titanium retainers

[BEEK]

i have sucesfully ran fiat 2.0 with 11-1 compression, big valve head 42-82 cams with a 500 cfm holley 2bbl, the motor turned 8000+ rpm, all day long , the only failures i had was because of oil starvation. once a proper sump was installed i never had a failure again! 5,000 laps at over 8k 3/8 mile and 1/2 mile asphalt ovals.

[Zmatt]

Nice. Ive been told not to rev past the redline on the tach cause the engine blows pretty easy. Being italian i found that hard to beleive.

[fiatfactory]

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[Zmatt]

I meant an stock engine of unknown provenance that is in good shape. For example, I have a '77 1.8 in my spider that has about 40K miles on that was pulled form another spider. All emissions crap has been pulled and it has a 32adfa. What do you think it can do safely on a regular basis? The tach starts to redline just under 7000 but I know a lot of older cars have suggested redlines and can go higher, whereas newer cars have cutoff marked. and if one wanted to go to say 7500 or more what would need to be done?

[fiatfactory]

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[Zmatt]

Yeah I had already guessed the stock power curve dropped off before that anyways and it would take mods to make it worthwhile. i just wanted to know what i had to work with. Italian engines being what they are i thought the redline was kind of low.

in terms of building a high strung carb'ed engine yes. I was looking at swaps since making real pwoer that way is expensive and makes it hard to street. But it seems like a lot more people in the community are looking into doing efi conversions than then and opens up a lot of possibilities.

If you are talking about the fiasco at turbo124, those guys all had access to fiat parts we don't, and they have a lot more money and time to put into it than I do. That and they are purists. If I could afford the $15k to make such an engine as they recommended that would be great, but to be honest, if I had 15k to blow on an engine i would put it in one that made a lot more horsepower. We have different ideologies and ideas about what is important in a sports car simple as that. they think I am a fool and a heretic and I think they are unrealistic and have more money than sense. It's better to just avoid that part of the web than to cause any problems.

anyways on topic, I'm learning something new about these engines every day. My main sources of information are my old man, what people say from time to time here and what the different manuals say. The way the information is out here it's hard to find and most of it I find by accident. liek the ITB's, I didn't know such a kit existed until the other day. Or megasquirt I knew about ti, but until people started talking about it here I didn't know anyone in the spider community had used it. Because of this the different ideas and options change everyday. I could have an efi turbo setup for the most power, a carb turbo setup a lot of power, but not as much as efi, but easier setup, I could do ITBs to get the feel of carbs but more power and better reliability, or i could throw wads of money at it and get hi comp pistons, rework the bottom end, super aggressive cams, big valves and $1500 in carburetors and intake for an old school build, or I could source a different engine that already makes enough power and then figure out how to shorehorn it into the car.

[BEEK]

i have "other' engines, a 2.3 mercedes with a supercharger 195hp, but i would rather build a fiat motor, just more plain fun to me. now the irs from the benz is another story, it might find its way under a fiat! ive literaly built hundreds of fiat motors, and i like the design, oldschool as it may be, but thats where the challange is to me anyway. ive been told that there is now way i made 225hp from a 2.0 but the superflow dyno disagrees. unfortunatly that piece is long gone. but i remember what i did. i might try and duplicate it again one day. but what im building now is for a track day car, and a street driven car, although it wont be real pleasant on the street. but ill make the sacrafice. the lash cap route we did many years ago, used alfa shims under unmodified fiat buckets, was able to run very thin shims, actually we had to take some material from the shim holder sides, as the cam hit them because the shim was too thin

[Zmatt]

The M111 right? I've got one too! great motor that. I need to replace the MAF in mine, that's one problem they have, flaky o2 sensors. I've been todl they can go for a very long time. 12k more miles and i will be able to get my 155k badge for it.

I really like the simplicity of the TC compared to modern motors. One look at it and it's easy to figure out what most things do. that's not necessarily true with newer ones. they have cables running everywhere. I'm just trying to find the best setup for my driving style and wallet.

[fiatfactory]

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[BEEK]

correct me if im wrong. all things being the same. a us spec 1800 is the same as a euro spec 1800 less the pistons? ei compression racio. there may be small differences in cam timing, but in a performance build , cams will be replaced anyway. the euro block isnt a "high nickel" or anything special, the crank is the came, the rods are the same. i am interested in the bolt only rods for the 2.0, as i had no idea they existed. but those must be of later than 1985 vintage.
the later post 1985 8v head has larger valves in europe. but that too is not hard to duplicate. so i see no reason that a "euro spec' motor is realy any different , or performance levels are unobtainable. maybe ive missed something. ive worked on fiats for 20 years, retired now, thank god. but i still love to tinker. ive parted out well over 1000 fiats. sold every concevable part to most all corners of the states in my time. i have raced fiats, very sucessfully. i restored 100's of spiders.
todays fiat community in the US, i belive is stronger than it was 10 years ago. more people are trying to modify the 40+ year old design motor. and it still performs well. granted a 16v jap motor will always be able to out perform. the builds being the same. but how cool is it to drive a 30-40 year old car. just my opinion, yours may differ

[fiatfactory]

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[Zmatt]

You make some good points, but what got me was you mentioned parts form a few euro fiats, i can't get those. This all has to be built, and balanced and that requires an engine builder, we have a good one in the area (not a fiat expert though) and their time is expensive. You said so yourself, anything is available if you have the money. well some of that is mroe money than its worth. granted if i wanted to make a good injected build as well a lot of those same things would have to be done, they wouldn't be as necessary at the beginning and I would get more mileage out of them all things being equal.

Now I'm already well off to getting some of that power back and getting to "euro spec" although i wouldn't call it that. I've got a 32adfa, it supposed to be one of the better stock carbs. I have a later 4-2-1 header, which I have been told it better to the 4-1, and I've ripped the emissions gear off. Nothing major, but it can't hurt.

[Daniel]

Thanks for sharing that info Steve, i've built a lot of TC engines and owned many Fiats myself (3 -Spiders
5 -131s/ Brava / Super Bravas 1- X1/9 1-Lancia Beta 1-Zagato never really paid much attention to the Euro
stuff other then toyed with the ideal of using a 16 v Head a couple times .
Seems like the US Folks got the low end Fiats add one more reason to the list of why they didn't make it
over here sure hope we get the fasted 500s available this time when Fiat Opens there doors to us again .

Zmatt

If you weren't looking for a full race Engine but wanted more power then a stocker going with the Factory
FI manifold and Mega Squirt would be a very good option i used a FI manifold and stock ECU with a
mild built 2L and the power felt the same as a 2L with 40 IDFs till i started to pass 6k RPM then the
small Air flow Meter started to show its limitations . I drove the car often no issues never broke down on
me always started right up was a fun car to drive . I had what would almost be a 42 - 82 Cam on intake
and a 40 - 80 Exhaust, Header, small dome 4 mm Pistons 84.6 mm, some minor porting work .

[Zmatt]

@Daniel
That doesn't sound too bad at all. I can read electrical diagrams and I am pretty handy with a soldering iron so I'm too afraid of megasquirt. How hard is it to retrofit the carb engines with the FI gear? And can megasquirt work with the stock FI well enough? I've seen some people switch it out for things from domestic cars, but it being bosch it shouldn't be that bad right?

I wish they had sold some more fiat/lancia/alfas here. They came out with a lot of cool models in Europe just as they were pulling out in america. We never got the delta integrale, or the S4, or the fiat coupe/barchetta. Then again a lot of cool hot hatches were never sold in the states.

[Daniel]

@Daniel
That doesn't sound too bad at all. I can read electrical diagrams and I am pretty handy with a soldering iron so I'm too afraid of megasquirt. How hard is it to retrofit the carb engines with the FI gear? And can megasquirt work with the stock FI well enough? I've seen some people switch it out for things from domestic cars, but it being bosch it shouldn't be that bad right?

Matt
The Fiat FI Manifold is a direct bolt on to any of the Twin Cam Engines so no issues there if you can read electrical
diagrams you might be over qualified for the job . All though i've never built a Mega Squirt have read up a lot on them,
they seem to have good instructions based on posts and a couple of people i have spoken with who used there product . I
have some understanding of electronic parts less then the basics in my opinion I know what resistors, capacitors, diodes, transistors and relays do, understand there values on the most part but that is about it yet i have no fear of purchasing
a Mega Squirt kit and attempting to put it together based on what I've read so far .

You could do a search on here for some of the guys who have done this upgrade one of them didn't leave much feed
back or details to follow in his footsteps so to speak after he completed the upgrade but sounded happy with the results .

I believe one small issue is the Fiat TPS (small black box on end of throttle shaft ) {photo below }( throttle position sensor ) isn't compatible with the Mega Squirt ECU so you'll need to adapt a proper unit add a MAP sensor to the manifold and select injectors accordingly . Hal told me he used ford Injectors on his Super Charged 124 coupe on a Fiat FI Manifold and had to do a minor mod to make them fit but he isnt using and MS on his car .
If i remember correctly the housing around the Injector nozzle is larger on fords and drilling that part of the manifold out would be the fix for this not 100% sure you would do some comparisons before doing so anyways .

ClarkTheShark may have a MS on his spider try a search for his posts he did something to eliminate his Fiat ECU sorry
but i don't remember the names of the guys who are running them .