Merry Christmas Sam. - Thread - Urban Exploration Resource

Posted by bandi
But I don't have fond childhood memories of a Pinto.

i do.
my great gramma had a 76 Pinto Squire wagon. Towards the end of it's life, my dad and cousin Dave would pile us kids into the back of it and go four-wheeling into different ponds to go fishing. It would amaze you where that little Pinto went.
My first 'real' car was a 78 Mercury Bobcat hatchback... I had it had my grandmothers house and would sneak down there at night to go joyriding on the backroads (until she caught me pushing it up the driveway at 3am). Unfortunately for the Bobcat, it was too rotten to be driven everyday so me salvaged the drivetrain (the engine going to an 84 Ranger, the transmission to my 80 Pinto) and scrapped the car. The car that I took to school with me was a bright orange (ford color code 2G "Bright Bittersweet") 1980 Ford Pinto Hatchback (VIN# 0T11A116655) assembled in Metuchen, NJ in September 1979 and sold at Belden & Edwards Ford in March 1980 for the princely sum of $5395. I bought the car in November of 1990 with 86,732 miles on the odometer for $300. It was a 2.3L 2VV engine with a C4 automatic. The transmission was shot, so we swapped in the C3 out of my Bobcat (which had just been rebuilt). My father did all the body work and repainted the car (the same color to my chagrin). I loved that car. I drove it back and forth to school for about a year and ended up dusting the car in it. So my dad, not willing to 'just' swap a cam into it and call it a day, decided to do something fun with it. After all, it wasn't his money... no no no, it was my money. So, he ordered a cam kit from the Ford SVO catalog, a Holley 550cfm 2bbl, Pace Setter header (settle down, it was 1992), MSD ignition box (in place of the Ford Duraspark unit), an Accel distributor, wires, Ram performance clutch kit, Ford SVO clutch cable, had the flywheel machined down and straight pipe back into a glasspack. It ran well.

Outside, i had a set of ugly Mustang 14" wheels with two different sized el cheap Cooper Cobra white-letters, and a satin black hood with CJ hoodscoop. I ended up dusting the C3 out of it shortly thereafter and installed a 4speed out of a Pinto race car. The swap took a day... the car went from fun to "I just embarassed your 305 Camaro, Smedley." The 2300 would just wind and wind and wind to about 7500 RPM... I'd shift out when the throwout bearing would start rattling... it was a joy to drive obnoxiously. Of course, it handled like a Radio Flyer wagon and stopped like a fully loaded dumptruck on a wet road... but who cared?

i drove that car everywhere. (Sigh)... out of all the cars i've had, that Pinto gets me all weepy.