Hi
Basically I understand the principles of tuning, but have no practical skills yet. My car is powered with a 2litre pinto, naturally aspirated in a
single carb (size unknown, sorry for sounding dumb is there an easy way to determine the size?).
Anyway the question is, how best to spend money attempting to get more bhp? If you have any tried and tested ideas please post next to the estimated
cost. Reliability is also important to me.
｣1-｣100
｣100 - ｣250
｣250 - ｣500
｣500 - ｣1000
｣1000+ (expect not to see the word pinto much)
I have always fancied a supercharger after watching mad max as a kid, any ideas
Why do you want more power ?
If its to go "faster" for the 1st ｣500 or so spent it would-be better spent on the chassis/car set up than the engine.
I ran pintos years back, to get real power you need real money, personally bite the bullet and fit a red top for instant grunt.
Bear in mind that a 2.0 Pinto using the standard carb, ford cam, no real tuning as such, but well built and tuned can make 135bhp in FF2000 or Sports
2000 trim.
Standard power in the front of your MKIV Cortina back in the day ?
101bhp, same engine, same spec.
The sensible thing to do is make sure it is in good order and well serviced, then take it for a proper setup on the rollers to optimise jetting and
ignition timing.
Maybe even fit a vernier pulley at little cost to allow some monor fiddling with cam timing.
That would all make sure it's optimised to be all it can be.
101bhp vs 135bhp form the same engine spec ?
the most cost effective bang for your buck is n2o
From what I have read on here, the cheapest way to get more power from a pinto, is to swap it for a1.8 zetec with 2.0 litre cams.
I've been through this one as many have and so I'll offer my limited experience. Costs add up quickly with small things so there is no cheap
fix.
Problem with most answers you get are they are woolly and not much help. Whilst I respect Johns advice and he's right but, without some hard
facts it's not easy to make a choice.
I did consider a more modern and lighter engine (Zetec/Duratec) but for several reasons I stuck with a Pinto
1. I already had a 1.6 Pinto so the swap to 2.0l was easy and didn't involve any changes to mounting, exhaust, electronics, fueling or drive
shafts.
2. I'm learning about engines so wanted the simplicity of the Pinto
3. I didn't want to mess with injection, cats and related electronics and engine maps.
So I re-built a 205 block and spent roughly the following
Kent RL21 cam & vernier pulley - ｣200 (2nd hand cam)
Dellorto 40's - ｣300 with trumpets, socks, manifold & linkages
Headwork - ｣400 (cash ;-)) inlet & exhaust ported, valves re-seated & replaced
Megajolt 3D - ｣180 including trigger wheel, coil pack, EDIS & sensors
Lightened Flywheel - ｣65
Tune up on rolling road ｣250 (cash ;-))
Add that to all the small bits like gaskets, ARP rod & flywheel bolts, chopped sump, etc. and I spent at least ｣1,500.
Personally I'd start with a cam change then look at maybe a bike carb set up after that.
Changing to a Duratec may have cost less I guess but the extra costs in changing the car to suit the engine and the potential electronic and emission
problems put me off. Maybe someone will throw some costs at the modern option.
quote:
Originally posted by Confused but excited.
From what I have read on here, the cheapest way to get more power from a pinto, is to swap it for a1.8 zetec with 2.0 litre cams.
the zetec will give you issues in the dax chassis (assuming its the pinto chassis)
I beleve the back of the engine ends up hard against the chassis rail and gives you no room for the thremostat/water rail - on the dax zetec chassis
they leave a bit more room at this point - obviously ther are ways round this but its a bit of a PITA
don't know how easily a duratec would fit as I've not seen anyone do this swap in a rush yet....
the redtop/xe swap has been done plenty of times though
I vote for the pinto aswell - but then I would because thats what I'm putting in my rush 
The head is were the power is in the pinto - I'd go for a cam first (newmans, piper or kent) then carbs, then porting/valves and a bit of a skim
to up the CR, ignition, full bottom end ballance/lightening - then more CC's
twin Dellorto's or webbers are quite pricy, but bike carbs will give you the same bang for less bucks
I went way OTT and spent more than I'm going to admit to on mine and the car isn't even on the road yet - I've gone for the all steel
bottom end etc.... its basicaly a 2.1 NA cossie with a pinto head now, the bottom end should be good for 9000rpm+ 
only thing I havn't done is port the head, but that can wait till its been on the road a wee while
quote:
Originally posted by pajshChanging to a Duratec may have cost less I guess but the extra costs in changing the car to suit the engine and the potential electronic and emission problems put me off. Maybe someone will throw some costs at the modern option.
(might be a bit of a waste though...) take a look on some of the capri forums, its free advise
The standard ford cam is actually pretty good, the best thing you can do is buy the book on tuning these by David Visard, get some steel burrs from
ebay, vernier cam adjuster and a head skim, I assume you already have a banana exhaust.
A day fettling the head, 1/4" skim and set the cam up with 7 degrees advance will get you near 135BHP so 30% more for ~｣200.
Regards Mark
One thing not mentioned yet, try to find a set of roller followers the pinto set up is agricultural, roller followers free up a bit of power and are
soooooo much more kinder on the cam, if your upgrading the cam go for a cross drilled one and ditch the crap spray bar, as for porting the ports are
already pretty big, so a clean up is pretty much all that is required unless you want to get serious in which case you need to be adding material to
the inlet ports not taking it away.
Back in the 80's I had a all singing and dancing Dave Brookes downdraft head, fancy rimflow big valves, emerald cam, steel bum end, the engine
was high maintenance low power compared to the red tops around at the same time.
Personally if I had a pinto under the bonnet I would leave as is, any under the bonnet upgrade would see the pinto engine ousted, but that's just
me.
you could do a budget bike engine swap for under a grand. Maybe ｣300 for a zx9 or fireblade, ｣300 on an exhaust, ｣200 on prop and adapter, and the
change on fittings.
I managed a BEC transplant by myself with little technical knowledge, certainly never rebuilt engines or anything like that, in just a month or so
IIRC.
quote:
Originally posted by Jon Ison
Why do you want more power ?
If its to go "faster" for the 1st ｣500 or so spent it would-be better spent on the chassis/car set up than the engine.
The great thing about older engines (my gsxr1100 is a 95 engine) is that there are loads of people with them who are moving to newer engines.
Why not look out for a spicy Pinto that someone else has already put money into and then moved on. I would imagine that they are pretty common and
must be very cost effective.
quote:
Originally posted by mark chandler
The standard ford cam is actually pretty good, the best thing you can do is buy the book on tuning these by David Visard, get some steel burrs from ebay, vernier cam adjuster and a head skim, I assume you already have a banana exhaust.
A day fettling the head, 1/4" skim and set the cam up with 7 degrees advance will get you near 135BHP so 30% more for ~｣200.
Regards Mark
quote:
Originally posted by iank
quote:
Originally posted by Jon Ison
Why do you want more power ?
If its to go "faster" for the 1st ｣500 or so spent it would-be better spent on the chassis/car set up than the engine.
And the driver, for 99% of people going onto a decent driver course will save seconds per lap.
Either buy a good pinto someone else has bankrupted themselves building or get rid of the archaic boat anchor altogether for something with a proper
valvetrain and fuel injection.
The head/manifolding is where the power is made in any engine, everything else merely facilitates that. The pinto is exceptionally poor as a starting
point given the availability of good, low mileage modern engines IMO.
quote:
Originally posted by pajsh
Changing to a Duratec may have cost less I guess but the extra costs in changing the car to suit the engine and the potential electronic and emission problems put me off. Maybe someone will throw some costs at the modern option.
quote:
Originally posted by matt_gsxr
Why not look out for a spicy Pinto that someone else has already put money into and then moved on. I would imagine that they are pretty common and must be very cost effective.
quote:
Originally posted by alistairolsen
Either buy a good pinto someone else has bankrupted themselves building...
Just blow your budget and get a Hayabusa then bolt on a supercharger
Theres tons of cheap Rover V8's lying around...
quote:
Originally posted by coozer
Theres tons of cheap Rover V8's lying around...
quote:
Originally posted by alistairolsen
quote:
Originally posted by coozer
Theres tons of cheap Rover V8's lying around...
there's a reason for that....
The problem is that you're trying to tune an engine that was pretty crap to start with.
Best thing to do would be to start with something decent. A full AB Performance 919 Fireblade set-up including the Billet sump and prop adaptor went
for ｣650 on ebay last weekend, that would have given you more power to start with than a Pinto is capable of with a lot of tuning. It would have only
reqiuired a prop' and exhaust to get running.
Yes, Yes, Yes, you all have great ideas but the man asked for Pinto tuning tips.
This is the cheapest way to some more power.
An injection pinto head, the one with egg shaped inlet ports, worth 5 to 10 bhp just because of the inlet sharp side turn under the valve.
Fit a Felpro or Adjusa head gasket to bring the compression up to 9.7 to 1, skim the head to go further to 10.5 to 1 if you can spate the extra
cash.
To make this work you need a better cam with vernier pulley, FR32 or 33 cam.
Some bike carbs and a manifold, this lot should give you 135 bhp.
Cost ｣500