850 Fiat 850 Coupe Hill Climb/Sprint car

The main drama with fuel injection is having to change to a high pressure pump and return lines, swirl tank etc.

Good to see continued evolution

Supercharger to head manifold is all set to go. IAT sender mounted just downstream, Blow off valve in the centre, pair of injectors firing straight down into the intake port, MAP take off on the side. Throttle body manifold on the left needs a slight mod.

Engine bay is looking a bit different now. No distributor is going to make tappet adjustment easier. Bracket top right is for the coil pack and EDIS control and holds MAP sensor, flex fuel sender etc. Leaving caharger off for a couple of days till I get the fuel lines sorted while I have good access.

Have not updated for awhile so here goes. Car is up and running now with the Microsquirt ECU.

This was the cars first outing last Sunday.

Was at another hillclimb event last Sunday. Still not got the Microsquirt dialed in correctly and had a failure on the first run. Car running way too rich.

Next event is the Australian Fiat Nationals in a couple of weeks. I made some adjustments to my front brakes to get more swept area. The Tokico mounts were shortened down to move the caliper closer in. First photo is the before photo.

This photo shows the extra area with all the pad making contact.

Have not posted for awhile so I thought a couple of videos might be helpful.


This is a recent one where I was doing some tuning!


Since then I have had a minor engine problem and I will get to that shortly!

Been awhile! Last month had the car on a dyno. Was surprised to find I was running 19psi boost at 6000rpm. This was giving me heaps of torque, roughly double the stock torque and HP at the rear wheels was up 50%. Unfortunately the air intake temperature was 150c and hp dropped off rapidly after 6000rpm.
Fortnight ago ran in the local hillclimb. 5 trouble free runs and the car sounded great. Last couple of days I have installed a larger pulley on the supercharger and now run a ratio of 1.46:1. From the data logs I have about 9psi and the air intake temperature is down to 80c. Back to the dyno next week to sort the ignition and fuel maps. The engine sounds much happier and I suspect I will have more hp and a little less torque but the car will be easier to drive. Video is with 19psi boost. Cone aircleaners are crap!

Dyno day again yesterday to check the maps at the new boost of 8psi.

Short video from the first run at Winton. My first time at Winton and the cars first run on a full sized circuit. I never got to grips with some of the corners, especially those just after the sweeper! Many laps are required at this circuit to get it sorted. Took it fairly easy and never used more than 6500 rpm and about 70% throttle. Second run after a couple of laps I left the track at corner 10 over the ripple strip. This strip has a sharp deep drop off on the inner edge and I hit the floor pan very hard. Lap or so later I had the occasional backfire from the exhaust and a series of brief engine failures. Car started immediately after each stop and I'm certain it was ignition. Third run I had more engine failures and I decided to put her back on the trailer.
When I got home I plugged in the laptop and run the engine and data logged but found no faults. I did notice the WUE light took awhile to go off and when I checked the settings found the warm up enrichment was still on at 86 degrees C. I reduced that to about 70. When I watched my videos of the day I was surprised to see the radiator temperatures on the Davis Craig controller were 75c, the temperature is set to 85c and the controller maintains the temperature normally by cycling the pump or turning on the fan. No idea what temperature the Microsquirt was seeing but it's possible the WUE was coming on and adding fuel. I will be installing an inline thermostat. Mini Cooper S radiator is too efficient.
Also snapped off a welded lug on the left rear suspension where I have a Dyneema strop to stop the suspension tucking under. The left driveshaft boot has also let out a heap of transmission fluid. There is gear box oil everywhere on the left hand side of the engine bay and a fair bit on the 36:1 timing wheel and Ford pick up. There is about a 1 mm air gap there normally but I'm starting to think some of the oil may have upset the signal and caused the intermittent failures.
Car has done 145 miles now on the rebuilt engine and about 20 miles since the replacement pistons and new rings.

Yesterday I ran the engine till it was nice and warm then dribbled some oil over the induction pick up to simulate the gearbox oil leak problem. Blipping the engine resulted in several backfires and the engine ran rough but did not stop. Under load the engine probably would have stopped though I reckon. I'm fairly confident this was the problem at the sprints. The induction pick up slopes down to the 36-1 wheel and the oil runs down to the tip perfectly! An electrical tie about 5mm from the tip with the joiner down would probably cause the oil drops to fall clear. I will probably devise some sort of shield to keep oil clear though just the same.
Also had the rear suspension apart and removed the plastic seats for the coil springs so now the coils are making a metal to metal contact. Coils are from Germany and are what's used in Abarth 1000 coupes. Car sits about 40mm lower in the rear now and is obviously what I should have done when I first installed the coils.

Formula Ford Avons. Tyre on the right is the front and the tyre on the left is a rear tyre now going on the front. Lot more rubber! Had to roll the fender quite a bit. The side view shows the new stance. Weight is on the front though the wheels are off the trailer. Measured the camber at the rear at 2 degrees negative.

Hillclimb yesterday. Made some modifications to the nose cone!

Good to see you are ok. Hope the repairs are easily done.

Jayarr said:

Good to see you are ok. Hope the repairs are easily done.

Click to expand...

Thanks. Checked underneath yesterday and there is no damage. Front is pushed in between the headlights but will be an easy repair, should push out OK and a bit of metal shrinking it will be as good as new. No headlights, just fibreglass covers so that reduced the damage. Some tyre marks on the side that will polish out!
This is a photo on the previous run.

Actually I posted an older photo by mistake. This one is from Sunday and it has the larger front tyres. Formula Ford rears all round now.

This is my first run of the day on the 22nd of July. Siting run before I bent the car. Painting up the front at the moment.

Hill climb last Sunday. Engine ran fine but had handling problems. The Avon crossply race tyres don't like negative camber. Planning on switching to the new Yokohama A048 That Formula Ford run now.

This is session number 2 at the Tailem bend circuit in South Australia 12th of April. Car now runs Yokohama 048's all round and a Hyundia i30 roll bar at the front. Car handles well. In the incident where I take an excursion the engine overheats rapidly as I re enter the track but I don't notice till later. Suspect an airlock in the cooling system. The headgasket is blown.

Well, it's certainly a long time since I have posted here! My car is up on jacks at the moment. I have just had to replace the clutch. I have installed a sintered clutch and a stronger pressure plate. I bought a kit from Michael Feyl in Germany. We lifted the gearbox back in place last night! For the last few years, I have been doing regular hillclimbs and a lot of track time with a club called GEAR which is short for Golden Era of motor racing. In this video, you can see how I destroyed the clutch on the downshifts. The damage was done then but it actually failed on the following weekend at the hillclimb! Check out the other videos on my channel to see how the car has progressed recently.