1979 Ford Pinto

1979 Ford Pinto

TrashWagon 3

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The Ford Pinto was manufactured from 1971 thru 1981. They came as hatchback, sedan and wagon. I had a 79 Wagon. This is the story of my 1979 Ford Pinto Wagon.

milesfox104@yahoo.com

It Goes Like This...

I bought my 79 pinto from a guy in Fort Wayne, IN for $300.00, a month or so after a friend had bought a '77 Mercury Bobcat Wagon. I had never seen a pinto before, and I noticed it was almost identical to the Bobcat. It was yellow with black interior, 2300 motor and 4-spd manual transmission. This car was to be my third TrashWagon. The motor Idled pretty fast, and burnt quite a bit of oil. I drove the car home, fixed the choke, and parted the Baja lights (same ones from the Grand Am) from the Subaru and installed them on the front of the roof rack. I then painted the fenders black and painted black stripes along the bottom of the doors with yellow letters with the words TrashWagon 3 in yellow letters. I installed my CB radio and the Delco cassette stereo from the Grand Am. I also installed the Sony 10 disc cd changer and a Radio Shack 110 watt amp and two 8" stereo speakers in the back. The dash light burnt out, so I put a blue light on the instrument panel. I used the tachometer from the Grand Am. I also installed a shackle lift kit and removed the old shocks from the back. I drove it with no rear shocks for a while, and everyone seemed to be amused when I bumped the brakes and got the ass-end hopping off the ground. The tailgate latch did not work, and the tailgate flopped open. I lost several tools that way. Finally I got a pair of air shocks and a glasspack muffler.
I had a job delivering pizza in this car, and I got honks and waves from passers by. I was constantly buying oil, using 30-weight chainsaw bar oil mixed with used oil to keep costs down. It went trough about 2-3 quarts over about a 100 mile endurance each night. I also installed an oil pressure gauge to monitor oil pressure. One day the u-bolt that held on the driveshaft was loose, and the driveshaft disconnected from the differential on the way to a friends house. I was going about 60 mph, and luckily, I had enough momentum to roll up to his driveway. I fixed it the next day. I had to call off days because of radiator problems. The first time, I backed up over a stick and punctured the back of the radiator. I fixed it with flux core solder, which seemed to work. A week later, I was drift racing on the Ice in the Wal-Mart parking lot when the solder fell out. I left the car in Kendallville, and got another radiator out of another Pinto. That radiator looked like it had been damaged and repaired, and needed a little solder to patch it up. I had it put in, but it leaked a bit. I put everything from pepper to leak stopper to eggs in it, but to no avail. Then I looked for a radiator at a junk yard and scored one out of an S-10. I also got some cab lights off a few trucks while I was there. I had to modify the bottom outlet to fit the hose, and tie it up with wire as it was not wide enough to fit properly. A bolt held one side, and the other sat atop the power steering hose. Then I mounted the cab lights to the roof. I later discovered that I should have used acid core solder instead of flux.

Roll Over, Doggie

I was driving down a county road at night when a dog ran out in front of me. I was doing about 45 just when I threw it in to 4th gear. I steered to the left to try and drive around the dog, and realized that I was too far over and there was a utility pole there. I suddenly cut the wheel to the right, and the rear end got loose and came around in a 180. I was facing the opposite direction as I slid off the road into the ditch, causing the car to fall over upside down. The motor was still running, and I had both feet on the clutch and the brake, and both hands on the wheel. I turned the motor off and released the seat belt. I fell on my head, and tried to turn the lights off, but the switch seemed to be on the passenger side ceiling (upside down). I has to crawl out of the passenger side door to inspect the damage. I had never seen the underside of the car standing up! The driver side fender was dinged up, and grass was stuck in the gas cap hole. Half a tank of premium leaked out of the filler hole. The tailgate flew open, folding up inder the top of the car, causing the window to pop out unbroken. Laundry and Nintendo games and other misc. items were sent out the back of the car all over the ground. The passenger top corner was cracked from rolling over onto a small log that happened to be there. All of my stereo system was hanging around by the wires inside the car.

I've Fallen, And I cant Get Up!

I knocked on the door across the road, nobody answered, and then a truck came along and gave me a ride home. I didn't want the police involved, because my insurance was cancelled. I called my friend's dad and he came in his Chevy 4x4 and a tow strap and pulled the car back on its wheels. Oil had leaked out of the filler hole, and I topped it off with a bottle of used oil in the back of the truck.

Phase 2

The next day, I cleaned out all of my stuff, and vacuumed up all debris and pieces of glass. removed all of my wiring, stereos, seats, carpet, and interior panels and moldings. I also removed the tailgate and windshield. There was a fairly sized hole on the floor behind the passenger seat, and another smaller one in front of the passenger seat. The body seams were pretty rusted out in the rear, along with the inner fender wells. The pillar between the doors and middle windows were beginning to crack, causing the sides to start to bow out.

I drove about 20 miles with the car gutted out, with no windshield and no tailgate to go get another windshield and tailgate from a guy I met at Advance Auto Parts. He had 5 pintos laying around his yard, the same place where I got the 2nd radiator. I had to wear a motorcycle helmet so the wind didnt bother my eyes. I got the windshield from a 79 Pinto Wagon, and a Mercury Bobcat gate from the same car. I loaded up the parts and took them home. I put the windshield in place with no sealer so I could go to work the next day. The boss thought I was out of it to deliver in a wrecked car. but he needed the help that day. He was a bit weary about the dependability of my car, with the radiator problems and the fact that I got stuck for an hour after backing over a trashcan that got stuck under the rear wheel.
    I bought some windshield sealer and installed the windshield. I bolted up the tailgate, bit it was crooked. I had to take a jack and a 2x4 to push the roof uo so the gate would close properly. This gate had no window, And luckily I had the old one to use, with stickers and all.
   The pinto guy had a 77 hatchback with a 2.8 V-6 that I bought for $75.00. I towed it home with my car and parted out the motor, fenders and bumpers.
   I removed the fenders from my car to install the '77 fenders with the round headlights, but I had to go to work with no fenders that night. I finally got the '77 fenders on the car, along with the '77 front bumper. I inverted the original square headlights so the turn lights were where they were originally, with the square ones in the middle. I had a piece of expanded mesh for a grille. The 77 fenders were white, and I painted them black. I decided to paint the car with the same paint scheme I painted the Subaru, like you see in the pictures. My friend had bought a flux core welder, and I made support braces inside the car to help hold it together. Then I mounted a piece of plywood to the inside roof to mount my cb radio. I salvaged red carpet from my friend's bobcat to put on the floor. I had brown carpet on the hump, blue carpet on the ceiling, and patterned carpet on the inside of the doors. I traded interior plastic with the red plastic from the Bobcat Wagon. I had finally got fired from work, due to the fact that one of the gas tank straps broke. I cut the rear fenders out for the hell of it, and removed the gas tank. I replaced the tank with a plastic jug in the back with a garden hose stuck down in it. I fabricated some fenders out of old shelves I deeboed from a factory I worked at. I also mounted some taillights on the top of the back of the car (inspired by the Crapalier TrashWagon), because there was no fender where the originals were supposed to be. I also mounted the '77 rear bumper, which took a little modifying.

Repairs and Modifications

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The oil burning problem had started to catch up with the longevity of the motor. I drove to Fort Wayne as the oil was getting low. I had none on me, and I had to drive for a while before I could get more. The car's performance had started to deteriorate, losing power as I drove. The oil was run almost dry, but I made it To Wal-Mart to buy oil for it. The engine had cooled a bit by the time I came out of the store. I topped off the oil and the car ran better, but the power curve was drastically affected. Acceleration was piss poor, but it ran OK at cruising speed. Oil pressure used to hang at about 40 psi, but now it barely sat at 20 psi. This was, I believe, due to the fact that the crank and rod bearings were ate up along with the cam, causing a loss of oil pressure to the top end of the motor.

I took a trip from Fort Wayne to Lebanon to visit friends. The car got there without a problem, but it would not start after I parked it at IGA grocery store. I finally got it started, but it did not have the power to move the car, because it was shooting exhaust up through the carburetor. The next day, I pulled the valve cover off to inspect. I discovered the camshaft was ate up, as much as 1/8 of an inch, and the rocker for the #4 cylinder exhaust valve had fallen out of place. I was able to put the rocker back in place to drive home, but the problem occurred several times after.

I went to the junkyard and bought a head for $40.00. I tried to remove the old head, but even with a pry bar, I could not get it to budge. I had already removed the intake and exhaust manifolds. So I swapped the camshafts, and replaced the rocker arm. I got the car running again, but there was a vacuum leak in the re-used intake gasket, and after a while the radiator would occasionally boil over, suggesting head gasket failure. I did not have a torque wrench when I put the head bolts back in.

I rounded up some money, and bought a head and intake gasket. I was able to remove the head this time, and put the junkyard head in its place, with its original cam. I forgot to put the dowels on the head when I put it back together, and I didn't think of replacing camshaft oil seals. I got the car running again, and it ran a lot better. But the bad thing about it was the fact that oil leaked out the front and back of the motor, burned twice as much as it used to, and because there was no dowel pins in the head, it leaked oit the corner of the head gasket and into the #1 cylinder.

The Long Haul

I was ready to head for Lebanon for good, and packed up all of my stuff in the car. All the pictures on this page were taken on the day I set off for the long haul.
I made the trip to Lebanon, and went through almost 3 gallons (yes 3 gallons) of 30 weight chainsaw bar oil. I made another trip north and back to Lebanon. I drove for about 2 days in Lebanon, before my car broke down for good. I had about 500 miles on it since the head replacement. I was driving down the Baja trail that goes to Hazelrig doing about 40 mph. The front of the car was bouncing up and down a good foot off the ground when the engine up and quit. I figured it had threw the timing belt. I had to abandon the car for a few days. I got someone to get my car and tow it to the house I was staying at. He had a tow chain and a Cadillac. We went back down the trail to discover that my car was sideswiped into the ditch, with the fender crumpled up and the bumper hanging. Upon closer inspection, I saw that my car was ransacked and my cb radio along with a video cassette and my sketchbook was missing. We hooked up the chain and pulled the car home. I later tore the motor down and found that the auxiliary shaft had locked up, causing the timing belt to slip and making the fuel pump and distributor inoperable. I took out the distributor, and the shaft would turn. But when I pit it back in, the shaft would not turn. The teeth on the distributor gear had a prominent wear pattern, and I figured the teeth on the gear were messed up in a way that they would not mesh properly. This was probably due to lack of oil pressure and the stress of gyration from the car hopping up and down. The car sat in the driveway for a week before the landlord threatened to tow it. I moved it out in the street by cranking the starter in gear, but it drew cops like flies wondering where it came from and why it was there, so I parked it in the alley partially in the yard of an unoccupied house. It sat there for about a month before realtors came in and out of that house and had it towed away while I was at work. I had all of my stuff out of it, and my lights, gauges, etc. before it was hauled away. The only things I didn't get was my plates and a Pinto/Bobcat Haynes Repair Manual.

Back To TrashWagon

All in all, I had the car for about 5 months, longer than i had any of the other cars (which usually expired after 2 months) and managed to get almost 10,000 miles out of it (5,000 being the most of the other cars. The car was definitely worth the 300 dollars just for the fact I got what I did from it. Now I have an 80 Mercury Bobcat in the works.

Mercury Bobcat & Ford Pinto

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