JPSC Forum

Well my Pinto is now out of my Striker ready for stripping, and the good news is ive confirmed that the oil consumption problem is due to it sucking oil down the inlet valve guides ( big pool of oil sitting on top of No2 Inlet valve when i took the carbs off)

Ive also been spending my time doing some reserch on Pinto Valves / head jobs befor I start the rebuild and have managed to aquire everything I need to do the job myself apart from fitting the K line valve guide inserts.

Once its all stripped, im going to intall my own "Big Valves" and this will requier me to cut both new valve throats and valve seats.
Im going to use new "Rim Flow" valves from Paul Ivey (REC) and have gone for the Ultimate spec which is a whopping 46mm inlet valve and 38mm exhaust...
To put these into perspective most aftermarket Stage 2 big valve heads use the Ford Group 1 valve which is only 44.5mm,/ 38mm with a full race head using the Group 2 45.5mm /38mm valves.

This should really get the head flowing well so we should see the bhp figures rising quite nicley..............

Once i start to do the machineing work ill post some more info including pictures of whats being done, and will also be looking at setting up the rockers to give the optimum lift on the cam, as with Pintos badly set rockers can dramaticaly affect the amount of cam lift avalable

what cam are you going to be using?

Hi Timbo The Cam im using is a combination grind cam giving the following figures:

Cam Lift: Inlet .309’’ exhaust .305”
Valve lift: inlet .512’’ exhaust .491’’
Duration: Inlet 304° exhaust 292°

Well the engine is now out of the Striker and cleaned and stripped.


Before strating to work on the head I checked the valve lift to see how far "Kent's" figures are out, and was supprised to see that they are only .006" out, for the advertised figures


Now the hard work starts and i desided to do the inlet valves first.


46mm rimflow vales from REC


Only slightly bigger than standard............
Using 46mm inlets means opening up the inlet throats from 38mm to 43mm ant this has been done using some valve seat cutters, First I used a 30 degree cutter to open out the throats, then a 60 degree cutter to un shroud the valve, and then a 45 degree cutter to make the valve seat, at the moment ive only roughed out the seats as the final cutt will be taken once ive had the valve guide inserts fitted and reamed to size.

Well this project has come up against a sight problem.
Having got the head back from have the valve guides K lined, I did an inital dry build only to find out that the head is of a 1600 pinto and not a 2.0 liter.
This makes the 162 bhp previousl acheved on the rolling road even more impessive as the valves on a 1600 are much smaller that the 2.0L however on the plus side using the 1.6 cranks the stock compresion up to 11.2 / 1and give improved downdraft du to the taller inlet runners.

No the problem is that 1.6 heads use taller valves than a 2.0, and this means that i need to lower the spring seats in the head by 3mm in order to get the 36mm installed height for the valve springs...

So im now waiting for Esslinger Racing in the USA to send me a Valve seat cutter along with some valve lash caps in order to lengthen the valves before we go on.
One of the plus points of the sharted valves is that it increasses the lift of the cam (more lift = more BHP) and with thecurrent setup full lift has gone up from the advertised .480 to .530, but this also means that the cam is very close to running of the top of the rocker pad, so ive made a compromise an gone for .055" thick lash caps this should move the cam back across the rocker pad to a more exeptable position and also yet still give me a bit more lift, hopefully around the .510 mark wich should just clear the pistons when using the 46mm valves.

Today the valve spring seat cutter and lash caps arrived from the USA, 5 days to ship from point of order and NO shipping charge................

Hopefully over the weekend ill get to lower the spring seats on the head and ill post some pictures.

Spent all of this weekend wrking on the inlet manifoild, once it came off it was evident that the ports at bothe ends on the inlet were not lining up with the carbs and head, so it was out with the die grinder.

On average 2 to 3mm in diamiter had to be cut out of the inlet manifold at the head in order to reposition and line up the ports, luckely it was only 1mm at the carb flange.

Once they were the correct size/shape, I bolted the inlet, joint and head together and have "honed" the whole induction runner from carb joint through to the valve on each inlet to ensure minimum retriction to the flow.....

Another weekend in the garage has seen the valve spring seats lowerd by 3mm in order to give me my 36mm installed Valve spring lenght.
The cutting tool is used via a normal electric drill but its hard going, in fact my drill is all but cream crackerd now..........LOL


Here you can see the tool just prior to starting to cut one of the Spring seats


Standard spring seat


Modified spring seat


Only another seven to go...............

Also done some porting work on the intake for the webbers, all the runners now line up perfectly with the carb throats and the head ports..........


Here is a picture with the new valves installed:


Just a slight diffence to what came off.....

Ok so i wanted to get the engine rebilt for Christmas, geeees its bl00dy cold in the garage, we might not have any snow in Crewe but boy is it freezing, acording to the termometer it -4 to -2 im my garage................
In fact its so dam cold that i tried my space heater and all it mahaged to do was make it "rain" as the warm air hit the freezing roof and condensated into water and was dripping of the roof......... so off went the space heater.

OK back to the rebuild, first of all i gat the bottom end finished of with the introduction of a good old fashend "Crank Scraper" to help control the oil spray "windage", I know the RS2000 Alloy sump hass a bulit in windage tray, but every little helps in the serch for BHP.


So with the crank scraper installed, on went the sump and a new compesite sump gasket.


Turning to the top end, im not a lover of strech bolts, so I opted to fit the ARP head stud kit, not cheap but good quality, another reason is that the compression has been increased from the standard 9:5/1 to 11:5/1 due to the 38mm combustion chamber volume and the use of a FELPRO "Blue" head gasket.


Another shot of the head with the valves installed, its worth noting that as the head is a 1600 casting using the shorted 2000 valves meanes that they are basicly to short, so the rocker geometery is wrong, this requiers valve "Lash Caps" to be fitted to effectivly lengthen the valve. Try getting these in the UK if you can, however a quick look through the Eslinger Catalouge found they have these "off the shelf" at .055" long, after a yet more checking with spacers between the rocker and valve, and then measuring the valve lift showed that by increaseing the valve lenght by .055" brought my valve lift to within .010" of the spec that Kent give.
Its worth noting theat with the Pinto, if the valves are "short" the lift is "incresed".
So with the lash caps installed I get .515" lift on the inlets and .490" on the exhaust.............


Now with the head on, its time to dial in the cam, Find true TDC with the dial gauge, and then fit the degree wheel, and fixed pointer at TDC, rotate the grank and re measure. now that TDC is confirmed, rotate the engin clockwise to the specifyed full lift degree, in this case 105.

Now with a DTI on the valve collet of number 1 inlet valve rotate the cam to acheve full lift on the valve.
Once this is done make shure the vernier adjuster is "loose on the cam sprocket and fit the belt.
Set the belt tension, lock up the venier on the cap sprocket and rotate the hole lot and re check the cam timing, " full lift on No1 at 105 degrees"
if it not spot on, you need to start again and fit the belt.
It took four attempts to get it spoy on and still have some adjustment left on the cam sprocket so that we can do some further adjustment (advance / retard) the cam on the rollers..........


All this leaves is to fit the water pump, alternator and drive belt and shes basicly ready to drop back in.


So once Christmas is over its fit the new clutch and drop the lump back into the striker, fit the carbs / exhaust and fingers crossed fire her up.....

I managed to get the pinto back in the striker for the end of the year, and she fired upp fist time......

I need to et the engine up now as the carbs are realy spitting and poping but i still had to take her out for a quick test drive (she needed fuel) so it was a quick trip to Tesco for some 99ron fuel and a quick blast down the local duel carrageway..............

I know the timing is no where near as advanced as she should be (probably only 26 degrees as apposed to the 36 / 38 degrees) but even with some Aldon octain booster added she pinks like mad....

Having done some checking on the net im going to try some NF Octain booster as ive not come across any bad coments yet on all the forums and it "claims" the bigest increse in RON and MON ratings.






Soo once the weather improves its back into the garage and start on the engine setup.........