Turbo Power!

I was determined to turbocharge the BlackMagicCapri, but I wanted to to it in a budget way - Junk Yard turbo if you like. Therefor, I decided to keep the standard bottom end, just ad an oil cooler and the necessary oil feed and return lines for the turbo itself. I got some help from a friend at work to weld a simple exhaust manifold, and I dropped the front suspension crossmember to be able to remove the oil sump with the engine still in the car. Removal of the oil sump is necessary to fit the oil return fitting.

With the battery moved to the trunk, the fuel metering head and airflow meter fit nicely on the battery shelf, and I replaced the mechanical low pressure fuel pump with an electrical pump instead (to feed the small tank for the high pressure pump).

When you do these kind of changes to a car in Sweden, you need to get it inspected to make it road legal. I had quite some communication with the authorities before they approved my combination. When they finally did, I was in a real hurry to get the car together for the inspection on a monday. The first test start was made the saturday before, and the car ran like crap. I couldn't get a decent idle, and it misfired all over the place. I tried fiddling with fuel and ignition settings, but I didn't have time to get it quite right.

On the inspection the car wouldn't idle, so I got a straightforwad fail because they could test it for emissions. Otherwise I just got some minor fail points, and now I had a months time to fix it. The rough running was cured by such an easy thing as new plug wires, and the next inspection was passed with flying colours!

Later this summer I got hold of a Saab APC (automatic performance control) system. This is a neat thing that controls the boost pressure partly based on a knock sensor, partly on engine revs and partly on boost pressure. If knock is detected boost is lowered to a safe(er) level. It is a stand-alone system up until 1989 in some models, and even later in some. I installed the system during the summer, and spent some time tweaking it. I never got it to work properly on this engine though, probably because the block has no hole tapped for a knock sensor, so I used one of the inlet manifold bolts.

I also got myself a G-tech Pro performance meter, to help see if changes to the car were improvements or not. The best bhp figure I got was 117 bhp (at the rear wheels), which is a healthy improvement over the 95 bhp (flywheel) that a standard Swedish spec Pinto should develop. I had problems with detonation though, probably partly due to too high CR, partly due to not enough fuel and partly due to wrong ignition timing.

Before the car was put in storage for the winter I replaced the points ignition with an "Ignitor" setup. One thing less to worry about...

All in all this old Pinto covered more than 5000 kilometres with the turbo, totally standard. The Pinto may be a heavy old slug, but it can take some abuse...even so there was a new engine lurking...see the next page!