Pinto Car Club of America

Hey all, figured it was about time I started a thread covering my turbo conversion trials and tribulations in the effort to help others, or at least show them what not to do  ;).

I originally was planning on converting my '76 wagon, but late in '06 I picked up a 1977 Cruising Wagon, which is going to get the "Wild Treatment" instead. There are a few pics of it on a different thread. I'll post some here in the near future.

Since my shop space is a premium, I am trying to focus on chunks of the car, instead of the whole project, although the project as a whole is in the back of my mind. If I can stay focused on these chunks, or assemblies, it will force me to actually finish this project, and not end up with a shop full of disassembled parts that will never get reassembled. Anyway, I picked up an '86 turbo t-bird motor the other year, tore it down, and have accumulated most of the parts to rebuild it. And since this is a Pinto, I couldn't bring myself to just slapping it together with a stock, OEM rebuild kit. Oh no, I envision 300 hp, show quality (or as close as my skills/money can make it) rip snorting Pinto goodness! Why you might ask? Well, because sometimes the underdog deserves to catch the competition totally off guard, and also this will be a challenge to myself. To learn new skills. To refresh old ones. And have a unique kick-butt car to show off once it's done ;D

Ok, as Mr. T once said: "Enough jibber-jabber fool. Let's get down to business!"

Lately, I've been dabbling with Powder Coating. Very cool stuff! The car is going to be black, with purple motor and suspension bits. The wrench is pc'd with Caswell dark purple, although it seems real light in this pic. I'm in the process of building an engine rack that will fit inside my oven. Almost the entire engine will be pc'd or polished.