Pintos?

My Dad bought a 73 Pinto new from the dealership back in September of 72. It had the British engine in it with the 4 speed. I do remember that it wasn't very spunky with that engine. After he passed away in 82, my brother replaced the engine with the larger German engine backed by an automatic, all removed from a station wagon. We also swapped the wagon's front disc brakes over to the 73 and added a header originally used on a micro sprint car plus a 450 Holley 4 barrel. Man did that little car scream then. Too bad the body kept rotting away around the power train or he might have still had this car.

 

Here is something most probally have not seen.

 

Look at the document.
It says Per. Truck????
What the heck???

 

Hey Simple Man British about Cortina engine being bullet proof! Weren’t they nick-named the Iron Horse?

 

Actually the "iron duke" was the Chevy II Nova 4 cyl engine! It was also "bullet proof"

 

Also the document says 11 million cars.
There were only 3.5 million Pintos built in their 10 years of production.
Something is just not right here????

 

Thanks Tony,
It's going well. Got the engine bay all cleaned up, all those unused holes welded up along with the battery rot. Motor mounts are welded in. I'm re-routing all the wires under the drivers side fender, so the only visible wires will be for the engine harness. Still got a little ways to go but at least I should have it back on the road in a few weeks!

 

I had a new pinto wagon, we were so proud of that thing wish i had it now. The motors were trash!!

 

What motor was in it? I had a 2.0 4-Speed 72. And it ran great....Once I put the Pertronix in

 

Hello 69GT,
When I get a Pinto with the pertronics installed, I take it off.
I never liked the pertronics.
My Blue 72 wagon had this installed.
One day I started the engine and I could not get it to turn off.
I turned the igniton key back to normal position, removed the key and the engine ran on.
I removed the battery cables and the engine ran on.
I unplugged the regulator and the engine ran on.
I stood there in dis-belief thinking "This is impossible"
The only way I could kill the engine was to pull the coil wire.
I reconneted everything and the same thing happened.
Barth and Brian were standing there as I un-hooked the engine from all 12V sources. They could not believe it either..
I removed the pertronics and reinstalled the points and condenser. PROBLEM SOLVED!!!
I do not pretend to understand. Some day when I have time I will do some research and see if the pertronics really helps or not.
I like points!!! They are simple and cheep.
With points I can run down any engine that will not fire.
Pop the Dist. cap off and check for spark.

 

Hello ModMav71,
What engine are you going to run?
From Pintony

 

Yeah. You had the same problem my Maverick had a few times and I never did solve why it kept running. I figured I had a bad ignition switch. Still not sure why it happened but I turned ignition to OFF and took key out with the Maverick still idling happily. Then it just shut off .

I never had that problem with the Pinto. But otherwise it ran better than it did with points. The main difference was with the points the damn thing often dieseled after I shut it off. Sometimes embarrassingly long. Pertronix cured it completely. Shuts off like a light switch. Not gonna pretend to know a lot about points though. I could have set the gap wrong or something.

 

It wasn't the rear of the tank that blew it was when the front of the tank bashed into the pounken and sparked. I had a brand new 79 and it had a poly shield between the tank and straps that extended up around the front of tank to eliminate the spark during crash. Till today that was one of my most dependable cars.