Post by oldschool on Mar 6, 2007 23:14:07 GMT
The Cinquecento Sporting equipped with the 1108SPI FIRE engine certainly has one of the smaller engines rather than a massive and very powerful engine. Despite the size this engine should not be underestimated. Of course the options are to change the engine in favour of the bigger FIRE engines or any other engine one?s desire might come up with. The only problem that some people might encounter is the financial limit.
But when taking a closer look at this engine should excite the tuner. At 54bhp and 86Nm it is not an engine with an outrageous output. On the other hand this engine had a power output of 120bhp in the group N Cinquecentos. This is about 120% more than the stock engine. Surprised?
Even in the standard configuration it outruns many more cars that one would expect.
Continuing to have a close look it soon becomes ever so clear that this engine has been strangulated. The Brazilian version of the 999cc MPI engine has a power output of 65bhp. This shows that there must be some reason for the comparatively low power output that is far away from the real capabilities of the 1108cc engine. Actually the reason for it is the taxation laws in Italy.
What can be done to increase the power in the Cinquecento Sporting?
Changing the engine is one of the options to look at. And this will be done a bit further down.
The simplest way to improve the power and torque is to fit a proper induction kit. Cheaper so called induction kits, which consist of a 'mushroom' filter element on top of the throttle body will make the car sound faster and might help it breathe better, but the performance will be only partly improved. The disadvantage of these filter elements is the missing induction length in order to increase the moving mass in the induction tube and gas speed can't be increased as there aren't any passages present to do so. Such induction kits often suffer from poor top end speed reducing it in many by in excess of 20%! Foam filters have an additional disadvantage because they do not flow as well as cotton gauze filters, which would not create a real problem when enough space for a large enough filter element can be found anywhere under the bonnet.
When money is an object, replacing the paper filter by a performance replacement filter element will improve performance slightly but noticeably with only little money being spent (app. £35.00). Going a bit further with a proper induction kit consisting of an extended tube (hopefully without any sharp corners like some aluminium tubes that have bends which never saw a mandrel bender rather than being cut in an angle an then welded together) and a rather big cotton gauze filter element can make a substantial improvement. The highest the author have measured so far on an induction kit of this sort had an improvement of 13Nm of torque and about 4bhp as a single modification. This means that the torque improved in the region of 15%! This is about the same sort of improvement that would be achieved by just swapping the 1108cc by a 1242cc! This comes at a much lower price tag (from app. £120.00) than an engine replacement and obviously creates less of a headache too as the exhaust has not to be adapted etc.
Of course, the engine swap opens other avenues due to the higher capacity of the engine. On the other hand a complete Supersprint exhaust and a proper induction kit will set us back by the same amount as an engine swap on its own and is rather convenient to fit. Additionally the power per pound ratio is much higher too. If then an up rated throttle body is fitted a remap is needed. By then the car is considerably more powerful and much more fun to drive without touching the internal parts of the engine. The only other external improvement apart from a forced induction is the reworking of the inlet manifold. There are a number of ways to go about it. The cheapest would be to remove sharp edges and to increase the size of the ports slightly and match them with the ports in the head. But it should not be polished, which can otherwise create nasty surprises.
All realistic modifications that go beyond the modifications mentioned before require dismantling parts or the entire engine and will for that very reason get costly.
But when taking a closer look at this engine should excite the tuner. At 54bhp and 86Nm it is not an engine with an outrageous output. On the other hand this engine had a power output of 120bhp in the group N Cinquecentos. This is about 120% more than the stock engine. Surprised?
Even in the standard configuration it outruns many more cars that one would expect.
Continuing to have a close look it soon becomes ever so clear that this engine has been strangulated. The Brazilian version of the 999cc MPI engine has a power output of 65bhp. This shows that there must be some reason for the comparatively low power output that is far away from the real capabilities of the 1108cc engine. Actually the reason for it is the taxation laws in Italy.
What can be done to increase the power in the Cinquecento Sporting?
Changing the engine is one of the options to look at. And this will be done a bit further down.
The simplest way to improve the power and torque is to fit a proper induction kit. Cheaper so called induction kits, which consist of a 'mushroom' filter element on top of the throttle body will make the car sound faster and might help it breathe better, but the performance will be only partly improved. The disadvantage of these filter elements is the missing induction length in order to increase the moving mass in the induction tube and gas speed can't be increased as there aren't any passages present to do so. Such induction kits often suffer from poor top end speed reducing it in many by in excess of 20%! Foam filters have an additional disadvantage because they do not flow as well as cotton gauze filters, which would not create a real problem when enough space for a large enough filter element can be found anywhere under the bonnet.
When money is an object, replacing the paper filter by a performance replacement filter element will improve performance slightly but noticeably with only little money being spent (app. £35.00). Going a bit further with a proper induction kit consisting of an extended tube (hopefully without any sharp corners like some aluminium tubes that have bends which never saw a mandrel bender rather than being cut in an angle an then welded together) and a rather big cotton gauze filter element can make a substantial improvement. The highest the author have measured so far on an induction kit of this sort had an improvement of 13Nm of torque and about 4bhp as a single modification. This means that the torque improved in the region of 15%! This is about the same sort of improvement that would be achieved by just swapping the 1108cc by a 1242cc! This comes at a much lower price tag (from app. £120.00) than an engine replacement and obviously creates less of a headache too as the exhaust has not to be adapted etc.
Of course, the engine swap opens other avenues due to the higher capacity of the engine. On the other hand a complete Supersprint exhaust and a proper induction kit will set us back by the same amount as an engine swap on its own and is rather convenient to fit. Additionally the power per pound ratio is much higher too. If then an up rated throttle body is fitted a remap is needed. By then the car is considerably more powerful and much more fun to drive without touching the internal parts of the engine. The only other external improvement apart from a forced induction is the reworking of the inlet manifold. There are a number of ways to go about it. The cheapest would be to remove sharp edges and to increase the size of the ports slightly and match them with the ports in the head. But it should not be polished, which can otherwise create nasty surprises.
All realistic modifications that go beyond the modifications mentioned before require dismantling parts or the entire engine and will for that very reason get costly.