I know this is ancient history now, but so is the story of a friend of mine's Pinto station wagon.
1974 Pinto wagon, 2.3 liter engine, automatic transmission.
With timing set per factory spec, about 9 mpg. With timing set just short of pinging, about 18 mpg. The car was < 4 years old at that time, probably under 50k miles. He kept a gas log on the car at that time. I was the person who adjusted the timing on the engine, so I know how it was set. I remember the situation well because it seemed like awfully low mileage.
Two caveats: One - he WAS a rather, uh, shall we say, "enthusiastic" driver. As enthusiastic as one can be in a 2.3 liter Pinto with an automatic. He was always on "assigned risk" insurance, paying through the nose because of speeding tickets, etc. Two - He did replace the timing belt at some time previous to our setting the timing...I can no longer say for certain that he had the valve timing set right. I think he did, but it's been over 30 years ago and I've forgotten many things that were more important to me than that...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Frank Lee
Who knows?
I've been trying to track down something trustworthy re: Pinto fe but as of now what I put up is what I got.
I haven't even found the original C&D article. I want to see that, not filtered by all the recent coverage of it. I did see someone's comment that the car in question had the 2.0 with a/t.
Almost regardless of what I or anyone finds, I simply don't remember little '70's cars, rotten old-school automatic transmissions or not, getting fe THAT terrible.
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