TRADE UP Part 4: From Monte Carlo To HATED V8 Luxury Sedan

On today's episode of WatchJRGO, we are back in the shop for the next stage of the trade-up series. And personally, I think I traded up for something really cool. What is going on, guys? I am WatchJRGO, and welcome back to my trade-up series. In the very first video, we traded a electric water pump that I bought for $94.58. I don't know, the cents change every time. It's hard to remember the exact number. At a Army Surplus auction years ago, I couldn't sell it, and I finally traded it for a fake Articat four-wheeler. It was an Articat DVX-400 with a, just like a Chinese engine swapped onto it that somebody had done in their garage with a go-kart clutch. And then, after fixing the Articat and getting it riding around, I didn't even video it, but I ended up putting a new belt on it. We should note that cost me $7. R.I.P. Our costs have gone way up. But luckily, Amazon did the rescue with a cheap go-kart drive belt. It was $7, and there the next day, threw that on there, and ended up selling the four-wheeler to my buddy Kyle, or trading it straight across, for a Monte Carlo LS. That's right, a fake Monte Carlo SS. It had plastic, the factory, supercharged SS dash panels on it, but it turns out it was just a base model LS all along that somebody changed the dash pads on. So, today, let's get everything out of the garage, we gotta back it all out, and pull in the car that we just traded, the Monte Carlo 4. P.S., I hinted at it before, and comments guessed it already. Just kidding, guys, the Camaro is completely dead. I'm getting real tired of this nonsense. So I think it's been, the battery's been bad for quite a while in here, and it is a brand new Optima yellow top. I've got the receipt in the center console from one year ago. So, let's go ahead and take this battery out to start the trade-up series, and swap it out at O'Reilly's, because they should warranty that right out. It literally will not hold a charge at all after one year. On second thought, I'm gonna call them and have them get a yellow top over here, because it's probably at the hub store, and I'll just jump this thing for now, and we'll change it at the end of the episode. Vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom. Battery's completely dead. I tried to pull it in, it's not gonna happen. So, instead, I'm gonna take the jump pack outside, start the car, then bring it in here. Vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom. Ooh, there we go! Meet my new Lincoln LS! Well, guys, I guess everything in here is gonna have a rear battery and going to be dead today. Those are the two rules for coming into the shop. So, hopefully by the end of the day, we've got all this resolved, and we'll make a little bit of progress on cleaning up the new car that's been sitting for a month or two. Now, many of you know and love this Lincoln already. This is Riley's Lincoln LS, and also, many of you know, when I got my Saab 9-3 Aero, I traded my old Audi A4 that the CarNinja and I swapped the timing chains on real quick. We did the timing chains, and then he wanted the Audi, and we traded for the Saab, and then I ended up selling the Saab down the road, and he ended up giving the Audi to Riley. So, her Lincoln LS that we did a bunch of work on on the channel, it's got new coils, plugs, quite a few different things got done on this car to make it nice and a driver again, and now we have this that I sold to Monte Carlo for $1,000, and I bought this for $1,000. And we're gonna figure out what's going on with it, why they wanted to stop driving it, and hopefully put some life back in this old car, because it is the American sports sedan. Well, as American as a Jaguar gets. So, before we jump into my latest trade here, let's talk for a little bit about the Lincoln LS. Now, as you guys know, I've had many of the variants of this platform here on the channel. I've had, obviously, this car itself, the Jag S-Type with the three liter, with the manual. That was a pretty fun one. I've also had the Jag S-Type R with the supercharger and an automatic, and they built just a bunch of different platform shared versions of these cars, along with the Ford Thunderbird. So, they're all roughly the same. They feel roughly the same when you drive them, and I personally like the way they feel, even if Hoovy was hating on them in his last video. Now, one of the cool things about this car is it was the source of a bunch of beef between Ford and Toyota Lexus. So, when this thing came out, they were gonna call it the LS8, and then the V6 version, which would be the Jag S-Type as well, would be called the LS6. But Lexus was mad about that, because Lexus sells their top tier luxury sedan as the LS. I don't know what the LS means, but we all know the LS is the top of Lexus' model range, as far as sedans go. So, Lexus whispered over to Ford that they better not call this car the LS8 or the LS6, because it's way too similar to their LS. And at the same time, Toyota was developing a new truck, probably the Tundra, right? And they were gonna call it the T150. And Ford was like, we're gonna sue you immediately if you call your truck that, because it sounds just like an F-150. And guess what? Everyone changed their names. But somehow, this car got called the LS all by itself, even though that seems even more Lexus than it did before. And speaking of the F-150, I know everyone loves to whine about how all the new trucks are aluminum, even though it's made all of our lives a billion times better. They weigh so much less. Fuel economies have gone through the roof. But this was kind of the beginning of that as well, since this was a Jag rebranded as a Lincoln. It has a bunch of body panels that were, for the first time on a car like this, made out of aluminum. Hear that? Sheet metal. It sounds like sheet metal with Bondo on the door, but this is very lightweight, and you can push right through it like it's a pop can, kind of. And the roof, too. So, front fenders, hood, I think the trunk lid and the roof, those are all aluminum on the Lincoln LS. Also, so is the engine. The Jag AJ V8 under the hood here is aluminum. And this car also has the extra $1,000 sport package thrown on it, which added a couple cool things, like the ability to manually shift the automatic five-speed transmission right there in the center console. You don't get paddle shifters or anything like that. You just get the up and down, like an early Porsche Tiptronic. It also adds these big chrome, beautiful-looking 17-inch wheels, honestly. I'm a big fan of these wheels. It's a classic look. It says that it might be a Lincoln town car, but it's more sporty than that. So, this thing, for me, is much more close to my heart than the town car ever could be. I know the town car well. I know a lot of people love them, and Hoovey is probably the last champion on Earth for the town car, because even the police departments have long since given up on that. You guys know, the only thing you see on the road anymore is Dodge Durangos, right? So, Durangos and a few Tahoes, that's the new police department car of choice, that and the Ford Explorer, and the Crown Vic fields have been depleted. So, it's not like we're gonna see too many more of the Crown Vics, but this was, I think, its spiritual successor, and honestly, a lot better, because it's faster, it's still super comfy. Even these seats, as rough as they are, are very comfortable, and it makes a bunch of power, and of course, it's the same layout with front engine V8, five-speed automatic transmission, and rear wheel drive. So, a very cool platform, if you ask me, and it also has a ton of aluminum suspension components, just like you would expect in the Jag. Personally, there's only one thing that really sets this apart from the Jag for me, and that is having Securicode right there on the door. As you guys know, I'm a big fan of Securicode. The battery's already completely dead. It won't even lock the car at the moment, but hey, it is there. It looks like it even had power auto-dimming mirrors, because they've faded to an orange, like those mirrors always do, if they're auto-dimming and it goes bad. So, I would say it has a lot of cool features. Let's start under the hood, and then we'll head inside this thing and kinda check it out. So, under the hood of the LS, with working hood struts, I gotta mention, we have that 3.9 liter V8 you guys have seen us working on on the channel a bunch. Now, we still haven't done valve cover gaskets, and it probably could use them soon, but it's running amazing. Not even a stutter out of this engine, which, to me, is a huge plus, and everything else under the hood is pretty standard. It's not loaded down with options or anything. I'd rather have more options than less at all times, but it's a standard old-school power steering pump, an old-school water pump driven off the accessory belt right there on the front of the engine, and vacuum assist brakes, no electronics. This thing is honestly a very old car, just like the town car is, but with modernized suspension brought over from the Jag, although that modernized suspension does tend to wear out on these cars and leave you with a lot of slop in parts of the car where you don't really want it. Now, if you remember the previous videos, the headlights have been polished, Riley did that. Honestly, just a ton of maintenance has been done to this thing, but it's in sad shape because the battery is 100% dead. There is a tire that's 100% flat on the back there. It won't hold air for more than a day now, and it's just been sitting a lot and kind of needs cleaned up again. So, we're gonna go on that mission after we finish up our tour here and show you guys what the Lincoln LS is like. Coming inside the driver's cockpit here, we've got a pretty cool looking door panel, honestly. The carpet started to fade over the years, but we've got power locks right here, memory seats right there, auto up and down windows for the front two, power mirrors and power windows for the rear, and a lock to keep the kids from messing with the windows in the back seat. It does have auto headlights, so you're starting to get into some nice options here. Power pedals, which was a pretty crazy option to have back in these days. This is a 2004, so it's not terribly old, only 21 years now, but it does have power tilt telescope wheel, big fan of that, and also rain sensing wipers. So, huge shout out to Lincoln for really outfitting this thing for being this old. You can lock the trunk by putting the key in there and turning the switch. Otherwise, it's the trunk release button. That opens the fuel door right there, hood release is down below, and that's pretty much everything till we get to the steering wheel here. So, let's hop inside and take a look at the steering wheel, which has cruise control and radio media controls right there. So, track forward, track back, volume up, phone controls, and switch source, and then of course over here, the cruise control, on, set, resume, cancel. And that's basically it. We've got a driver information center here in the gauges. Simple, simple gauges with coolant tip, tack, Speedo, and a fuel gauge, and then digital displays on each side showing mileage and status about the car. This one has an aftermarket Android head unit in here, which does work, and even has the remotes. Check it out. So, we've got dual digital climate control in the front with heated and cooled seats, it looks like. Very impressive for 2004. And what do we have here? Ashtray pops out, and what do we have here? Ooh, 12-volt auxiliary, and a cigarette lighter. Nice, good job, Ford. This thing had it all, really. So, this controls the screens in the cluster here. It lets you control the little digital display and see everything about the car. We've got a compass mirror from Gentex, so the standard mirror everyone in the world uses. Very good. Compass, and no temperature up there, it looks like. Good old HomeLink, still a great option to have here in 2025. I love every car that has it, in case you've got some old-school garage doors that need to open up. Sunglasses holder, flips out of the upper center console. Some reading lights here. And the sunroof controls, the sunroof is auto. And then the parking sensors, you can turn them on and off by pushing this button up here. So, that's basically a complete walkthrough of this thing. Five-speed transmission, like I said. A little, kind of the J-Shifter, but different than the Jags, on the Lincoln LS. Electronic parking brake, and traction off, which is secretly Jag's traction control, but they just called it Ford Advanced Track in this car. It came with a firework, so that's nice. And we've got dual center consoles here. So, it looks like a 12-volt outlet right here. Nice. 12-volt auxiliary in the console. Change holder out of the F-150, pretty funny. Oh, and that's the slide, just like the Jag. All right. And then we've got a glove box with the manual in it right there, and random receipts. It's pretty big, big enough for that. The manual book was that big. So, you know it's got a little bit of room in it. And of course, sunroof. We just cleaned the sunroof drains on that to get it to stop leaking. I think you guys have seen plenty of the sunroof on this car. We spent a good couple hours cleaning that up. We also have an ant infestation, I just noticed. We need to get straight to the car wash and get this thing cleaned up, which means there's a big to-do list to do so we can go drive it. I think this is a five-way power seat for the driver. It looks like the passenger seat's power too. Can't beat that. Wood grain on the steering wheel too. Check that out, town car enthusiasts. Let's take a quick look at the back seat as well, since we've got it in the shop. Ooh, I didn't notice the back seat was a completely different color. That's out of a different car, isn't it? I think the whole back seat's out of a different car. And the headrests. That's interesting. Also, all the door panels are different colors. Maybe the front seat's got swapped. Is that what happened here? Because we've got a tan door over there, and then we've got black with burl wood over here, black burl wood over here, but the steering wheel's kind of dark brown. I don't know what's going on. Also, a lot of it's been painted. So maybe it's all tan and it's just been painted with SEM dye or something. Maybe that's how this interior changed to be five different mismatched colors. So I didn't know that until just now. Never really took that close of a look. And here in the back seat, which is nice and leather, we've got dual cup holders and a flip down armrest that I don't want to touch. So we're gonna put that back. Also, there's a brake disc right there with one brake pad. Interesting. And then here in the very roomy trunk, we have a Pioneer amplifier, the old Pioneer 760 or whatever that Walmart used to sell. So this was the amplifier for those late night installs. Yep, that's it. I got more of these on tap, don't worry. I do a lot of those late night installs too, or I sure did. And then somewhere back here, we've got a bunch of stuff that's unplugged. Oh, these are all the factory rear speakers in the amplifier. Huh. Well, the rear deck is just unhooked. So maybe we're hooking that back up and maybe we're not. We also have remote releases for the rear seats to flip them forward on both sides. And that is the 2004 Lincoln LS. Now, let's start with the most important part. Let's get this tire to hold some air. So I think we're gonna jack it up, pull this wheel off real quick, and spray it down and see if we can find the leak because it keeps leaking down. And hopefully it's just a nail or something easy. Okay, no obvious leaks after getting the tire off real quick. Maybe it's the valve stem. Not really sure. Let's see how this valve stem looks. If it's, ooh, it looks new. That's always scary. We might have to run this over to Johnny's and pop it off the bead and remount it. I thought this might happen, guys. One leak at the bead right there. Valve stem leaking too. And I haven't even checked the back. So I'm just gonna say, let's take this over to Johnny's, pop the top and bottom beads, clean the wheel up, and then put it back on there. And hopefully we can get it to seal up because it's two huge leaks, honestly. You know those TEMU guys keep offering me wheel and tire mounting machine, and I should really do it so we can not bother Johnny for nonsense like this, but let's go. As you guys can imagine, these wheels are absolutely ruined, as every old chrome wheel is. The coating's coming off, and that's where the leaks were coming from. And somebody had already tried some bead seal on here before and they didn't have enough luck. And there's just chrome flaking off all inside the bead lip. So we are gonna clean this like crazy and hopefully get something that'll hold air here. So just hold it down and hammer on it with this wire brush. Ben handed me a blue point wire brush. Is this lifetime warranty? No, the cost is over. Well, this is looking pretty good. We put all 32 ounces of bead sealer in this one time. The balance is gonna be awkward with so much bead sealer. All right, so honestly, I think we're good. It's got some air to bring it up. And then we're gonna set the bottom too? Okay. Wow, that stuff works. What if it works too well? All right, we got the weights off of there. And after a quick check with some soapy water, it looks like we have no leak on the back. So that's good so far. Let me pop in the valve stem real quick, flip this thing over and we'll check that as well. We're doing good so far. One more check here and we should have it whipped. The main thing's the valve stem and our leak was like right there or right here. Looks like no bubbles to me. Look like no bubbles to you guys. Take a look at this here. Here's our valve stem. You come in tight, no big bubbles. I think the leak is finally solved. This has been going flat on Riley for a year or two, just not at this rate. So I think we got it all sorted out now. So let's balance it real quick and back on the car we go. Here we are at the CarNinja de-chroming service. Thank you. Adding some light weight to my race car. It's like going to the beach and peeling off skin. Yeah, dude, that's actually me every summer because I don't like to like, I don't work into it. I just go to the lake and burn. Same, same way. Yeah, that's the best way to do it. No doubt, no doubt. I almost, should we spin it again after you took a half a pound of chroma? Yeah. Let's see how bad it is. You guys can hear the chrome flaking as this spins. Oh, dead on the money still. All right. So we've got a half an ounce right there. That is right where it wants it. And it still wants 175 right there where the laser said put it. A perfect balance on the most beat wheel on the planet. Here, let's, should we show them how bad it is? Yeah. Let's give it the spin. Oh yeah. You can see it like just, it goes like this and then it comes back. Let me close and see how bent it is. All right. See it? Oh yeah. She's got a little wobble, a little bounce to her step. You shouldn't be able to feel it. No, that's just what you call a happy car. And we're back with our newly fixed wheel and tire. Thanks to the car ninja. He wouldn't let me pay him. So I sent him a whole new giant thing of the bead sealer we used on here. We only used like, I don't know. We only used a little bit. I thought we were going to use a lot but I sent him another quart of it. So hopefully that tied him over for a long time for helping me out with this bad boy. And then I got back and I took a quick look in here before I threw the wheel back on. And guess what? It's got all the jag problems, broken boot, broken boot. The ball looks terrible. Broken boot, broken boot. I bet the inner's bad too. You know, the outers are all bad but I don't think there's any play in this thing. No play at all. So even though it's all junk and probably should be replaced because it's so old, we're just going to put it all back together because it feels great when you drive this car too. It doesn't feel like there's anything wrong with the suspension. All right, one problem down. At least we'll find out in the morning if I succeeded but from what the bubbles were telling me, we did succeed here. So I'm going to go ahead and torque this thing, throw the cap back on and then we're ready to change this battery out. And this battery looks terrible. Woo, look at that. It looks like there's been battery acid all over the whole trunk. So a lot of cleaning and there's even a free set of jumper cables in here, even though it looks really gross. I think those are just going to go in the scrap iron. Okay, so the rear speaker wire harness here, amplifier, everything like that was ripped out of all of its little Christmas trees that hold it into the trunk or the deck lid and then zip tied up. So it made this nice little harness here but the way it was on there, you can't reconnect the speakers. And I would like to know why the rear deck speakers are not connected. So we're going to start this troubleshooting off by hooking all the factory connectors back up, right? Taking the easy route. Plus I know the head unit works and there's one of the speaker wires had a bit of a crimp to it there. What's this say? 2W4T19B1138F. So if we look that up, which I might just use the video to do later, it's probably the speaker wire harness for the rear deck. So I'll pop that last zip tie right here and let's plug it in and see what happens. The speaker surrounds look like they're in good shape. So that's always good news. And if we put all the Christmas trees back where they belong there's an amplifier or something that appears to just be missing. So that's a little bit iffy. We might have to zip tie everything back up out of the way here. I'm also just going to remove this aftermarket amp. This would probably be better to just sell secondhand and figure out why there's no power or audio to the rear deck instead. Well guys, I just hooked up the new battery and look at that. The tag lights are on and drawing power at all times as soon as I hooked the battery up. So that is a little bit interesting but let's see if we've got power now after tossing another battery in her. She should be a runner again. Here we had nothing without a jump pack. Trunk ajar, let's unajar the trunk. Tag lights really work. Well, I wanted to do a quick transformation and get all these leaves off of here because the leaves were giving a home to some ants. We needed to make sure the ants didn't stay on the car any longer. So I washed every bit of dirt and scrubbed the door sills out too. And I think the door sills are a little better. All the ants were congregating on the Lincoln logo. All right, all right, all right. And I'd say it looks a little shinier too. Let's get it back to the house after we go put some 91 in this thing. And see if we can get it to run even better. I do know that originally when we worked on this thing a lot of the misfires were actually coming from, I found out after the fact, it had E30 in it. And this car requires, you know, E10, E15, 91. And E30 is super detrimental to these engines and really any engine that's not made to run on flex fuel. So I'm gonna run over to Casey's. Let's get some 91 and see what happens. Well, I thought I was gonna go fill this thing up with gas but it turns out it's already full of gas. So that kind of ruins my plan. I guess I better go drive this thing around and actually get it much closer to empty. And then we'll go fill it up. And then I think we'll be ready to make some pulls in this thing. See what the old, probably 200 horsepower engine feels like. Yeah, how did that come out of the lock? That's weird. All right, that is it for today, guys. Thank you so much for watching the trade-up series. We're gonna continue this tomorrow as we keep working on the Lincoln. But look at that. Doesn't it look a million times better already? Woo wee! A million times better. So it can only get better from here. We'll keep cleaning this thing up and see if we can get everything working again. Thank you so much for watching. Don't forget to head on over to shopwatchcherrygo.com for cool shirts, not like this. And please like, share, subscribe, do whatever you wanna do. And I will talk to you next time. The auto AC even works. I fired it up. It actually all shut down since the battery was off. But as soon as I turned it back on, hit auto and cranked it up, perfect. I told you guys we were gonna change this battery in the 67 and that's exactly what we're gonna do right now. I did call O'Reilly's and they got one coming. So it should be ready to rock. But Optima haters unite for a minute. I know everyone loves to jump in the comments and talk about how after Optima moved to Mexico, which is after whoever bought them, bought them. I forget who bought them, but I think it's Johnson Controls, right? The quality just disintegrated, right? And I'm not an Optima hater. I'm actually an Optima lover. We used to rip the batteries out of every single thing we owned and change them to these. This was before the days of lithium, right? Now lithiums are the ultimate battery. There's nothing better than a lithium if you can get a good quality one. But I had an Optima in my first Camaro that lasted like six years. And then, you know, I've had plenty of experiences with other ones. There was another one hanging around here that we used for years and years and years as a jump pack to start everything. But this yellow top that's in the Camaro was purchased 12-16 of 23. It does have a three-year warranty on it. And it was $309, 333 out the door. And it's bad, completely bad. It will never start this thing if it sits for more than one day, which is absolutely crazy. Now, for a while, it was doing fine. It would sit for like two weeks, maybe even a month at a time, and start right up every time. But literally, how does a battery go that bad after just one actual year, right? It hasn't been that long, a year and six months if you wanna get real precise about it. But we gotta take this thing out. And it does pain me, right? Because I, like I said, I'm an Optima lover. We were taking out those massive tractor batteries, throwing them away, and putting Optimas in, and they'd start better and faster every time. And I think we still have Optimas in some tractors. But they're probably 20 years old at this point. And I guess maybe the quality did go downhill. This is the first one I've ever had a problem with, really. Luckily, it's under warranty. So let's get it out of here. It's a huge process to get it out of this car, and then go get it replaced. I say it's a huge process because it has this billet mount, right? So you gotta get the battery terminals off, and then you have to pull all these Allens out, and then you have to unscrew these posts because the battery doesn't wanna come out with the posts in place. So it's gonna take me a minute to get, it's funny, the three screws will take a second, but it'll take 20 minutes to get the battery out, I bet. I figured out why Yellowtop went back in this car, because it uses all four terminals. How annoying. This, I was like, wow, that's not a big enough gauge to start the car. It's not. Literally, all this does is power the amplifiers right here. It's all really well done, and it's not like there's any voltage draws or anything like that. This thing normally, like I said, will sit forever, and if you are really worried, it has a built-in battery tender that lands on the top posts there. So you can just throw an extension cord in this car, and it'll be fine for a long time, but you guys know how I am with battery tenders. I don't like them. All right, guys, we are here at O'Reilly's to swap out our Optimas. I sneakily already dropped it off in the back door where the cords go. All right, we are good to go. Thank you so much. Yep, have a good day. These weigh more, I feel like. They do. Am I getting older? Or do they weigh more? No, they weigh more. All right, see you later. Have a good day. And we are back from O'Reilly's with my new Optima Yellowtop here, and it's time to put this whole battery mount back together. So I wanna show you guys just why I was gonna say it takes a while. So there are screws that, luckily, the floor is keeping captive on the bottom of that billet bracket there. And then you have these hex heads on the billet piece up top, and you can tighten those with a wrench. And of course the, oh, don't you dare cross thread on me. It's hard to actually get these going because the screws like to fall down, and even though they're captive, they're at an angle. But then you install these posts. You gotta get them all tight. And of course, it's all billet aluminum, which is pretty, but at the same time, you know, you can see the aluminum dust falling out of this stuff. All right, we got another one started. Now we'll crank it down, and then we can put on the triangle that actually secures the battery and put all the screws back in. So this mount's pretty involved. It takes a little bit of time. Also be careful with your Allen wrenches while you're in here because one wrong move and you've got a dead short across a couple very powerful terminals. Are we done jumping the Camaro every time I have to drive it? It's time to find out. Actually, I have to shut that trunk. You gotta shut it for real. The moment we've all been waiting for. Sounds cool in the Lincoln starting up, that's for sure. Oh, we're good. We got fuel pump for real. There we go, two V8s rescued in one episode. The battery that went in the Lincoln, just as a side note, was a spare that was on our pallet of batteries here. So we didn't spend any money on that. And of course, I spent about $20 giving a new bead sealer to Johnny since he wouldn't let me pay him at least $20 for fixing that tire. So we don't have really any money in the Lincoln. And then I did, I probably spent $5 at the car wash too. I had to clean that thing up before we continued working on it, of course, because there were ants on it and I wasn't gonna deal with ants coming in the shop. So gotta do what you gotta do.