Cans on the Rolling Road

CaneyJ · 28 Jan 2008 at 23:35

Took a day off work today to finally sort the car and truly finish the turbo conversion. Haven’t driven it in true anger for fear of the fuelling being out so banded together with 3 other Clubcento members and went off for day of setups at 1320 Autos

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It’s an odd place specialising in tuning bmw minis, set in the middle of knowhere at the back of a modern car scrap yard (nice pickings btw). Amongst the garages other projects was this little number running a hugemous Turbo lump.

Just 3 cars to sort out in order of run in’s.

1.4llitre 16v converted Seicento Abarth running emerald management, BMC filter and cherrybomb exhaust. First cento in the country to use fiats new 1.4l engine as used in the new fiat 500. Was taken from a newly crashed Grande Punto with the added bonus that the sei is only 740kg. Pushes 100bhp as standard not taking into account of mods

…a High boosting (0.6 bar) seicento, professionally converted by a specialising company called Van Aaken developments. High boost is achieved through low compression pistons/spacer plate, uprated fuel pump, intercooler and fuel pressure regulator.

CaneyJ · 28 Jan 2008 at 23:36

And mine, a homebrew low boost (0.4bar) turbo conversion based off Van Aaken kit specs but much simpler being low boost running standard compression and without need for an uprated pump. Still requires a second cosworth injector controlled by an Aquamist MF2. Complete with a larger capacity 1242cc Mk2 Punto bottom end, Punto HGT calliper stoppies and apex suspension kit.

And the results….:

92bhp at the wheels, 109bhp@5787rpm at flywheel & 103lb ft(139.5NM)@4829rpm
“potential for better flow”

74bhp at the wheels, 88bhp@5175rpm at flywheel & 106lb ft(144NM)@3362rpm
(keep in mind it had a blowing manifold so theoretically would be higher)

70bhp at the wheels, 83bhp@5192rpm at flywheel & 102lb ft(138NM)@3213rpm.

All in all a very fun day out. Car isn’t producing as much as I’d hoped but there are still many plans on the horizon including widening the throttlebody from 30mm diameter to 40mm, fitting a bespoke exhaust system and a slightly hotter cam from a Punto 75 and maybe some cylinder head work.

Hopefully should get near the rounded 100hp I'm looking for. Interesting point was all cars produced similar figures of torque though apparently mine of the two turbos produced the much smoother drive with a nice power curve. Will post the graph up later.

Quick vid of mine on the rollers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP8gLG6R11s

CaneyJ · 28 Jan 2008 at 23:49

The figures do indeed suggest that but the car really is so much more fun to drive with the extra torque and surprisingly smooth power delivery. Is only the second stage of my tuning process. The car is still running a peashooter of an exhaust and cool air flow needs to be sorted since the engine bay on these cars gets hot as standard let along bolting a turbo on.

40mm throttle bodies do make a world of difference. I shouldn't be hard or much more expensive to see 100bhp. The hardest/most expensive steps are over.

There are cinqs in my club running as daily drivers on 120bhp using multipoint injection and Megasquirt management. A fellow in Denmark is running 150bhp out of his. In my mind they still represent the true embodiment of what a 90's mini should have been.

The figures provided were @ the wheel figures only with the flywheel amount being guestimated by the technician. Using this calculator http://www.dyno-power-run.com/dynocalc.shtml produces these results which seem nicer but all together more confusing.

1368cc NA 16v 92bhp@wheels = 113.33bhp flywheel
1108cc High Boost 74bhp@wheels = 93.33bhp
1242 Low boost Mine 70bhp@wheels = 88.89bhp

CaneyJ · 29 Jan 2008 at 12:46

The low/high boost generalizations were set by van aaken when thet produced the conversion kits for the cars and the club just adopted them. There was a car in the club running 1.2 bar with standard internals and another guy I know spent something crazy like 3 grand on his engine internals to get 2 bar boost pressure.

As for the abarth statement, you are more or less correct. All cinquecentos and most Seicento sportings aren't really true abarths in anything other than a badge and fancy aesthetics. I myself don't consider a fiat to be an abarth unless it has dedicated bespoke mechanicals and in the case of the later seicento they did have their own run of dedicated gearboxes making them mechanically different.