some progress over the weekend, fitted the spoiler, light and grill back on
 
cleaned mountains of painted sound deadener off, just a few small rust spots which I'm probably just make worse if I tried to spotweld it

dint came out well from what it was. I never knew Ford used liquid nails as seam sealer! Still gooby after go knows how long. The thin cut off disk suggested in the garage thread is prefect, and together with flap disks are my best friends.

i'm fairly certain that all blocks were black and only the valve cover and cam wheel cover were blue or black depending on if you had a HC or LC engine.

mine will be Blub because the engine bay will be a metallic brown going to paint the engine blue
even though only the high compression engine was available in 1979.

Looks like it was black to start with.
The spare fan cover I have is blue, did they do the grey ones for a different model ?(originally it is a Cortina judging by stamp).
I found this engine rebuild plate after cleaning the block a little, apparently Ford themselves used to do rebuilds which I had never heard before. If it's 40 thousand oversize, what does the displacement that works out to be? The camshaft looks like it's possibly the original as it has Ford Logo cast in. All of the top of the engine looked  pretty good on first impression, but I was wondering if there is anything suspect around the front edge of the head gasket, above the thermostat housing. Its hard to see in the last photo, but it looks as if theres corrosion around the top of the block, under the head gasket on the LHS above the thermostat housing.
I have a new waterpump, gaskets, leads, plugs, and flywheel, clutch plate etc etc coming. The plan was just to get the car mobile again to start with. Is it worth getting the new flywheel/clutch assembly balanced before putting it together.?
 
   

Yeah and while the head gasket is being swapped. .. take the head in to be skimmed. . Like 0.120th .. get some compression in there . It'll love it , but it'll need a adj cam wheel to take care of the timing issues caused be the head sitting lower on the block.
Balancing is good but are you chasing every drop of bhp, most pinto's are pretty good . I've swapped a flywheel over in mine and was fine without balance.

thanks guys.
2,038 cc of grunt:) 
I usually do things twice, and since the fat man in the red suit is coming, I think I'll try to get it assembled over Christmas, and pinch the weber 32/36 off the capri to get it going. Then in a few months pull it out to paint the engine bay and do the engine properly. I'm nearly in between garages ATM, so everythings a mess and mostly in storage.
The car came with a bundle of gaskets, so its wont be a drama if some get sacrificed redoing it again.
Go idea with getting the head skimmed, and I'll skip the balancing then.
Hopefully it ends up being a good engine to start with.
 

should have a baffle, put one back in in if you re able, really does stop oil sloshing around.  Top end really can't afford not to have a good oil supply. Len