Well, here I am, back once again. I wrote on the site a few months ago that the Pinto was a lost cause and was being sold to help fund my families financial future. But as few might know, I actually still have the car. We are in the process of buying it back. My dad and I couldn't bring ourselves to part with the Pinto again seeing as the rising demand for these cars decreases the chance of us finding a Pinto in better shape.
After all, ours has no rust whatsoever, its been garage kept all its life. In addition, the car has under 2,000 original miles. The problem is the engine. We aren't able to fund to race the car anymore and the engine isn't something that, without major modification, could be street legalized. So in the process of finding a way to keep the car, I brought up a possible solution. Sell the engine and transmission and start a quick restoration of the car. Clean the engine bay up, redo wiring and interior, and touch up the paint under the hood and under the car.
The engine would be replaced by a 2.3L turbo and a matching tranny out of a Turbo Coupe setting at a local car dealership. The prospective donor car looks in decent shape, though the front has sustained damage in an accident (possibly by hitting a deer?) The exterior is very solid and I'm going to check on the cars running condition... its been on the lot for around a year or two so im skeptical if it runs or not and if it does, how many miles?
Just thought I'd share a possible set of plans and give a update. ;D
-beegle55
Casey warm it up then do a compression on it. But hey youre dad would of told you to do that. Fred :)
Hey Beegle, welcome back! Glad you got to keep that awesome Pinto, you are on the right track, ditch the race engine and make a driver out of her. The turbo 2.3 is a stout engine and a great swap, with the entire doner car you're set. The main problem I've seen on these cars is a blown head gasket which is no biggie, but a great bargaining tool for you!!
what does wv require for a 77 (or 78??) to be street legal? i know its not much up here. if your cars set up for it already, why not just save your time and money and work with what you got. slap a set of lower compression pistons in it, get a cheap cam that works with whatever lifter set up you have, dual plane intake and a 600-650 cfm carb and be done with it. by the time you buy that tc, go over the engine to make sure its ok, go through the wiring, run the wiring, modify for the t-5, switch the t-5 bell to a mechanical clutch (if its an 87-88 tc), youll have a ton of time into it. plus the money of the doner. if its an auto, well, that trannys not even worth its weight in scrap if you plan on modding that motor at all. if its an 86 or older, its got 30# injectors and a small vam. 87-8 had large vam and 35 # injectors. also, la eecivs had the fastest prossesors and had better timing curves due to intercooling. la3 (88 stick shift turbo coupe) one of the best to choose from...next to an 86 svo.
you will have better weight but i dont know if that would matter. it looks like your car is set up for drag racing already. whats that 150-200 # worth. that harness (87-8) is also a total pita to swap over. if i were to do my harness over again, id use a 2.3 vam mustang harness and re pin it.
for what its worth. it took 3 turbo 2.3 heads for me to find one that was rebuildable. all 3 were cracked and only one was ONLY cracked in the valve seats. turbo heads are different from others. if i remember right, the dual plug 2.5 head out of a 2000ish ranger flows the best factory. but the turbo intakes wont bolt up and the ranger intakes dont flow at all.
dont get me wrong, i love my turbo swap. i just got it going again and it pulls like crazy. but your already set up for a 302, why take the trouble to change it? its your car, time and money. i just wanted to give you a little advice. i dont know how much you researched this. if you really are interested in this swap and end up wanting to do something with the turbo 2.3, check out www.turboford.net. those bottom ends are good to 400hp stock. i would also be glad to help you with info that ive researched if you choose to do the swap.
bob
I guess we have different experiences with these, and it will all depend on the car(s) you find. I have had 7 Turbo Couple donor cars (+2 engines), and I paid $500. or less for most of them. There were 3 that did not run when I got them, and only one of them I did not make run before I gutted it, but I did not even try that one. Out of all of them, only one had a head that was unusable, but the valves can be swapped into a 'Pinto' head. The engine in my yellow car has over 180K and runs great (any comments Scott? Jim?). It came from a good running (but rotted) donor and I did nothing to it before the swap (less the oil pan). IF your donor runs great, I reccamend a new head gasket and valve seals; much easier to do with it out of a car.
I agree with T74P, if your car is set for a V8, maybe a stock V8 set up would be cheaper, and maybe easier. I also agree with a bunch of other things he said too; good stuff. I think you similar power from slightly tweaked 2.3T and a stock V8, but you might get WAY better mileage (maybe 2Xs) with the 2.3T.
IMHO: For an EFI 2.3T swap, a donor car is the way to go. For all the effort, I don't think you can convert a N/A engine AND buy all the ancillaries needed for what you COULD buy a car for (I have seen sellers that think 'rotted to the door handles' T/Cs are made of gold). What year is that prospective donor? The 86 is great, but others will work too. The 86 (my favorite) has a T-3 turbo (WGA on the engine side), easy to use harness, most of them have the E6 manifold, and all of mine had 35* injectors (?).
Glad to hear you still have that nice Pinto.
Bill
Thanks for the input. However, it has come to my attention that we can't do the swap. We were interested in trading the current powertrain setup in to the guy who but the Pinto intsead of paying full cash back for the car. He is uninterested and his wife has given him two weeks to either get the car or the money so the car is going down the road. I've decided to move on... And I'm looking into a Maverick as my next project and am going to check it out this evening. Once again thanks for the great input.
-beegle55
i agree with 77turbopinto about that t-3. although for a bone stock or very lightly modded engine, that ihi is nice with full boost at 2200rpm! i think 86 was the first year for that manifold...hense the code e6...1986. but im almost possative the only tbirds that had 35# injectors were 87-8. i could be wrong. 35s are brown top and 30s are green (i think).
after driving mine, still no where near tuned, i will never go back to a v-8 pinto. the calm maners of the 2.3 and fuel economy out of boost and the feeling and power of the turbo spooling under boost has me hooked.
bob