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fiat 126
cd.thomson - 14/3/11 at 07:55 PM

Okay, so T66 has made me immensely jealous..

Does anyone know the most sensible way of increasing the bhp/weight ratio in these without a ground up redesign of the chassis? My budget is fairly limited but say I had £1000 to spend on top of the car which had already been fully restored.

What would you do to make it a bit more interesting?

balidey - 14/3/11 at 08:04 PM

Fiat Fire engine is a sensible / common first step.
Either 1108cc std cinquecento gives 55hp easily get upto 75.
Or 1242cc from Punto gives 75 std, easily upto 85 ish. Should be enough without being too mad

cd.thomson - 14/3/11 at 08:12 PM

excellent news balidey,

Any idea what level of difficulty the swap involves? Engine, box, mounts, exhaust or are we into the realms of chassis modification and new wishbones?

T66 - 14/3/11 at 08:15 PM

There are some really home grown 126s in Europe


My chassis is well sorted, but there are lots of guys running bec cars with various styles of engine fitting, not sure quite how well they will handle, but that depends what your going to do with it.


Heres what got me started on the old Fiat theme, then I discovered the Italian/Sicilian autoslalom cars


http://youtu.be/FIMOB2WcUGs




http://youtu.be/R-F4YLYpkaE



I exchanged a few emails with a Polish guy (Piotr) building a Lada hillclimb car, he put me onto this site and the link to all the 126s...


http://www.motonews.pl/forum/?op=fvt&t=121769&c=0&f=25

balidey - 14/3/11 at 08:18 PM

On Guy Croft forum there is someone who has fitted a FIRE engine in a 500, which is mechanically very similar to the 126

http://www.guy-croft.com/viewtopic.php?p=1912

cd.thomson - 14/3/11 at 08:29 PM

Again, thanks for the info guys. I'll give it all a watch/read.

That white R1 126 is a beauty!

scootz - 14/3/11 at 08:30 PM

Did you get the Dax shifted CRaig?

T66 - 14/3/11 at 08:50 PM

quote:
Originally posted by balidey
On Guy Croft forum there is someone who has fitted a FIRE engine in a 500, which is mechanically very similar to the 126

http://www.guy-croft.com/viewtopic.php?p=1912



By strange coincidence - I rebuilt a Fiat 2.0 Twincam and was using the excellent GC website for help, the Polish guy I mentioned was from that site....


He was building a high quality Lada Samara hillclimber - His build was immaculate.




I have some pictures of other 126 engine transplants somewhere if your interested. You will never compete with the Eastern Europeans for creativity and ingenuity when it comes to them shoehorning bigger engines into their little cars.


Its just the suspension and brakes they are crap at....

cd.thomson - 14/3/11 at 09:15 PM

quote:
Originally posted by scootz
Did you get the Dax shifted CRaig?


Partially, being messed about a bit by a foreign dealer so going to get it relisted I think.

Funds for this project are being supplied by a combination of selling the bike on and selling my runabout at the minute.

I love the bike, but I'm not rich enough for a weekend toy at the minute so I'm looking into daily driver projects.

scootz - 14/3/11 at 09:27 PM

Sorry to hear about the faff... hope it gets sorted out soon.