Hello All,
I have enjoyed reading your builds for a long while now so I'll share a bit of my current project. I may or may not keep this up to date but hopefully some of you will enjoy reading it. I bought the bean sight unseen equipped with an original 1.6 kent and a 4 speed. It was my daily through a winter and when I found a buyer for the motor the V8 swap began. Here are some pictures of the car as recieved, in daily mode with big mustang rear wheels, and a few pictures of the motor build (302).
Once the motor was built it went in along with a T5. This required moving some radiator support and tunnel out of the way.
While the motor was going together and getting installed I had an explorer 8.8 shortened and repacked the trac lok. The front was converted to 5 lug using mustang ii rotors and a grinder to match the new rear end.
In reply to Shavarsh :
Are you worried about brake noise with that setup? ;-)
This is "The Bean" in Chicago.
So the 71-73 pinto, while being the most attractive pinto, does have its challenges. The front suspension is unique, and does not interchange with the popular mustang ii components (74-up do). This year (73) has a 1 year only steering rack and associated crossmember. 71-73 also have a few less inches front to back in the engine bay than the 74-up. My advice to the next person doing a V8 pinto is to use a 74 and swap in the small bumpers and grill from the earlier cars.
All that said, here are some pictures of the spot the exhaust needs to go.
Nice! This should be the official beer of the project:
There are a few common ways to set up the exhaust on a V8 pinto. If you have enough room, the mustang ii manifolds can be used to dump the exhaust straight off the back of the head. There are some wild headers that install in multiple pieces and go around the steering shaft and into the fender wells. You can also run the exhaust bellow the crossmember. I didn't like any of these options so I had to come up with something new.
There is a good hole for a 2.5" exhaust on the passenger side between the firewall and the starter. Also after pretty extensive searching I found that ford explorer manifolds are very low profile... and cheap. When swapped side to side they exit nicely from the front of the heads clearing the mechanical fuel pump, alternator, and master cylinder.
Finally a build thread where I can point and laugh at your craziness in person.
Love where this is going to end up.
Thanks Weary!
To connect the manifolds and facilitate a single exhaust over the starter, I needed a y pipe in the engine bay. Here are some pictures of how I decided to do it.
Hey...this is neither IRS nor Miata.
Darn Cool, though. Carry on.
Shhhh...
Here are some more pictures of the exhaust.
And here are the pieces painted up:
Of course we need a radiator. The water pump now resided where the old radiator lived. The first iteration involved an aluminum scirocco style radiator with some tabs welded in for mounts. It was an effort to keep some structure in the radiator support and avoid unnecessary cutting...
Here's where we ended up after some more plumbing, wiring, gauges, etc. First startup was pretty rough and included blowing the muffler up due to unburned fuel collecting there.... The neighbors loved that one.
It took months of driving to figure this out, but the 11 volts from the stock ignition wire did not play well with the Pertronix distributor at startup. Intermittently it would shoot a geyser of fuel straight up out of the carb during cranking. Very inconvenient and super dangerous. I put in a relay triggered by the stock wire and ran clean voltage to everything and the problems ceased immediately.
The low ignition voltage and a leaky carb were most likely why initial startup was difficult but we prevailed!
The stock console does not have a spot for gauges. After thinking about putting the gauges under the dash, or in another less conspicuous location, I decided to make a new console. Here are the results:
The 302 Ford's such a compact v8, but the pinto makes it look enormous.
This has my attention. That's a clean Pinto to start out with.
Bean! I just got it! I'm dense!
I love it, I love it, I love it.
I had a '72 with a 2.0L, a '74 with a 302/FMX, and a '76 wagon with a 302/C4. I still have exhaust manifolds to do another one, and as long as I keep them, I'll never build another. Had a student teacher a couple years ago with a cruiser wagon. Love Love Love.
A V8 Pinto will smoke the tires to Kingdom Come; the engine is quite a bit ahead of the front axle, but still very fun.
On my '72 I put the heater controls in the console, and put the gauges where the heater controls were.
You're going to have fun if you ever need to pull the starter.
I did dual exhaust on the '76 Wagon, but did not have skill enough to bend both tailpipes over the axle, so I just dumped under the floor.
Both my V8 swaps needed hood pins (but I had mechanical fans) - are you able to keep the factory latch?
We should have a challenge: V8 Pinto build vs. V8 Vega build vs. V8 Gremlin build. Of the three I think the Pinto is the hardest because there were no factory versions. Chevy did a V8 Vega (called it a Monza but it’s the same car) and AMC did a V8 Gremlin.
The V8 Mustang II is your Fancy Pinto. It's the same turd under a different polish.
In reply to TIGMOTORSPORTS :
It looks clean from the outside, but it has its share of hackery underneath
