Having never sampled an 899cc Seicento, I'm wondering how the driving experience compares to that of the 1108? Would the smaller OHV engine with it's more ancient origins seem a bit agricultural by comparison or is the difference not that dramatic from the driver's seat? Are motorways best avoided? I'm guessing with the 899 people hear the tappets coming long before they see the car...

Steve

They arent that bad to be honest... its been a while since ive owned one but i used to love driving it.. underpowered but still nippy... i used to like the challenge of taking the b roads as quick as possible purely because if you slowed down they took ages to get going again ??

Momentum is key, but they are fine on the motorway, autobahn, etc too.

I did London to Oberhausen in Germany and back to London in a day.
About 650 miles.

That's interesting, thanks for the responses. The 899 does sound quite a usable little motor if you have the right driving style and work with it. I quite enjoy cars like that. At least they demand some involvement from the pilot! Incidentally do 899 cars have power steering?

Steve

Steve70 said:

Incidentally do 899 cars have power steering?

Steve

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No

D

rallycinq said:

No

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Which is good as they really don't need it.

I drove my 899 for 6 years (now since converted)

Apart from the obvious low power it is surprisingly good! Very refined for such an old engine!

I put 60k miles on mine with mostly dual carriageway and motorway, not a problem really!

Not sure what you mean about tappet noise, mine were always silent unless it was a very cold morning

chrisb7777 said:

Not sure what you mean about tappet noise, mine were always silent unless it was a very cold morning

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Was yours an early one with adjustment and hydraulic or a later one with just hydraulic?

Mine is a 1994 which had the hydraulic rockers with an adjusting screw. Rather than replace the failed hydraulic bits I replaced the whole rocker assembly with the solid setup from a 903 Panda. Much better.

David C said:

Was yours an early one with adjustment and hydraulic or a later one with just hydraulic?

Mine is a 1994 which had the hydraulic rockers with an adjusting screw. Rather than replace the failed hydraulic bits I replaced the whole rocker assembly with the solid setup from a 903 Panda. Much better.

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Mine was a later fully hydraulic type.
By the time i took the engine out it have over 100k miles on it, it still ran spot on and super quiet

chrisb7777 said:

Mine was a later fully hydraulic type.
By the time i took the engine out it have over 100k miles on it, it still ran spot on and super quiet

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I think the later ones were a lot better than the early ones.

Lets face it, putting an adjuster on a hydraulic rocker isn't putting much faith in the hydraulic bit...!!

David C said:

Lets face it, putting an adjuster on a hydraulic rocker isn't putting much faith in the hydraulic bit...!!

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Haha, very good point!!

That's very interesting concerning the tappets. I didn't know their were two versions, hence my initial remark. My project 1994 Cinquecento has the hydraulic/manual adjustment set-up and that is noisy. Well worth converting that to the later all-hydraulic set-up or even the older Panda manual adjustment assembly mentioned by David, which I'd be quite at home with through running various 60s and 70s cars over the years.

So am I correct in thinking that later Cinqs and all the 899 Seicentos from launch had an all-hydraulic rocker assembly?

Steve70 said:

So am I correct in thinking that later Cinqs and all the 899 Seicentos from launch had an all-hydraulic rocker assembly?

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Yes.

Well I've now heard for myself how quiet the 899cc engine can be. I was listening to the lovely smooth tickover over of a 36,000 miles R reg Cinquecento for sale not far from me. It was such a nice original car I couldn't put it out of my mind. Good low mileage examples are getting rarer so I ended up having a bit of a punt on it and bought it for a very modest amount. So now I'm up to a total of three Centos without even trying. Addictive aren't they?