MORLEY’S FIVE STAR WORKSHOP
PINTO PROBLEMS
Ever had one of those Oh-my-gawd-what-have-I-justdone moments? Of course you have… you work on cars. It happens to us all. To be honest, my life is a catalogue of such forehead-slaps, but I surprised even myself the other day.
You may remember that several months ago, my online purchase of a radiator for the RS2000 came back to bite me squarely on the arse when said radiator dropped its guts on the freeway. By the time I swung across three lanes of traffic and found a safe spot to pull up, the little Pinto had eaten its own head-gasket in a spiteful act of retaliation. We both came home on a banana-back and then I was a bit surprised to learn that the Esky would run perfectly when cold, but then started popping and banging as soon as the head and block had a bit of heat in them.
So we ripped off the head, checked it for true (which it was) gave the valves a bit of a twizzle in some lapping paste and bolted it all back together with a fresh head-gasket. Hit the key, up she fires. Beautiful. But a couple of days later, I went to start the wee bastard, and it didn’t want to know. Naturally, I began to catastrophise, wondering aloud if maybe the new head gasket was leaking and allowing coolant into the combustion chamber(s). Finally, the engine wouldn’t even turn over, making me suspect she’d actually hydraulicked.
To check this, I needed to gently turn the engine by hand to check, so I reached for a big spanner, grabbed the nearest pulley-nut and started turning the motor. The monster mistake I had made, however, was to place the spanner on the camshaft sprocket, rather than the crank pulley. So, when the engine – with the spark plugs still fitted – came up to compression, and I continued to lean on the spanner, the rubber timing belt immediately jumped about 10 or 12 teeth. Oh bugger.
Yeah, I know, rookie error, but I was so concerned that I had a two-litre water pump instead of an engine, I forgot about the basics and wrenched on the wrong bit. A couple of hours later with help from a Pinto-genius mate of mine (cheers, Tim) we had the engine re-timed and everything turning freely. The Pinto is supposed to be a free-spinning engine (should the timing belt break) but mine has a fair bit of compression and a cam with bigger lumps than Dolly
