That "Blue Colt" of mine was an impressive car for many years. When a friend rode home with me when I got out of collage in Fla late '82 back to Conn, I had a loaded trailer with 3 motorcycles, my furniture, tool boxes and stuff. On that near 2K drive he felt I needed more low end torque. He lived in NYC, he soon found a 2.6 engine in a salvage yard on Staten island. It was literally new, like two miles on it. the D50 got hit on a drive from the dealer. He bought it and told me to come and get it. That being the earliest of 2.6 was a narrow block so it bolted up to my existing 5 speed.
Got the engine in the car and started driving it, stock engine did not impress me compared to the built 1600 that was "lively" Mind you that Colt was a 120mph car as it was, not the original 96mph the stock ones were.
So I bought a pair of 40mm Webers, new. Had a cam made with a Pinto circle track grind and that car came alive. Ran allot of track events and hillclimbs up till a made a mistake in June 2000, hit head on into rock ledge at a hillclimb, near 70mph impact with three tumbles.
In all those years I never needed to touch the carbs or engine. The engine is up in Nova Scotia now in a '74 Colt.
Here is a before and after of that car, The previous image with the V6 in it, you might notice the left side is new and there was no roof on it yet. I had not replaced the drivers side rollcage yet. I do not have allot of images of this since it predates the digital era.