Donor Pinto Engine Questions

[Guest chris brown]

Sorry Chris after 1992 all petrol cars had to have a cat and the Sierra was made untill 94. Not very many around with them on but I have sold them in the past.

 

Bosal UK

Pinto never had a cat it was the DOHC and CVH only in later Sierra's. Last pinto's 1991/2

[agent_zed]

Can't simple things get complicated quickly, or is that just life

 

hahahahah certainly seems that way. Mind you i dont think ford helps very much as they seem to like having as many different combinations of things as possible,

 

Merry christmas everyone

[E.Hunt]

Pinto never had a cat it was the DOHC and CVH only in later Sierra's. Last pinto's 1991/2

 

 

No wonder they kept bringing the dammed things back

[ibrooks]

Sorry Chris after 1992 all petrol cars had to have a cat and the Sierra was made untill 94. Not very many around with them on but I have sold them in the past.

 

Couple of things here.....

 

First we need to understand that date of first registration and date of manufacture are two different things. For our purposes though most people use the V5, which shows only the registration date, as proof of the donor vehicle's age and DVLA tend to just go with this.

 

I know for a fact that the Sierra wasn't being MANUFACTURED post 1991 - dad's uncle worked for Ford at the time and was involved with killing them off (dragging them back from the dealers and fitting all the extras to lesser models in order to create the high spec "Azura" models to get rid). Anything you've seen that has a registration date later is simply because they were kicking around in the dealership unregistered - even this was limited by Ford as they gave a cutoff date to the dealers and told them to register the cars by that date whether they had been sold or not. Odd ones could have slipped past this but not many.

 

Cats had to be fitted to any vehicle built from January 1993 onwards. This was the date at which the manufacturers HAD to fit them - many actually started fitting them to cars before that date though which is why some Sierras got them (not I believe any of the Pinto engined ones though). Whether your donor has a cat or not - unless it's a very unusual beast (a post 93 registered Sierra) you don't have to carry that cat across to your kit-car. Even then if you can prove the manufacture date rather than the date of first registration you can lose it.

 

There are Sierras that were built from shells by people other than Ford at later dates (mainly competition stuff) - the V5 will again show the registration date which could be almost anything but Ford's records should still show when the shell was manufactured and so long as you can get them to confirm that then the DVLA will accept that as the manufacture date.

This is why vehicles registered in Jan 1973 are given "historic" taxation status despite the cutoff date being 01 Jan '73 - they know that the chances of that shell/chassis having been manufactured in '73 are minimal and the rules say manufactured before 01 Jan 1973 rather than registered before 01 Jan 1973. Even if you get a car registered many years later but can prove the manufacture date was pre 1973 your car will be given historic status and be tax exempt. It's just the same with a cat.

 

Iain

[IanS]

My donor was built in 83 and I purchased it in 96 with the original engine (carbs and leaded head).

I finished my build in 97 and have run the car for around 60000 miles since then.

Most of this mileage has been on unleaded, the valve gaps have not moved.

So you will find that a lot of the old heads are perfectly useable on unleaded.

 

Ian

[Snapperpaul]

I have just purchased a highly modified but leaded head and will be running it with some Millers or similar because the chamber work is so good I don't want to ruin it by cutting out the exhaust seats and putting in inserts.

[Guest Space--ace]

If the head is unleaded you can simply check like follows :

 

[Snapperpaul]

The injection head is easy to identify with its pear shaped inlet port and flows a lot better giving nearly 10 bhp better than an unleaded carb head