his was a pretty good day for the Pinto Suspension. Well, it started out good but it was a lot of work to get the parts on. I also have a sway bar and new end links and new bushings, I can't find those pictures yet.

In between cursing the day pintos were made, I hooked up an auto fuel line cleaner. I looped them and filled them with solvent. I had a large glass jar as a reservoir, another missing picture.

Nice new rubbers for the springs. New Pinto leaf springs as well.

They did look like they were worn out but the difference in stiffness was amazing. It was more like I remembered it to be.

This is the original as it came off the car

After a small amount of work blasting, rust converter and paint.

 

Re- building the Ford Pinto V6 2800 cc This was for my 76 Pinto But ended up in my 79.

 This rebuild took me a couple months I think. I was building this for my 76 but as it turns out I needed it for my 79 wagons. ( Im working on the wagon now.) I bought this engine from a guy who assured me that it was good.🙈🙉🙊 I took the oil pan off the day I got it home and the oil pickup was full of blue silicone pieces. The lower timing gear ( the big one) had several missing teeth. You can see, in the first picture that the valves were shot as well.  BTW I just recently found all these pictures. I lost a couple Memory cards worth.

I tried to show the inside of the water jacket in the front left corner. There were 3 YES Three oild freeze plugs in the water jacket. It took me 2 days to get them out. I had to wedge them in and bend them, then grab them with needle nose pliers

My new set of valves, they were about 40 bucks then and haven't changed in price much since.

The first time through with the hone. I was lucky the cylinders were in good shape. Considering the rest of the engine. 

Overall it came out well. It is not a high-horsepower engine. I think it's about 120 HP all in. I wanted the V6 because I am going to tow a small camper with it. 

Lucky for me I still had the Corvette to keep the manuals on. it was a good pinto parts holder.

I did a complete valve job and each cylinder held fluid over night .

The crank going in is the last picture I found for the assembly. 

Rebuilding the gas sender on a 1976 Pinto

I took the sender out of this homemade gas tank, it held gas but I was scared of it.  I bought a new tank. The sender was stock and it looked like someone had left old gas in the tank long enough to turn to sludge.

 The sender comes apart with some small bendy tabs I opened them slowly and was able to separate the two halves. There was so much sludge inside I had to scrape it out and then went at it will some gas and a brush.

 I got it clean enough here to inspect the wrapped wire resistor and the tab

 I just cleaned the other side the same way and disconnected the wire from the back.

 I used some 600 grit sand paper on the copper tab and bent the bar a bit. I checked it a few times to see that it moved smoothly.

 Re soldered the wires after I finished cleaning with solvent and then with the parts cleaner and gunk.

The finished product I tested it with  the gauge and a car battery and it works fine. I will soak it is gas and give it a final scrub with steel wool before it goes back in the tank. It took me about 4 hours but I was stopping and starting , had some coffee breaks and some wander gazing so it could be done faster.

Let me know you comments .

All striped down to the shell and ready to sand

I really hope I do not need to remove any more parts. I have 2 SD cards full of pictures and 100s of baggies of nuts and bolts.

Refurbish Instrument cluster on 1976 Ford Pinto

The Instrument cluster was in poor shape but all the gauges worked. The white plastic in the back of it fell apart when I removed it, This is very common. I found one that had the plastic but the gauges did not work form a member at www.fordpinto.com. Over all it cost me abut 20 dollars in stuff and I paid 45 for the parts cluster.

Here is the pinto dash before I removed it and found that the white plastic had disintegrated.

Sanded the insides 

Sprayed the whole thing with adhesion promoter

Good Stuff

Looks nice in primer 

Black rustoleum spray paint

I did lots of taping and sprayed from the back with this silver paint

I learned later that I needed to do another coat of silver as I missed a few edges

Looks good from here

You can see the spots where I should have paid more attention but I did repair them

The pinto dashboard and steering wheel

This is the pinto dashboard and steering wheel before I began work on it. It is in excellent shape considering the car is about 36 years old. As you can see in the previous posts the car was relatively rust free. The carpet came out is pieces as it had gotten wet many times from a leaky windshield and and drivers side air vent.