(G) Racing Cinq!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

First off, Hello as I am a newbie to this forum!

Having been a Cinq Sporting owner back when they were Shiny and new I always thought that I should have been racing it not using it on the road. A couple of years ago I spoke to some people about building a racing one, maybe someone reading this remembers?? As it turned out I was a little new to the racing thing and took the easy option of buying a 'cheap' race prepped Nova instead and have had moderate success over the last couple of seasons.
Now the burning sensation has returned and I need to follow up on the Racing Cinq dream but I have to ask some questions first.
What is the best performance (BHP) recorded for a normally aspirated 1108, aggresive cams, modified heads all good? The same question for the 1242 but I also need to know how hard the conversion is for a '4 spanner Mech' (haynes manual measurement). For the series I race in I can't do a turbo and if I do a 1242 I have to run in the invitation class as Fiat never sold 'em
Looking ahead I am going to need the names of suppliers of 'Nicely priced' suspension, exhausts etc so any help greatly appreciated.

Matt

Well firstly welcome back to the world of cento's.

GSR is currently preparing a race cinquecento which I hopefully will have some input into with the setup.

The 1108 n/a engine is a lot better than people make out, with ported/flowed head, multi angle valve guides, raised compression and a good cam, induction, exhaust, remap, you should easily see 100bhp. In group N spec they were obtaining near 110bhp.

The 1242 is an easy swap as long as your comfortable with the idea of hoisting the old engine out, lowering a new one in and reattatching the mounts. Everything is the same bar the extra inch or so on the block which causes no issues to my awareness and an exhaust spacar which slots in between downpipe and manifold which can be fabricated by yourself to my knowlege to enable you to use the existing 1108 exhaust system if you wish to keep it. If not you can just buy the supserpsrint manifold for the 1242 engine which cuts out this problem.

THe only restriction on these engines without sounding negative is the spi system which only relaistically only allows for 85 to 90 bhp normally aspirated set up unless you are going to start investing in a larger injector etc. but this can have other side effects.

With a multi point injection set up, there is no problem with this. This would be best for power on an n/a engine, best bet would be to source a Sei mpi loom and fuel pump (3 bar) instead of spi (1 bar) then hook it up to either 1108 or 1242.

Without sounding too complicated this would be best I feel.

Good Luck With It.

BTW (oldschool) has a lot of experience in this area (race preparation) so it may be worth sending him a pm. He did a project for Nitrane who is basically preparing a race car with 1108 n/a engine like yours. Still with single point injection to which I am aware.

This is his site link :

http://www.nitrane.co.uk/projects/project500.htm

for racing if you are going 1242 you may want to consider the 1.2 16V motor as a base

You need to watch what class of racing is being envisaged, this is what caught out Nitrane.

Cheers

David

Matt, email reply sent. Happy to discuss any aspect of my project with you. You need to give careful thought to who you use for engine work. Lets just say I've learned a few lessons along the way!

Cheers, John