The UK's (maybe even Europe's) 1st 1.4L 16V Seicento

[Guest]

OK OK it has taken me ages to get this together, but here it is at last.

The car belongs to Emma, but as we own a house together and I did lots of work on it, I qualify to write about it  ;D

The car started out as a standard low mileage 2001 Seicento Abarth MPi model, so normal Abarth stuff like full body kit,  14" wheels, lower final drive gearbox, Abarth on front grill, Abarth embroidered headrests on seats, red stitching on steering wheel. The car was never intended to be modified as at this time we had two hi-boost turbo Cinquecento's.

One evening,  just over a year ago while browsing ebay we came across a  8200 guaranteed miles 1.4L 16V from a written off Stilo for an exceptional price that included 24hour TNT delivery from a breakers yard in Southampton, we thought it rude not to buy it even if we didn't end up using it.

It was paid for and delivery day arranged, so imagine my surprise when TNT arrived with a  massive pallet all covered in bubble wrap, my first thought were that will never fit in a 'Cento as it was massive. On inspection though it turned out that not only did we receive an engine, but all the ancillaries were still attached as was the 6 speed gearbox, it still had oil in the engine it as it hadn't even been drained, they had literally just cut through the exhaust behind the engine and cut two water pipes and lifted it out of the car lock stock and barrel, dropped on pallet and wrapped it, it really did turn out to be an even bigger bargain than we at first envisaged.

So it was at this point that the decision was made, the Seicento was going to receive the engine gearbox combo as the Abarth gearbox would have been hopeless at cruising due to its lower final drive, good for sprinting not so good for fuel economy or high speed motorway comfort.

i should at this stage point out that much of the engineering decisions were made by Emma's dad Jon who is a modest man but I don't mind blowing his trumpet. He is an engine development engineer for Mahle Powertain maybe not a name known to all but if I was to say that until about 18mpnths ago they were know as Cosworth Technology people will know who they are. He has also worked for Tickford (Prodrive now) and Nissan WRC Europe, Chequered Flag Lancia Stratos rally team, and built many race and rally cars for other people, and if that wasn't enough, he was back in 1976 the UK Cars & Car Conversions Rally Champion in a Hillman Imp of all things, so knows how to drive as well.

So last winter the Sei was taken off the road, but not before we put a fresh MOT on it to ensure it was going to be covered once conversion was done, gives you time to iron out any issues before it has to be MOT'd again.

The actual physical fitting of the engine was not difficult, a minor modification was made to the driver side engine mount bracket to clear the alternator belt, and some spacers plates were made by Jon as although the engine bolted in he wanted to move it approx 5mm to the right as with his experience of engine dyno development work knows that alternator belts can move a much bigger amount than you think under high rpm's, this was to build in a little more clearance on the alternator belt side. The standard exhaust manifold with CAT built in was never going to work so this was removed and replaced by a Super|Sprint tubular manifold which was also wrapped in graphite impregnated exhaust wrap as it still comes close to the rad and a water pipe, so again building in protection. Another issue we had was the plastic one piece inlet manifold, this is rather large, so we used a 2 piece alloy/plastic inlet manifold from a early 1.2 16V Punto, and even though this is shorter by some 20mm it still meant that the water return pipe from the heater matrix was close to it, so I removed the bulkhead protector and shortened the pipe and rather than have the hose clip T-piece out side bulkhead, it is now inside bulk head, a minor and overlooked modification.

After it had been trial fitted and checked all clearances attention turned to the gearbox, being a 6 speed its about 20mm longer than the 5 speed unit, this present s a problem of when you turn the car full lock to the right the wheel would rub on the gearbox housing which is an MOT failure if noticed by MOT station, so a set of lock reducers were made from nylon plumbers bushes which helped the situation.

So the actual fitting was covered, though we still had to address the throttle body as the engine came with a fly-by-wire Bosch unit linked to Bosch management, this was going. As it happened Jon had a brand new 45mm Rover K series throttle body so rather than buy a Fiat throttle body which would mean using a longer throttle cable were the throttle quadrant is on far side exhaust side of the car and looks a bit untidy, the added unforeseen bonus of using the K-series TB was the throttle quadrant is on inlet side and means no need to replace throttle cable, and looks much neater and more factory.

Now we come to engine management, at first we did look at maybe using the standard Bosch ECU, but Jon took it into work got the ECU guru's to have a look explaining what he wanted it to do, these guys develop engines for BMW, Audi, Nissan, Suzuki etc etc you name it they have done it and the decision was made there and then, its old technology and is not fit to do what we wanted, remapping it was a best a bodge and could never replicate what a stand alone unit could do. So standalone ECU, we thought maybe Megasquirt, but were put off by the whole home build aspect to it and the fact some rolling road operators don't like using it, so we then looked at Emerald, well respected unit and cheap, in fact cheaper than two mapping sessions on a standard ECU, it was a no brainier really in the end.

So Jon had the unenviable task of stripping back the loom tracing all the wires, marking everything up so that a loom could be made to plug into the Emerald as it controls the fuelling as its a retrunless system, ignition, rev limiter, lambda control, throttle position (another added bonus of using K-series TB the Emerald was originally designed for K-series Lotus' & kit car builders) and even the radiator fan. in the end it was a time consuming but ultimately rewarding work to achieve the new loom. the leads are Kerr-Nelson racing leads and we run Fiat wasted spark rather than Coil-per-plug of the 1.4 16V, wasted spark keep sit all clean.

The car was all coming together, a intake system was made using a BMC Carbon Dynamic Airbox and after market stainless steel 90degree bends and s/s joiners and the air intake with Piper Cross "trumpet" down behind the vent on the Abarth spotlight section to ensure cool air is only taken in.

The exhaust system had to be bespoke, we utilised two Cherry Bomb Silencers, one being the new Diver type, a Rover KV6 s/s CAT & 2" pipe that Jon had and made up a system that flows very well, and is clean, sounds great, what more do you need 

Got the car all put together and the time came to get help before it was started, Chris a former colleague of jon's and now the owner of the rolling Road up at 1320 Autos came over and using a base map from a 1.4 K series engine got it running, it was rich, but running, so a quick map was put on to be able to drive it back to rolling road to get the proper mapping underway.

Up at 1320 it spent a few hours on the rollers tweeking everything and after it all it made 108bhp 100lb ft 9flywheel it was over 90bhp at wheels) which was an excellent result, but the real beauty is that with standalone its so easy to tweek the maps which now that the engine has been in for about 8 months is going to happen as the engine has really loosened up and after some checking and adjustment of cam timing is much quicker than when we first built it, it feels like it has at least 10bhp more, so time to go back and find out!

Once the car was running it was apparent that the standard running gear was now left long behind, the brakes although new were poor, the standard dampers were in Jon's words wooful for rebound and the addition of H7R springs only highlighted this.

With having experience of big brake conversion on the turbo Cinq's we went the tried and tested route of Punto GT Turbo front disc conversion, so going from 240mm solid discs to 257mm vented discs and much bigger callipers, and will all fit inside 14" wheels! And on the rear those now unused front discs were employed as rear discs with again a Punto GT Turbo rear disc conversion using special group buy brackets.

The car now stopped like it should, the brakes had brilliant feel, massive retardation abilities and plus looked good

So the attention was then on suspension, having had experience of various set ups, teh Cinq having Weitech, we went for KW Suspension after hearing good things about it from VAG owners, it was the final piece of the puzzle, its a well thought out system retaining good overall ride comfort but hugely increased road holding and a more aggressive stance being 35mm lower without loosing suspension travel.

In terms of styling nothing has been done except the addition of rare optional extra multi spoke Abarth wheel we bought from a dealer who had decided to change from a Fait Alfa dealer to standalone Alfa, so no need for the ex-display stock, again another bargain for brand new wheels! the side panel between the door and rear window has had black textured vinyl added to make the car look a bit slicker and more modern. Oh and it has a Fiat 100 16V badge on it, we did toy with a 100hp badge from a Panda, but found this which is in terms of age is right for the car and replaced the Sporting badge

In the interior we have replace the upper air vents with oil and water temp gauges so we can monitor what's going on and the rev counter and instrument binnacle have been flocked to stop the reflections on the windscreen.

As for performance, we have recorded a 15.9sec 1/4 mile, and sub 8sec 0-60, its easily on par with hi-boost turbo's, and in fact through the gears maybe even faster, it will never have the low end torque surge a turbo has so in some situations the turbo with less need to change down a ear will be quicker, but working through the sweet shifting 6 speed box is fun and rewarding.

Hope you enjoyed the read here's some pics!

[j333evo]

OK OK it has taken me ages to get this together, but here it is at last.

The car belongs to Emma, but as we own a house together and I did lots of work on it, I qualify to write about it  ;D

The car started out as a standard low mileage 2001 Seicento Abarth MPi model, so normal Abarth stuff like full body kit,  14" wheels, lower final drive gearbox, Abarth on front grill, Abarth embroidered headrests on seats, red stitching on steering wheel. The car was never intended to be modified as at this time we had two hi-boost turbo Cinquecento's.

One evening,  just over a year ago while browsing ebay we came across a  8200 guaranteed miles 1.4L 16V from a written off Stilo for an exceptional price that included 24hour TNT delivery from a breakers yard in Southampton, we thought it rude not to buy it even if we didn't end up using it.

It was paid for and delivery day arranged, so imagine my surprise when TNT arrived with a  massive pallet all covered in bubble wrap, my first thought were that will never fit in a 'Cento as it was massive. On inspection though it turned out that not only did we receive an engine, but all the ancillaries were still attached as was the 6 speed gearbox, it still had oil in the engine it as it hadn't even been drained, they had literally just cut through the exhaust behind the engine and cut two water pipes and lifted it out of the car lock stock and barrel, dropped on pallet and wrapped it, it really did turn out to be an even bigger bargain than we at first envisaged.

So it was at this point that the decision was made, the Seicento was going to receive the engine gearbox combo as the Abarth gearbox would have been hopeless at cruising due to its lower final drive, good for sprinting not so good for fuel economy or high speed motorway comfort.

i should at this stage point out that much of the engineering decisions were made by Emma's dad Jon who is a modest man but I don't mind blowing his trumpet. He is an engine development engineer for Mahle Powertain maybe not a name known to all but if I was to say that until about 18mpnths ago they were know as Cosworth Technology people will know who they are. He has also worked for Tickford (Prodrive now) and Nissan WRC Europe, Chequered Flag Lancia Stratos rally team, and built many race and rally cars for other people, and if that wasn't enough, he was back in 1976 the UK Cars & Car Conversions Rally Champion in a Hillman Imp of all things, so knows how to drive as well.

So last winter the Sei was taken off the road, but not before we put a fresh MOT on it to ensure it was going to be covered once conversion was done, gives you time to iron out any issues before it has to be MOT'd again.

The actual physical fitting of the engine was not difficult, a minor modification was made to the driver side engine mount bracket to clear the alternator belt, and some spacers plates were made by Jon as although the engine bolted in he wanted to move it approx 5mm to the right as with his experience of engine dyno development work knows that alternator belts can move a much bigger amount than you think under high rpm's, this was to build in a little more clearance on the alternator belt side. The standard exhaust manifold with CAT built in was never going to work so this was removed and replaced by a Super|Sprint tubular manifold which was also wrapped in graphite impregnated exhaust wrap as it still comes close to the rad and a water pipe, so again building in protection. Another issue we had was the plastic one piece inlet manifold, this is rather large, so we used a 2 piece alloy/plastic inlet manifold from a early 1.2 16V Punto, and even though this is shorter by some 20mm it still meant that the water return pipe from the heater matrix was close to it, so I removed the bulkhead protector and shortened the pipe and rather than have the hose clip T-piece out side bulkhead, it is now inside bulk head, a minor and overlooked modification.

After it had been trial fitted and checked all clearances attention turned to the gearbox, being a 6 speed its about 20mm longer than the 5 speed unit, this present s a problem of when you turn the car full lock to the right the wheel would rub on the gearbox housing which is an MOT failure if noticed by MOT station, so a set of lock reducers were made from nylon plumbers bushes which helped the situation.

So the actual fitting was covered, though we still had to address the throttle body as the engine came with a fly-by-wire Bosch unit linked to Bosch management, this was going. As it happened Jon had a brand new 45mm Rover K series throttle body so rather than buy a Fiat throttle body which would mean using a longer throttle cable were the throttle quadrant is on far side exhaust side of the car and looks a bit untidy, the added unforeseen bonus of using the K-series TB was the throttle quadrant is on inlet side and means no need to replace throttle cable, and looks much neater and more factory.

Now we come to engine management, at first we did look at maybe using the standard Bosch ECU, but Jon took it into work got the ECU guru's to have a look explaining what he wanted it to do, these guys develop engines for BMW, Audi, Nissan, Suzuki etc etc you name it they have done it and the decision was made there and then, its old technology and is not fit to do what we wanted, remapping it was a best a bodge and could never replicate what a stand alone unit could do. So standalone ECU, we thought maybe Megasquirt, but were put off by the whole home build aspect to it and the fact some rolling road operators don't like using it, so we then looked at Emerald, well respected unit and cheap, in fact cheaper than two mapping sessions on a standard ECU, it was a no brainier really in the end.

So Jon had the unenviable task of stripping back the loom tracing all the wires, marking everything up so that a loom could be made to plug into the Emerald as it controls the fuelling as its a retrunless system, ignition, rev limiter, lambda control, throttle position (another added bonus of using K-series TB the Emerald was originally designed for K-series Lotus' & kit car builders) and even the radiator fan. in the end it was a time consuming but ultimately rewarding work to achieve the new loom. the leads are Kerr-Nelson racing leads and we run Fiat wasted spark rather than Coil-per-plug of the 1.4 16V, wasted spark keep sit all clean.

The car was all coming together, a intake system was made using a BMC Carbon Dynamic Airbox and after market stainless steel 90degree bends and s/s joiners and the air intake with Piper Cross "trumpet" down behind the vent on the Abarth spotlight section to ensure cool air is only taken in.

The exhaust system had to be bespoke, we utilised two Cherry Bomb Silencers, one being the new Diver type, a Rover KV6 s/s CAT & 2" pipe that Jon had and made up a system that flows very well, and is clean, sounds great, what more do you need 

Got the car all put together and the time came to get help before it was started, Chris a former colleague of jon's and now the owner of the rolling Road up at 1320 Autos came over and using a base map from a 1.4 K series engine got it running, it was rich, but running, so a quick map was put on to be able to drive it back to rolling road to get the proper mapping underway.

Up at 1320 it spent a few hours on the rollers tweeking everything and after it all it made 108bhp 100lb ft 9flywheel it was over 90bhp at wheels) which was an excellent result, but the real beauty is that with standalone its so easy to tweek the maps which now that the engine has been in for about 8 months is going to happen as the engine has really loosened up and after some checking and adjustment of cam timing is much quicker than when we first built it, it feels like it has at least 10bhp more, so time to go back and find out!

Once the car was running it was apparent that the standard running gear was now left long behind, the brakes although new were poor, the standard dampers were in Jon's words wooful for rebound and the addition of H7R springs only highlighted this.

With having experience of big brake conversion on the turbo Cinq's we went the tried and tested route of Punto GT Turbo front disc conversion, so going from 240mm solid discs to 257mm vented discs and much bigger callipers, and will all fit inside 14" wheels! And on the rear those now unused front discs were employed as rear discs with again a Punto GT Turbo rear disc conversion using special group buy brackets.

The car now stopped like it should, the brakes had brilliant feel, massive retardation abilities and plus looked good

So the attention was then on suspension, having had experience of various set ups, teh Cinq having Weitech, we went for KW Suspension after hearing good things about it from VAG owners, it was the final piece of the puzzle, its a well thought out system retaining good overall ride comfort but hugely increased road holding and a more aggressive stance being 35mm lower without loosing suspension travel.

In terms of styling nothing has been done except the addition of rare optional extra multi spoke Abarth wheel we bought from a dealer who had decided to change from a Fait Alfa dealer to standalone Alfa, so no need for the ex-display stock, again another bargain for brand new wheels! the side panel between the door and rear window has had black textured vinyl added to make the car look a bit slicker and more modern. Oh and it has a Fiat 100 16V badge on it, we did toy with a 100hp badge from a Panda, but found this which is in terms of age is right for the car and replaced the Sporting badge

In the interior we have replace the upper air vents with oil and water temp gauges so we can monitor what's going on and the rev counter and instrument binnacle have been flocked to stop the reflections on the windscreen.

As for performance, we have recorded a 15.9sec 1/4 mile, and sub 8sec 0-60, its easily on par with hi-boost turbo's, and in fact through the gears maybe even faster, it will never have the low end torque surge a turbo has so in some situations the turbo with less need to change down a ear will be quicker, but working through the sweet shifting 6 speed box is fun and rewarding.

Hope you enjoyed the read here's some pics!

[j333evo]

Some more build pics

[j333evo]

Rear discs



Keep finding more pics, please excuse me lol

Fiat optional Panda peddles

[j333evo]

With the Cinq before suspension was done.

[halfpint]

i saw her at combe in sept. a great bit of car and alot of hard graft. defo a one of a kind. amazing what can be done to these lil cars hey!!!
well done aaron a piece of art at the end of it.

[pulsar sean]

  superb work there mate it looks so factory!! top job 

[N@tal!e]

Love it    ;D

[J.R Racing]

Just to let you know factory ECU is not at best a bodge as my 16v has been running ace since its remap at Red Dot and maintained exceptional reliability. The stock map gave me over 90bhp with no alterations!  its not a bodge as works 100%.


I would hope Emma's 1368 engine can produce more than 108bhp, I have seem a remapped 1368 with induction and s/s backbox on a panda achieve 120bhp+ atf. I would get Emma's dad to spend some more time on the rolling road.
 

Good project, first one in England for sure, but not in Europe my friend. Terry from cc Greece claims to have had one running on the road as early as June 2006.

I hope it brings Emma many miles of happy motoring.

[centox8r]

Just to ad to Aarons comments im on my third cinq and ive had a novitec turbo cinq before the one i have now and i am still learning about this great little car thanks to people like Aaron with his knowledge that he is willing to share. Many times ive pm'ed Aaron and ive always got the anwsers im looking for. you do sound bitter, what you really shoud be doing is enjoying the fact that such a little car can put a smile on our faces and when tuned right can shock other bigger car owners



Stakes

[Blowback]

If you explain why tthe standard ECU is a bodge then it would be easier to understand. 
I know people that run DTA and wish they had been able to remap the standard ECU because the car is not as driveable as before and also refuses to start in the cold.
I think some standard ECU's work well when remapped maybe the cento one is very limited at the end of the day from what I've heard when you buy aftermarket most of the struggle is getting to where you were before.  The easier bit is squeesing the extra power out.

Also from what I have seen on the punto side of things you should be able to get around 120bhp from the 1.4 on the standard ECU with breathing mods and a remap (I will have to check what rr that is on to confirm not chipped uk).  Which is why J.R. Racing thinks with aftermarket management you should get more but as you said it feels a lot quicker now than it did before so I would be interested to see what it is pushing out now.

How much does the cento weigh?

[Jamie86]

I'm sure there'll be another RR session soon as I plan on having my new Sei checked over at 1320 as soon as i've fitted a Coop fuel pump and a pressure regulator. .Possibly an Electronic boost controller as well depending on how flush i'm feeling  :-\
So will get Emma and Aaron up there as well!

I can say this car is rather quick and even suprised me just how quick it is on normal roads etc.. and pretty sure it'd give my Sei a bit a of  bashing 

[j333evo]

If you explain why tthe standard ECU is a bodge then it would be easier to understand.  I know people that run DTA and wish they had been able to remap the standard ECU because the car is not as driveable as before and also refuses to start in the cold.
I think some standard ECU's work well when remapped maybe the cento one is very limited at the end of the day from what I've heard when you buy aftermarket most of the struggle is getting to where you were before.  The easier bit is squeesing the extra power out.

Also from what I have seen on the punto side of things you should be able to get around 120bhp from the 1.4 on the standard ECU with breathing mods and a remap (I will have to check what rr that is on to confirm not chipped uk).  Which is why J.R. Racing thinks with aftermarket management you should get more but as you said it feels a lot quicker now than it did before so I would be interested to see what it is pushing out now.

How much does the cento weigh?

OK we will take the Seicento as the example; it either starts life as a Single Point Injection (SPI) 8V 1108cc engine, or later models are multi point injection (MPi).

The ECU's on the older SPi is pretty old now with pretty slow processing speed and as the name suggests it only has a single injector feeding the engine. To make this MPi what most do is just splice the injector feed wire into 4 and feed four injectors, now I am sure anyone who understands even a little of how engines work can see this is not ideal, the injectors are not controlled individually but just fire in batch. This engine has no knock sensor control, but does have closed loop lambda control. Also on a Spi car the timing is all wrong on the injector pulse, on a SPi car the injector pulse takes into account the fact the injector is a considerable distance from the actual pistons, so the time interval for the fuel to get from injector to combustion chamber is longer than a dedicated MPi set up as teh injectors are much closer to the combustion chamber so time delay is much much shorter. This means that the fuelling can be monitored much more accurately and therefor fuel economy is better and emission lower, this is why the Seicento's went Mpi as the old SPi couldn't meet the Euro emissions targets at that time. This problem has reared its head with many remapped ECU as to try and combat the time delay in a  more powerful fuel hungry engine the fuelling is increased, though this can lead to rich running at lower RPM's

The Mpi is a better starting point as it has multi point injection so no need for splices wires so at least the injection is better controlled. And the ECU is newer though still an old, think 15 year old since it was developed Marelli system, we are on Bosch ME7 now on modern cars which in itself will soon be superseded, so again processing speed is slow. Also on the Mpi models it has cam phase sensor and IIRC knock sensor. This is good as standard ECU knows exactly what is going on but this then proves its own problems if you change the engine. One the phase sensor is looking for information from a single cam, the 16V unit is twin cam so you can't connect it, so the ECU through up error codes and will not work right, plus as the 1368 16V engine is high compression of 11:1 instead of 9.6:1 on 1108 the knock sensor needs to be more accurate as with higher compression you are running much closer to knock to achieve the best from the engine.

So you see from an engine conversion point of view neither option is ideal as they both through up problems that really are no better than a bodge.

Every time you change something on the engine its needs full expensive mapping session, the initial cost saving in keeping it soon gets overtaken by the mapping sessions if you continue to tune the car.

The actual perimeters that can be changed are small, fuelling, ignition advance/retard that's about it, and the step values are small, typically every 500rpmon an old ECU as found in a cento. So on a car that runs from 0-7000rpm that's only 14 points it mapped at, which is pretty poor.

On a N/A car anyone who claims they can achieve more than 10% over a manufacturer developed map at a cost of thousands of pounds is dreaming, which is why all the large reputable companies never advertise big gains on N/A cars as its just not possible, you can only tweak fuelling and ignition so much.

OK that's some cons, lets see some Pro's.

The pro's of standard ECU is cold start mapping,and idle control. I know from Jon that when it comes to ECU mapping of new engines, the cold start mapping accounts for weeks of work to get it right, and this is in a proper dyno cell where you can control every single element of the environment. So you can heat the engine up cool it down, run it sub zero etc to fine tune cold start mapping, actual normal running mapping doesn't take anywhere near as long. So fitting standalone you loose this and dependent on time of year you are limited to the extent of cold start mapping you can do, and will normally need some follow up mapping to iron out any issues, ours has been great so far, though a little fine tuning would be nice as its like to sit on idle for 30secs on cold morning before pulling away as you can stall it easily, once warm no issues at all.

Its there and all wiring done, no need to change anything, it sits in its own bracket etc

Other pro's are on more modern cars the whole car runs off the ECU, steering, air-bags ABS etc, though on Cento's this is not the case as they are too old.

Standalone ECU cons:

The cold start mapping & idle control can be tricky to set up correctly and needs time, the time and effort of stripping back the loom tracing all the wires and then wiring them into a new loom to fit new ECU, making bracket to sit it in etc, i suppose you could say the stuff you take for granted on the standard car.

Initial cost can be expensive, Emerald as example is £550, right up to Motec which are £1500+ and used by the big tuners running big power integrale's, EVO's Skylines' etc as the standard ECU just can't cope no matter what you do to it and these are the original engines, imagine changing them!!!

May not be compatible with all engine sensors so may need to change them, ours was fine though we did use a K series throttle body and this is controlled by Emerald.

the Pro's though which far out way the con's

It is fully mappable & three dimensional graphs can be displayed for all tables ,and with the use of a 32bit Windows platform you can view everything on the ECU with a lap-top on on your PC. Plus its is mappable over more steps typically like the Emerald 64 so big improvement over the 14 or so found on standard ECU as if you can map it over much smaller areas the tolerances re much closer so the engine runs better.

Once its set up on a particular engine its very easy to adjust the parameters to take into account the new items.

Any additional rolling road time is cheap as can take less than 30mins to adjust for any additional tuning work done.

Standalone ECU's can control wideband lambda control, so fuelling is much much closer scrutinised over a closed loop lambda standard ECU that means lambda control is disable on wide open throttle.

you can data log with standalone ECU, so download all the stuff on your engines health, temperature control etc

On our car we can even map the fan control as this is ECU controlled, so say when we are on wide open throttle for extended runs, ie track day, fan comes on earlier and for longer, no standard ECU can do that.

Standalone can control multi injectors, wasted spark systems, coil per spark systems as well in some cases, turbo boost control, anti lag, traction control via ABS etc the limits are almost endless.

OK you say of  Punto 1368's making 120bhp when they started at 95bhp with a remap and exhaust, that works out at a 32% increase in power, that's just not real, getting a 32% increase on a turbo car is deemed blooming good and on those you turn up boost, on a N/A car I fail to believe it as I wish it was that easy.

I quote a certain Olaf Manthey of Manthey Racing, a world renowned Porsche tuner based at Nurburgring, the absolute perfectionist of Porsche tuning and there are many Porsche tuners.

He said in a recent interview with EVO mag he has read of tuners saying they can get 20bhp more on a 3.6L Porsche 911, he and I quote "Anyone who says that they can get 20bhp with an exhaust system is lying. If it were that simple, Porsche would have done it themselves." Now I know you can't compare a Porsche with a Fiat as the Porsche is going to be tuned more to its limit and had much much moire development work done on it in this respect, but an engine is an engine and it stands to reason that these claims can't be quantified.

I think I have covered everything and I think when you read again and see that our car made a significant 14bhp which is 15% increase in BHP over the engine as it started it is actually a good and honest result, it would have been all so easy for us to manipulate the r/r figures as I have been shown on the r/r  how it is done and its so simple. Though as said it has loosened up very nicely now and it would not surprise me to see some more from it, but remember we fitted after market ECU to control the engine correctly, in terms of actual modifications it has a manifold, still runs CAT, exhaust system and bigger throttle body and induction kit, that's it, everything else is bog standard as we wanted the car to be quick and reliable and fuel efficient which it is. I would honestly say its faster than the turbo backing up what Jamie says through the gears though it has no where near the low down torque of a turbo.

When Jamie and I go back to rolling road we will get a set of results from both cars, a hi-boost turbo and a 1368 16V and compare shoudl be interesting.

Aaron.

PS Seicento's weigh in at about 880kgs as weighed by us, considerably lighter than say a Panda or Punto with eth same engine therefore much better bhp/ton ratio.  As always cars weigh heavier than quoted at factory, manufacturer figures are always way lighter than actual car is, so it will easily be quicker than a Panda 100hp as they are a bit slow, much slower than my Ignis Sport as displayed in the head to head in Performance Tuner mag, 100hp didn't even crack 10secs 0-60 with Datron equipment strapped to it at Bruntigthorpe, ignis with 17" (standard 15") wheels was still quicker than standard 8.8 0-60 standard 8.9 quoted. And I know the Seicento is quicker than the Ignis.

[Jamie86]

And I know the Seicento is quicker than the Ignis.

But not quite as quick as a 17year old french flimsy hatch 

[j333evo]

And I know the Seicento is quicker than the Ignis.

But not quite as quick as a 17year old french flimsy hatch 

LOL, yeah that's last time I take i give you a  place in Glasgow to sleep for the night & take you out and show you around and help you buy a car ya & give you my most welcome company on the drive there and back, cheeky wee booger 

And now I think of it, where is this French legend now 

[CPH]

The Seicento MPI ECU is a Marelli.

In one point I have to disagree. When my friend Steve had his road going competition 205 with Weber Alpha injection mapped by the company the fuel bill alone was £2000. The car was there for over three months and the rr testing was supported by extensive road testing up and down the motorway in the early morning hours.

Otherwise some good points.