Turbocharging a Pinto - help please?

[rustingdeathtrap]

I toyed with turboing the pinto in my cortina untill i decieded on the volvo lump.
Standard c/r should be fine with half a bar.
What i would advise doing though is going with a fully mappable managemnet system. Ok you'll need to put a bit more effort in initialy but the results will be by far more worthwhile.
A couple of hundred quid can get you a megasquirt, most of the sensors you should already have on your engine and it gives you the room to expand later on when you get bored and want that little bit extra.

[wilko]

Given all the "challenges" discussed thus far, have you considered fitting nitrous instead?

Apart from a quick "see ya" off the lights do you need/want more go & more fuel consumption the rest of the time?

[Robinxr4i]

I did concider nitrous, but I don't like the idea of "running out of it" atleast with a turbo all you gotta do is put your foot down (no refilling ;D)

Anyway I picked up the turbo and manifold yesterday from Liskeard, the guy who I brought it off was going to stick it on his pinto transit but ended up getting a cheap YB instead. Looked like a bag of curse word, but wheel span the whole length of Morrisons car park! Awesome stuff!

Been doing a bit of research found a company called Micro Dynamics they do a Boost pressure switch £60, Boost ignition retarder £125 and 1/2 extra injector controller £190. IMO is ok concidering that second hand ERL MF2 injector drives go for about £250 on ebay. It will put me slightly over budget but I can live with that

[suterman]

you could get mega squirt and wideband gumph for not much more, use injectors and sensors from the scrappy and hey presto

[slater]

You want my advice, don't lower the c/r. don't shoot your self in the foot!

[Robinxr4i]

suterman said:

you could get mega squirt and wideband gumph for not much more, use injectors and sensors from the scrappy and hey presto

I know megasquirt would work out cheaper, but not after getting it mapped. The Micro Dynamics bits are bodges designed to get round problem, and a fully mappable ECU would be a proper fix, but good mapping and rolling road time cost serious money, which I don’t have.

slater said:

You want my advice, don't lower the c/r. don't shoot your self in the foot!

I am starting to come round to that way of thinking, lower the cr. you lose power so you have to run more boost to make up the lose plus you get crappy off boost. Keep the cr. the same and run less boost, get better off boost power and still get similar peek power.

As far as I can see as long as the pistons are strong enough and I retard the ignition loads under boost it should be okay with standard compression ratio. Micro Dynamics recon that you should be able to run 12 psi at standard cr. on most engines.

The only thing I am confused about now is where to take the oil feed from? Is there somewhere I can rob it from? Would a sandwich plate be best?

Ideas on a post card to the usual address or simply post underneath ;D

[slater]

oil pressure sender is a easy place on most engines. Dosnt need to flow much

[bodieanddoyle]

apparently some rolling roads won't map MS. don't know that for certain, but I have heard it said.
megasquirt 2 with its additional ignition control is perfect for a turbo setup. and with a wideband 0² sensor it apparently does a lot of the mapping itself. I'm sure rev. dick deluxe knows a lot more on the megasquirt thang.
oil feed can be off a sandwich plate or more often a tee-piece from under the oil pressure switch. don't forget you'll want a decent drain for the turbo too, nice and straight as possible.
you may want to get a oil cooler and oilstat to help the lube stay at the ideal temp too

[popuptoaster]

good luck with this, turbo pintos can work really well, but it wont...

be easier than fitting a 24v
cheaper than fitting a 24v
more reliable than fitting a 24v
need less wiring than a 24v
better on fuel than a 24v

I'm the master of the no budget vehicle and i still worked it out as the cheapest way to more power and it'll fit in your sierra a lot easier than it does in my cortina, i don't wanna sound like I'm anti turbo pinto, but its more ambitious than it sounds and it'll be harder to get it running properly in the end with odd little bits needing buying and problems cropping up all over the place, 24v into a sierra is popular and fairly common these days for good reasons, you don't need that much space to do an engine transplant, choose your 24v granny, go collect it on a trailer, rip out engine and front suspension as one unit by cutting the front up with a grinder while its on the trailer along with the engine wiring loom, grab the rear suspension next and then take the rest straight down the scrappy. bolt a gearbox up to it and then bolt it all up to the sierra and your done.

having said all that, good luck, and there are a couple of turbo pinto owners over on www.turbosport.co.uk if you want some advice.

[Robinxr4i]

^^^^ thanks popup I understand what your saying, but I've already got my self rolling on the pinto turbo route.

If my sierra had been a V6 in the first place then I would have gone for a 24v conversion, but as it is unless I had a V6 type-9 or a xr4x4 MT75 I would have had to get a manual box, plus a 2.8 12v fly wheel, not to mention the exhaust. I think in the long run the 24v would have cost the same if not more to do than a 24v conversion.

I am slightly worried about how the extra injector/injectors are going to run but it'll be a learning curve ;D

[gitfarm]

my opinion for what its worth mate...

like popuptoaster says, a conversion is the best and cheapest way of more power, even tho it may not seem like it in your head a the moment! even if you just stick a cologne in for now and then may go 24v later?

as for the turbo thing, try the comp. plate, or two headgaskets or whateva? whats the worst that can happen?! its a pinto and they're two a penny! also, if someones says it wont work etc. do it anyway! find out for yourself, too many people read text books/mags etc and will tell you it wont work, how will you know for sure if YOU don't give it a go. if it does go bang, the amount you'll have learnt along the way will be invaluable!

as an idea, theres a guy on sxoc running 380 odd bhp thro an internally stock ca18det, simply by using two headgaskets! runs it up the quarter mile contstantly by all accounts and its fine!

[Nathan]

A friend of mine did this to his capri with excellent success, I will get his details about it for you.

[Robinxr4i]

bgtmidget7476 said:

A friend of mine did this to his capri with excellent success, I will get his details about it for you.

Thanks any real world experience is welcome.

[Nathan]

Right just had a word and this is what his spec was.

2ltr Pinto
Standard head and CR
9.3:1 is fine on <1 bar with a careful setup

He ran 12PSI on this spec for ages and from all accounts it flew. He managed to kill it by winding her up to 22PSI. After killing it he then ran Cossie Internals with the std head.

[gitfarm]

bgtmidget7476 said:

Right just had a word and this is what his spec was.

2ltr Pinto
Standard head and CR
9.3:1 is fine on <1 bar with a careful setup

He ran 12PSI on this spec for ages and from all accounts it flew. He managed to kill it by winding her up to 22PSI

lovin the sound of that! ;D

[Robinxr4i]

bgtmidget7476 said:

Right just had a word and this is what his spec was.

2ltr Pinto
Standard head and CR
9.3:1 is fine on <1 bar with a careful setup

He ran 12PSI on this spec for ages and from all accounts it flew. He managed to kill it by winding her up to 22PSI. After killing it he then ran Cossie Internals with the std head.

Sounds good IMO, does he have any idea what power it was putting out?

[froggy]

slap the turbo on and buy a rising rate reg from the bay 60ish quid ,set the wastegate for 6psi and see how it goes. one of my lads at work has just grafted a holset h1 turbo onto his series 1rs turbo and we put the rising rate reg on but with my innovate reader to help set it up. although its a turbo engine already we fiddled with the pressure and got it to pull well with a safe a/f mixture up to 16psi. your stock injection will cope with modest boost but without any way of seeing what the a/f ratio is doing your guessing all the way to holy pistons at low boost i cant see the point in any ignition retard or extra injectors but if you can get it to run reliably then start the long road of getting more boost ;D

[B-8-D]

if on a budget you could do away with the boost retarder and lock the dizzy set it with more initial advance and give it a go.. found out that doesnt work on positive displacement supercharging but turbo can work there are lots of big power scrapyard turbo conversions done like that.... maybe not ideal but works..
si

[trannyman]

if you do decide to go down the lower CR route i have a transit pinto engine for sale i took out at the weekend. Its from a 1985 minibus with a genuine 37k miles, its was a rolls royce pool car most of its life probably sat in a hanger doing nothing.

I only took it out as i have a passionate hate for carbs (bad experience with a nova when i was young) and 70hp just isn't enough, an Efi pinto with a kent cam is half in right now - should see me to a few more hp's and mpg's

Mike

[BenzBoy]

If you're still worried about det, you can always make a water injection set-up. There are plenty of site out there on the net to show you how.

As for the 5th injector, I'd rob the cold start injector off a K-Jet equipped car like an Audi or something, and hook that up to a pressure switch (Hobbs switch I think they're called)

I wouldn't lower the CR personally. I think to start off , running less than 1 bar of boost should be enough work to keep you busy and enough power to keep you laughing. Once you've sussed all the fuelling / ignition / whatever and are hungry for more boost, then go looking for decompression plates / Cossie internals or whatever. I just think that starting off with a stock motor gives you more time to work on the turbo side of things rather than having to do engine work before you even start on the hairdryer.

JM2P