting mode. I won the bid and made plans to pick it up. I found the original owners to be very gracious and informative about the history of the car, a priceless perk when purchasing a car from the ones who had it since new!

I found the car sitting in a shaded natural area at the owners' home. It had tree droppings on it and MANY acorn shells in the engine compartment (actually in the eBay description), but because it had been in the shade, it was VERY well preserved. The owners said it was repainted in basecoat/clearcoat in 1993 due to the original gray paint fading, and it had held up really well. They parked it some six years earlier because of an erratic fast idle/sticking throttle issue they considered unsafe. It didn't run at this point, so I trailered it back home.

I took pictures of it similar to the previous LX.

The acorn stash.

I cleaned it up, installed a battery, found it had no fuel pressure, dropped the fuel tank, discarded the six-year-old gasoline, cleaned the tank inside, replaced the fuel pump, reinstalled the tank, added new gas, and started it up! Since then, I've begun to detail the car, and find more preserved and untouched features of it every time I look at it.

I licensed it on 5-23-2008 and began to drive it just like I found it, except for the repairs to get it running, of course. I'll continue to clean every crack and crevice of it as time permits, but what a joy to Drive like it's 1985!

I'm continuing to clean it as I drive it...

6-22-09  I'm continuing to use the LX as a daily driver.  I had to buy new tires for it and worked on the throttle body to address the fast idle/runaway issue.  I found the fast idle cam installed upside down which caused the throttle to open up when the vacuum pull-off operated.  Since then, it is safer to drive, but still has some low-speed jerking that seems to come standard with these old CFI fuel systems.  The car runs well overall, but I think the black LX I had previously was the fastest one of the three I've had, which were/are all unmodified.

I'll post some new pics soon.