At the ITV interview with Fred Dinenage yesterday, the Alan Gibson Dealer from Basingstoke who supplied the stuido-prop for the interview and feature on the pending Cape Town to London record (see latest on www.africarecordrun.com ), it was suggested the coil packs next to the sparking plugs on top of the engine overheat, there have been issues particularly with cars in stop-start conditions. We have removed the foam around the bottom of the air-cleaner and more air circulates around this region than before, but it sounds a worry we could do without. We are taking some spares donated by the Dealer, has anyone else expereinced this? Symptons are loss of power and a light on the dashboard coming on...(which says what?)

I know this is too late (you're nearly back already), but there have been a couple of campaigns to replace the coils on the 500 TwinAir, and looking at the parts catalogue, the description for the current coils states 'for the latest bremi coils'.

I'm not certain if the cause of failure is overheating - but the symptoms reported are misfires and/or complete failure of the coil, hence why they were replaced for later specification ones.

Hi,

congrats on your achievement ..!!,

I was going to post a similar twin-air reliability question .. but you are definitely the people I want to direct this to..!!

i've heard that the modern genration of "ECO" engines are succeptible to sporadic oil consumption,
how did your panda fare for this ??,

my FIRE engined fiats have used ZERO oil for thousands of miles,

but my T-spark alfa had a habit of using a bit every now and then.. apparently this was a common thing on the alfa's - attributed to the Cam-variator technology,
( Which i'm let to believe the twin-air employs),

any input will be most welcome,
thanks,
Charlie - Didcot

I see you are from Didcot - the local dealer, Mellors, on the Wantage road, sold us the Panda for the attack on the World Record from Cape Town to London. We carried spare coil packs (on loan from the Basingstoke dealer - great people to deal with), and didnt need them. Prolonged traffic tick-over is apparently one of the causes of over heating the coil packs, trapped in the foam under the air cleaner. Our engine ran fault free, as good as clockwork, for 10,300 miles, and didnt use a drop of oil. (Red Line 10-40), we check the oil and water now and then and not the slightest thirst was detected, running in 40C (bloody hot!) in Egypt, the car carried a small tool kit but it remained unopened by the time we got to Marble Arch.
Suspension kit from GAZ of Essex worked well - no rattles, nothing broke, nothing fell off. Utter reliability.

Hi Philip,
thank you for the update,
good to see you have paid back your supporters / sponsors handsomely,
Charlie