End Fiat TwinAir engine production is near.

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End Fiat TwinAir engine production is near.

The power and torque figures dont make sense.We,ve owned one twin air and two 1.2 fitted in 500.Both 1.2 were absolutely gutless and poor on fuel infact our latest Euro 6 Abarth would equal both of them.The twin air was better on fuel economy and also a much better performer.I just hope they keep the multiair tech on the latest engines.
 
What??????? you learn something new every day.Didnt even know they made one.Dear o dear what a tool i am.lol
 
Back in the 1980s Lotus built a fully electronic engine. The valves were entirely under computer control from a computer the size of a washing machine.

It had fuel port injection, no throttle valve and no starter motor. Variable inlet and exhaust timing controlled engine power. It was started by suiting fuel into whatever cylinder was just past TDC shutting the valves and firing a spark.

Konisegg have now produced this for mainstream cars. We now have iPhones so they don't need a huge computer.

From the man himself


From a handy American


Being fully electronic it could also shut down cylinders, miss out power cycles or even work as a 2 stroke.

Now Google what BRP Rotax have done with their E-TEC 2 strokes. Don't confuse these with the smoky old strokers of 1970s motorbikes. Very powerful, light weight, very clean and efficient. They are better in all respects than competing 4 strokes. Ignore the mpg figures - snowmobiles need lots of power and guzzle fuel.
 
April 2017 has come and gone and twinair is still with us. Sad how people believe silly rumours.

Fiat has too many platforms that run FIRE and twinair to be able to just stop twinair production like that and move over to a new engine type when cars like the Punto are needing replacement, the Tipo has just come out, the 500 has just had a facelift.

I’ve been working for a car manufacturer in their engineering department for the last 8 months and let’s just say that the idea of fiat killing off the twinair and replacing it with the firefly engine across all models is sheer lunacy. The amount of work required to get performance, NVH and just basic functionality working is a huge amount of work.

We announced a new car at Frankfurt and it’s going to go into production at some point in the future, variants which differ in body configuration will launch at some point after that in the future and cars of different engine spec will also follow at some point in the future as well. I’m not going to mention timescales or anything as I quite like my job, but very few companies have the resources to pull off something like that and even BMW staggers their launches of products like the 3 series in terms of body shape and engine type.

If BMW can’t just move all production over to another type of engine at one point then Fiat aren’t going to manage it...
 
April 2017 has come and gone and twinair is still with us. Sad how people believe silly rumours.



Fiat has too many platforms that run FIRE and twinair to be able to just stop twinair production like that and move over to a new engine type when cars like the Punto are needing replacement, the Tipo has just come out, the 500 has just had a facelift.



I’ve been working for a car manufacturer in their engineering department for the last 8 months and let’s just say that the idea of fiat killing off the twinair and replacing it with the firefly engine across all models is sheer lunacy. The amount of work required to get performance, NVH and just basic functionality working is a huge amount of work.



We announced a new car at Frankfurt and it’s going to go into production at some point in the future, variants which differ in body configuration will launch at some point after that in the future and cars of different engine spec will also follow at some point in the future as well. I’m not going to mention timescales or anything as I quite like my job, but very few companies have the resources to pull off something like that and even BMW staggers their launches of products like the 3 series in terms of body shape and engine type.



If BMW can’t just move all production over to another type of engine at one point then Fiat aren’t going to manage it...



If you think that because BMW produces a luxury product and because Fiat produce a budget product that they lack engineering ability or business competence then I’d say you’re wrong.

FCA has 225,000 people employed. BMW has about 125,000 ...

It must take an extra 100,000 people to figure out how to build a water pump right lol
 
If you think that because BMW produces a luxury product and because Fiat produce a budget product that they lack engineering ability or business competence then I’d say you’re wrong.

FCA has 225,000 people employed. BMW has about 125,000 ...

It must take an extra 100,000 people to figure out how to build a water pump right lol

Totally missed maxi’s point here.

The point is fiat won’t just kill off the twin air engine and over night use only the firefly engine, they may tail off, stop fitting them to certain models and carry on putting them in others, stop new engine production and use up stocks and parts. They won’t just ditch it.

The number of employees or size of the company is irrelevant. BMW is a very wealthy company has more money than fiat available to produce and introduce a new engine, (which they effectively did recently with the now modular bmw engine system) but even then BMW don’t just introduce an new engine across the whole range of cars and ditch all the old engines.

Maxi was responding to the content of the rest of the thread and now drawing any comparison between fiat and bmw on an engineering or manufacturing level.

I’ve worked in engineering and would would not believe the process and number of people involved in something as stupid as choosing a screw or bolt, the testing that has to be done and the number of people who have to sign it off before it can go into production (proper manufacturing engineers are a special whole 10 times higher level of anal then even the worst obsessive compulsive). So when it comes to installing a new engine across a range of cars, it can take years to move all the models over to the new engine as each car has to go though the same engineering process.

You seem to very much have a growing chip on your shoulder about anything German taking offence so quickly when what you’re getting wound up about has nothing to do with what has been said.
 
If you think that because BMW produces a luxury product and because Fiat produce a budget product that they lack engineering ability or business competence then I’d say you’re wrong.

FCA has 225,000 people employed. BMW has about 125,000 ...

It must take an extra 100,000 people to figure out how to build a water pump right lol

Again, you misunderstandand the point of my post.

It was said hat the Twinair was going to stop being produced in April 2017. Has that happened?

I think this forum has fallen for a false prophet, someone who has convinced everyone that they know what’s going on when indeed they know nothing. I mean the idea that Fiat would put a 1.8 litre engine in a supermini is just laughable!

You seem to think that I’m coming on here to say that BMW stuff is great and Fiat is crap. That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’ve owned and still own a Fiat product and it’s a good car.

You also do realise that no car company designs things like water pumps. They’ll subcontract that out to a third party manufacturer with specs of what they want in terms of flow and the envelope in which it needs to fit and then the manufacturer will go back with a few hundred thousand or even millions of pounds of money the manufacturer has given them and develop the water pump themselves.

As has been pointed out, no manufacturer ever rolls out a new engine across a whole range concurrently. It just isn’t the done thing. Even Fiat didn’t do it with the Twinair. First it launched in the 500 and then got rolled out to the Punto, Mito etc etc and the Panda didn’t even get it till 2012 when the new generation of Panda came out. That’s 3 years of it rolling off the line in the 500 before it got into the Panda...
 
It's unlikely they'd spend time and money re-engineering end of life designs. The Punto, 500 and Panda are all due a replacement (or possibly a mid life tickle in the case of the panda).

Next new car that gets launched will signal which way the wind is blowing. The brazilian ones have gone firefly engine but we don't necessarily get what they get.
 
Exactly, Brazil always gets something different and isn’t necessarily indicative of what Europe gets.

The twinair will be with us for a while methinks, I doubt it will be killed off anytime soon, the plan was IIRC to run the exhaust valves with Multiair technology as well.

It’s not been confirmed by anyone reputable whether GSE isn’t just a Brazil and North America engine. If you google for Twinair production finishing or similar, this thread is one of the top results, what does that tell you? ?
 
For reasons I said earlier in the thread it wouldn't surprise me if the production was quietly wound up. You could apply much of the same technology to a 3 cylinder motor and get better real world economy, more power and better driveability.

VW came out recently and said effectively the age of downsizing is over (obviously engines they've already got will continue but they are not going any smaller). At this point euro 7 isn't really any clearer other than the very real possibility of PM matter targets for petrols hence VW and PSA readying GPFs. So there isn't a huge amount of point rushing in to retooling for effectively nothing. Theres a not a push factor currently, current engines do fine on current standards and there isn't a highly developed replacement waiting in the wings to take over.
 
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