Pinto Car Club of America

I'm fixin up this 76 pinto mpg with a 2.3 in it.  The airpump's wheel turns kinda rough. I was told that I could remove the entire air pump aperatus and just plug where it enters the exhaust. Is this true? And how will it affect the performance?

The only increase in performance realized by removal of the air pump is the horsepower to turn the pump over, which isn't much. The air pump dumps fresh air into the exiting exhaust gases to assure that all the fuel is burned that exits out the exhaust pipe. It dumps it at the exhaust port because the exhaust gases are still hot enough to ignite any unburned gas with the introduction of additional oxygen. I know I got a little wordy, but I hope this helps.

     Thanks for the reply on the airpump, sorry it took so long to reply. I decided to remove the pump anyway because the wheel the belt went to was hard to turn. It probably has not worked correctly for some time.  I just picked up this pinto on march 4th. It only has 73,000 miles on it.  Everything is original.  I have been working frantically on it since then, before my wife can discover how much money I am putting into it.
It ran when I picked it up, it just needs some tlc.  
                                       chic