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What is the 2B
[Or, dietary tips for Sierras]

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The 2B with a 1600 engine is ok but not spectacular. Whilst a relatively heavy car like the 2B won't worry the super lightweight stuff like Hyabusa turbo Dax Rushes (800 bhp per ton for gods sake!) we can expect to embarrass the odd Cosworth if we have a reasonably pokey motor in there.

The 1600 was a good way of getting on the road, but never intended to stay for long. A couple of options for alternatives were considered. Firstly there were the Ford V6's, my favourite being the 3 litre Essex, with the Cologne engines more common these days. An easy 140-160 bhp, but quite heavy, and a lot of extra hassle in terms of exhausts and steering. Also cooling may be an issue with large all iron motors like these, so although they are cheap and sound good, these were dismissed.

The same goes for the ever popular V8 Rover, either 3.5 or 3.9 litre. These are lighter than the Ford V6's but command relatively high prices in the UK, where V8's are rare beasts. Don't get me wrong, in an ideal world I would love to have a musical and brutally powerful V8 stuffed in there, but I have to be realistic about the budget, well so I am told! This left the 4 cylinder option and where else to turn but the 2 litre Pinto. 98 bhp standard isn't much but there is a lot more just waiting to be coaxed out, they are reliable, cheap and almost identical in size and weight to the 1600. Besides, I had one in the garage anyway!

This engine was out of my Capri, and known therefore to be a good motor. I cleaned all the crap off it and stripped it down. The head was good and the bottom end seems OK with a little wear on the bores, not surprising after 110 thousand miles.

There is a plan of action which goes like this.

1) Skim, port and improve the head and valves,
2) Bore the block to max oversize,
3) Replace all the lower bearings as a precaution,
4) Shorten the sump,
5) Lighten the flywheel.

I can't currently afford a new cam and carbs so the budget, home tune was in order!

Be warned… All that follows are tried and tested ideas to improve the Pinto engine. But, I have not done this before so do not recommend anything below until I have had the thing on the road and dyno'd. Don't start grinding bits out of your engine until you are sure you know what you are doing, at least not on my say so.

The head was first to be tackled. I have never done anything non standard before so spent time reading up on the job before starting. I recommend ' How to Modify Ford SOHC engines' by David Vizard as a good place to start. I knew the principles but wanted some direct advice. The idea is to improve the amount of mixture which your engine can get into the cylinder each stroke, then get it thoroughly burnt and out again. Remember you are dealing with small numbers as far as lift on the valves is concerned, so small changes can, in theory, make big differences. To do the work you need a power drill, flexi drive, vice and some little grinding bits of various shapes and sizes.

The first job is to strip it all down and separate all the bits, keeping them together as sets of course.

Modifying the inlet valves is the number one job, as they are pretty poor as standard. Mine are now flatter across the back of the valve and the seat is radiused into the back to improve airflow. Ford left a bloody great burr at this point which no doubt sent as much mixture sideways as it let past into the engine. The seat is also very wide so this was narrowed from the inner edge to about 2mm. This was all done with the valve in a power drill in a vice, with grinding disc in hand and WD40 and wet and dry to finish. Don't touch the stem or neck the valve or you'll weaken it.

The theory goes that flatter backs on the valves means more space for airflow as soon as the valve opens and thinner seats effectively increase the size of the valve, 1mm less on the seat width equals a 2mm bigger valve, in effect. It's not as good as a 2mm bigger valve with the same size seat of course. Radiusing smoothes and speeds the airflow. All the valves need to be the same so when I had done one, I made a template off it from body filler to use as a gauge for the rest. The inlet valve stems will also be shortened by 1mm each to give about 0.3mm extra lift.(This is because in doing so you need to adjust the clearance up more, and change the fulcrum point on the follower. It also opens the valve for slightly longer.). If you don't think that will make a difference, then consider that the stock lift is less the 0.4", so an extra 0.3mm is, well, the wrong unit of measurement, but you get the idea. I have no real idea how much extra flow this is worth, but every little helps and this mod costs very little. I haven't been as radical as Mr Vizard suggests with any of these mods, but I am trying to play safe!

The inlet ports are a bit of a disaster area. I have been used to motor cycle engines with a fundamentally good design, so when I stopped to really look at the Pinto, with a little new knowledge, it was easy to see how much could be gained. The guide bosses are huge and while that may mean good life expectancy, it also says STOP AND SWIRL AROUND A BIT HERE to the incoming charge. The shape of them too is about as aerodynamic as an Elephant. You can apparently remove them altogether, but I decided to just reduce their size and smooth them out. Totally removing them gains little more flow than this and drastically affects guide life.

The rest of the upper part of the port is already too big I'm told, so I just cleaned up the worst of the casting marks. The last bit of the port, or throat, is the worst bit and the most important. We need to clean up the point where Ford machined the throat out and smooth this into the rest of the port. Also, there is a terrible (at least 100') bend at the bottom of the port which can be smoothed and radiused to good effect. I reduced the seat again to match the valve, having ground it in a bit to see which area's are being used. Again, thin it from the inside edge and radius the seat into the throat. Don't waste your time polishing the port anywhere, you need the small amount of turbulence created by the rough finish to help the mixture stay atomised.

Exhaust valves need radiusing on the face edge (the flow is going the other way) as well as the back, and once again the seat was reduced to about 2mm. I haven't flattened the back, as I assume that you don't want the turbulence that this would create with the flow in that direction. The exhaust ports can be treated much as the inlets but they are too small so I have opened them up a little especially where there is a sharp bend just after the throat. Don't go mad as there is a water jacket not far away through that cast iron! Don't remove the boss totally either or you risk burnt out exhaust valves.

Between the two ports is, suprisingly enough, the combustion chamber. I will leave it alone apart from cleaning up any bad casting marks that could cause hot spots and thus pre-ignition, and radiusing the round edge to the gasket line. Remember that anything you remove here will lower compression, which is not what we want.

Lastly, the head is skimmed by 20 thou to raise the compression a bit, to around 9.7/1, you can go more but on a stock cam and valves it's not worth it and watch the effects on your cam timing if you don't have a vernier cam wheel. Also the crappy water that passes for petrol these days will pink something rotten on anything much higher. The block will be bored out to max over size which should give about 50cc extra apart from restoring full health. 2.1 conversions are available still, but cost quite a bit more for your extra 50cc.All the lower bearings including thrust washers will be changed to ensure no horrible knocking sounds emanating from the bottom end, although when stripped it all looked as new.

The flywheel was designed for a car weighing 1100 KGs so it can be lightened a lot, then of course re-balanced. This doesn't make any more power but will help the engine to be much more responsive. Finally the sump will be shortened, see the RHOCAR website for details on how to do this.

Also on the RHOCAR site are details of how to convert your type 9 gearbox to a quickshift change without spending any money. This is very easy and improves gear selection significantly by changing the ratio between the two ends of the gear lever to give greater movement on the lower end.

Of course the sky is the limit for engine work but I've just gone for a low cost basic job to improve on the original rather than try to create a full race fire breathing motor. I am hoping for around 110 bhp, perhaps a bit more once it has been set up on the rolling road, watch this space around May 2002 for the results.

Total cost of this was-