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#1
A few years ago one day my door bell rang when two familiar faces had a set of car keys dangling in front of me, telling that these keys are now mine. The only thing I got out at this moment in time was a "Sorry?".
Well, the car was owned by the girlfriend of a client of mine, who also was a client of mine. Both came for performance tuning parts for their cars for some years.
She bought another car and the Cinquecento she used to own became surplus. So she decided to visit me and just drop the car with me. The car she bought then I own now too.
Here I was being lumbered with a yellow Fiat Cinquecento Sporting, which was dubbed 'lemon' in due course.
Lemon's chassis was fine. No rust, but had a number of niggles. As one can't look a gift horse into the mouth I just took it as it was then. Lemon was in good company. It was one of 4 Cinquecentos I owned then.
Lemon was great fun to drive like Cinquecentos are. But power is something I never can get enough of. Having done a 16v FIRE conversion on another one I thought I give this first a proper 1108cc treatment. Of course it shifted a lot better after gaining some good torque and 11bhp more, which was from 57 to 68bhp with 750kgs of car.
Sometime after I stuck another engine in, which came from a Punto 60. Before I fitted the engine I worked on the chead. The 1242 60 engine has got a single point injector, which means that the engine is a straight swap with the 1108. Just an exhaust spacer is needede and a re-map afterwards. This is even more important with the head work and the cam I had done for it.
Unfortunately the SPI injector only allows for 82bhp, but this was 25bhp up on what the car used to have when I got it.
It did shift. With driver it was just under 100bhp/ton.
One day I got offered a 1368 16v engine offered and thought I would fit that. So I started on the new project. Unfortunately this was the beginning of a frustrating period. In the middle of fitting it I got seriously sick and had to postpone further work. Then winter set in and nothing could be done. When I was able to continiue lemon was subjected to vandalism despite in a rather secure storage.
The project was thrown back further because I needed to repair the damage first.
Progress was slow, but a year later the engine was fitted in the final position, which is slightly different than the original position.
Some months later the exhaust was sorted and then the car had to be left for a while because of other work related projects.
A few weeks ago we decided to continue and get it sorted in order to see on the road soon..
After giving it a wash (of what is left of the car), we looked at the manifold. The engine was dynoed before coming out at 113bhp. At 850kg with driver this makes over 130bhp/ton. Not bad, but I want much more. Now some lightening is being done. The idea is to get off about 100kg with all the seats in and the same comfort as standard. And on the engine side the goal is to up it by 47bhp for the time being.
Well, it is work in progress.
This is the car when I was enjoying the 82bhp.
Well, the car was owned by the girlfriend of a client of mine, who also was a client of mine. Both came for performance tuning parts for their cars for some years.
She bought another car and the Cinquecento she used to own became surplus. So she decided to visit me and just drop the car with me. The car she bought then I own now too.
Here I was being lumbered with a yellow Fiat Cinquecento Sporting, which was dubbed 'lemon' in due course.
Lemon's chassis was fine. No rust, but had a number of niggles. As one can't look a gift horse into the mouth I just took it as it was then. Lemon was in good company. It was one of 4 Cinquecentos I owned then.
Lemon was great fun to drive like Cinquecentos are. But power is something I never can get enough of. Having done a 16v FIRE conversion on another one I thought I give this first a proper 1108cc treatment. Of course it shifted a lot better after gaining some good torque and 11bhp more, which was from 57 to 68bhp with 750kgs of car.
Sometime after I stuck another engine in, which came from a Punto 60. Before I fitted the engine I worked on the chead. The 1242 60 engine has got a single point injector, which means that the engine is a straight swap with the 1108. Just an exhaust spacer is needede and a re-map afterwards. This is even more important with the head work and the cam I had done for it.
Unfortunately the SPI injector only allows for 82bhp, but this was 25bhp up on what the car used to have when I got it.
It did shift. With driver it was just under 100bhp/ton.
One day I got offered a 1368 16v engine offered and thought I would fit that. So I started on the new project. Unfortunately this was the beginning of a frustrating period. In the middle of fitting it I got seriously sick and had to postpone further work. Then winter set in and nothing could be done. When I was able to continiue lemon was subjected to vandalism despite in a rather secure storage.
The project was thrown back further because I needed to repair the damage first.
Progress was slow, but a year later the engine was fitted in the final position, which is slightly different than the original position.
Some months later the exhaust was sorted and then the car had to be left for a while because of other work related projects.
A few weeks ago we decided to continue and get it sorted in order to see on the road soon..
After giving it a wash (of what is left of the car), we looked at the manifold. The engine was dynoed before coming out at 113bhp. At 850kg with driver this makes over 130bhp/ton. Not bad, but I want much more. Now some lightening is being done. The idea is to get off about 100kg with all the seats in and the same comfort as standard. And on the engine side the goal is to up it by 47bhp for the time being.
Well, it is work in progress.
This is the car when I was enjoying the 82bhp.
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