I got word last week that there was a 19,000 mile 2.0 pinto for sale local to me so I bought that and got it home. I had been looking for weeks for a mazda mx5 to break so I could get all the running gear with ancillaries, loom, ecu and key but nothing was coming up and all the local mazda men had nothing at a reasonable price that suited me, all their complete cars were roadworthy and upwards of £1500, no thanks.
Sods law, the pinto was in my shed half an hour and an ideal mx5 came up in Ballymoney at £250, so you guessed it, I bought that too. Here it is at home yesterday, 1.8litre twin cam VVT engine mk2.5 with 5 speed box and 79,000 miles, drove it onto the trailer and its even got MOT lol. Supposed to be putting out 145bhp but the beauty of it is everything is there and it runs. The guy selling it stripped the interior and panels off it as he races them himself but apart from that it is pretty complete.
So now I have a toss up between a pinto or an mx5 engine in this project, all comments or feedback on the matter are welcome