Pinto Car Club of America

Hi.  I have a 76' pinto wagon with the v-6 and automatic transmission. I intend to use it for mostly off road usage around my ranch and let my kids drive it on my property.  It runs kinda crummy, pops back on cold start up and seems like it has a miss.  Much of the emissions tubing and fittings are missing or broken, and some of the emission stuff that is intended to be triggered electrically doesn't seemed to be hooked up.  Doing some reading, it seems there's supposed to be two vacuum advance hook-ups to the distributor and there's not.  Could this be part of the rough running problem. There's so much vacuum stuff on this engine it's incredible.
How much of it can I remove and not hurt normal performance? How do I know what to remove? What the heck is a thermactor and do I need to keep it?
Help will be appreciated.

I believe the thermactor is the smog pump, usually located on the left side if you're facing the front of the car. If you're in Cali, then I think you have to have it hooked up. I'm not sure of other states. If it's smog exempt then probably it's not necessary. The other vacuum lines probably should be hooked up for better performance.