Dom's Escorts - Fitting an injected pinto engine

Updated and revised 2nd March 2002
The Plan I decided to replace the Kent engine with an injected Pinto from a 1987 Granada Ghia. This has 115bhp as standard and runs on unleaded fuel. Luckily for me, a friend had planned the same conversion on his Mk2 RS2000. He bought a Granada for £100 and removed all the running gear. After several months he decided that he had had enough of messing about with cars so he sold everything at knock down prices. This allowed me to get the engine and ECU for £60. Parts needed For anyone else contemplating this conversion the best way to ensure that you have all the bits you need is to buy a complete running car. A Granada is a better bet than a Sierra because the engine bay wiring is a separate loom. The under bonnet wiring on a Sierra is integrated into the whole loom which means more work sorting out which wires to keep and which wires to remove. The obvious bit to remove is the engine but you must also remove the engine bay wiring loom, ECU, ECU relay, fuel pump relay, fuel pump and filter. On a Granada the fuel pump and filter are mounted on their own bracket under the boot floor. This is a very large assembly and I would suggest that you get a fuel filter bracket from a Sierra. This is mounted on an under bonnet bracket attached to the inner wing. I bought one from a breakers yard and it proved to be a lot easier to mount. Ensure that you also remove the throttle cable, air flow meter and the coil.
Fitting the Pinto Before fitting the engine I cut a hole through the bulkhead and passed the ECU connecter and part of the engine bay loom through. The injection loom has several brown wires which need to be earthed but I decided that they were best connected once the engine was in. Fitting a 2 litre injection engine into what was originally a Kent powered Mk1 Escort isn't much more work than fitting a carburetted Pinto. I decided that the easiest way was to use all the bits that Ford used for the RS2000. The first thing that I did was to replace the standard pressed steel sump and pick-up pipe with the RS alloy sump and pick-up pipe. The alloy sump was fixed with M6 x 20mm allen head bolts. I lowered the engine in and attached it to the crossmember with RS alloy engine mounts.
Fuel System Shown to the right is a picture of a modified fuel takeoff with gauze filter next to the original fuel takeoff and filter. Basically, the standard takeoff has been drilled out and a bigger bore steel pipe (16mm) has been welded in. This allows direct connection to the fuel injection pump. To reduce noise and vibration from the pump I've rubber mounted it by sliding it into a length of 2 inch rubber hose. This was bolted to a stainless steel plate using exhaust clamps and then mounted to the chassis rail with small rubber mounts from an electric fuel pump kit. The finished setup can be viewed here. I used a fuel filter and bracket from a Sierra and mounted it on the opposite chassis rail. This was connected to the fuel pump and the engine with 8mm nylon fuel line. View the filter here. A fuel injection system needs to have a return fuel line back to the tank. All Mk2 Ghias, Sports and RS models have a return line so a sensor from any of these models would do. I used the sensor from a 1600 Sport Mk2 Escort. The return fuel line is also 8mm nylon and goes from the fuel pressure regulator on the engine through the car to the sender on the tank. I decided to route the return line through the car so that it would be easier to connect to the tank sender. Shown to the right is a close-up of the sender. I know that ideally a swirl pot should be fitted but I've found that fuel surge is not a problem because of the Escort's upright fuel tank. The fuel runs out almost exactly as the needle drops out the bottom of the red section on the fuel gauge!
Airflow Meter I realised early on that the standard Granada/Sierra filter and airbox wouldn't fit so I ordered a K&N 57i kit for an injected Sierra. This cost £62 but came with all brackets, gaskets, rubber bushes, nuts and bolts. It also came with a length of 2" flexible aluminium ducting. The rubber bushes appeared to be the same as Mini exhaust mounts and luckily for me they had the same thread as the airflow meter. I screwed them directly into the airflow meter and then made up two brackets to mount the meter on the inner wing. This seemed to be a better solution than cutting a hole in the inner wing and mounting the filter under the wing and I can use the ducting to get cold air from behind the grill. I was initially concerned that mounting the airflow meter vertically may cause problems but the car seems to run with no problems. I will eventually test the it more accurately using a volt meter and a vacuum cleaner to compare voltages when mounted vertically and horizontally. The spring tension that holds the flap shut is easily adjusted by removing the black cover and rotating the ratchet. The original trunking was pre-shaped into a 90 degree bend. This was not even close to being long enough or flexible enough to join the plenum to the airflow meter. I spent a morning scouring a breakers yard for different lengths and shapes of trunking hoping to find something that would fit. I eventually found some that was close enough. It was from an fuel injected Montego. One end of the trunking would fit the plenum or the airflow meter but the other end was slightly too small. It was the same outside diameter as the plenum so I went back to the breakers yard and bought another one. I cut the big end off and used it as a sleeve to join the trunking to the airflow meter.
Ancillaries I had the standard Granada alternator bracket and the rubber bushed RS2000 one. The RS mount positions the alternator lower in the car and I can only think that this is to clear the long arm servo fitted to an RS2000. I don't have a servo fitted because I find that I can feel more through the brake pedal without one so I chose to use the Granada bracket. The Granada dipstick is the wrong length for the shallower RS2000 sump so bear this in mind when checking the oil level. The 'max' mark is about an inch lower that it should be. I originally marked the dipstick at the correct height but have since 'cut down' another dipstick. The ideal solution would be to get an RS2000 dipstick and tube. With the engine in place I trial fitted the exhaust manifold I had to make sure that it was for an Escort and not a Capri. I also temporarily re-fitted the bonnet to make sure that it cleared the injection plenum. Radiator I decided that the best radiator to use was a Mk1 RS2000 one. This was designed to work in conjunction with the RS2000 electric fan that I was using when the car was crossflow powered. This means that there is a thermostat in one end of the header tank to trigger the fan. The radiator mounting flanges are also different to any other Escort radiator by being at an angle. This positions the radiator an inch nearer the front of the car and tilting backwards slightly. I've shown the angled flange and thermostat in the picture on the right. Fitting the RS radiator requires the slam panel to be trimmed back. The picture to the right shows how far I trimmed the panel and also the RS electric fan and bracket. The hoses used to connect the engine to the radiator are unique to the Mk1 RS2000. After trying several local motor factors I realised that these were no longer available. Thankfully the AVO Owners Club came to my rescue. They have them re-manufactured and currently sell them for £12 each. They also sell clutch cables for the Mk1 RS2000 for about £30. I was given a Mk2 RS2000 clutch cable only to find that it was too big to fit the tube in the bulkhead. This rules out, at the very least, all 1979 onwards Fords. I have heard that pinto powered Mk1 Capris have the correct fitting but so far have been unable to find one to try.
Wiring The wiring appears to be a daunting task at first but there is actually very little to it. The underbonnet section of the loom consists of connectors that only fit the correct ancillaries. The plug for the airflow meter will only fit the airflow meter, etc. Inside the car there is one large grey connector, two relays, a fuse holder, a pair of brown wires and a connector with 9 wires. The large grey connector goes to the ECU which I mounted up high on the passenger side kick panel. The two relays are coloured brown and yellow. The brown one is for the ECU and has a built in fuse. The yellow one is a relay for the fuel pump and for some reason has a separate fuse further along the loom. There are two wires out of the nine that have to be connected for the car to run. The thick red/black wire has to be connected to the fuel pump and the black wire has to be connected to an ignition switched live. This black wire powers the brown relay which turns on the ECU which in turn triggers the yellow fuel pump relay which powers up the fuel pump. The green wire is optional and goes to the rev counter but only works on electronic rev counters. The Mk1 Escort uses an electro-magnetic rev counter and so doesn't work. The Mk2 Escort uses an electronic rev counter so if you're doing this conversion on one of those just connect the green wire to it and away you go. I have had my rev counter converted to electronic by Speedycables who charged £50 plus postage plus VAT. They removed all the electrical components and replaced them with a small circuit board. This had wires coming out from it going to the original mechanism. It Lives! The car was started and left to idle for 30 minutes while all fuel connections were checked for leaks. I'm pleased to say that there were none. The car has since proved to be extremely reliable and excellent on fuel. I thoroughly recommend this conversion to anyone needing to replace their worn engine.