Introduction
It's been an up and down 19 months for me and the JTD, mostly because it's been off the road for 11 of them 
But decided to put together a short timeline of my time with the car that I can add to as time goes on
May 2006
Traded in my 1.2 Active for a ELX JTD with similar mileage. Well I say traded in, it was actually a straight swap! Which wasn't bad
My Active
And the JTD the day I got it (Don't worry I took the alloys off of the Active before I traded it)
Mmmmmm sexy red interior :yuck:
Decided the interior had to be changed, so when Jug had a Sporting/HGT one up for sale in the classifieds I was in there like swimwear!
Unfortunately things didn't go to plan, and I made a mess of the rear seat bolts that were rusted into place. So in this pic it was only the front seats that were fitted
I also bought a red OMP strut brace, which there are pics of later in the post
June 2006
Booked my car in for a remap, as this was the whole reason I bought the car! Angel Tuning came out and mapped the car at my house, and suddenly my 80bhp Punto was ???bhp (Somewhere between 110 and 130bhp)
July 2006
It's about time for a random shot of Whiley and Serin in my boot don't you think?
I took my car down to Frensham Pond near to where I live for some photos as I hadn't taken any proper ones since I bought it. I think they turned out alright
September 2006
While all the pissheads where at Skeggy; Me, Alex22, Bushboy and dannyhgt went to brooklands for an Italian day. I've got some videos of me, Alex and Chris doing the hillclimb. Chris had a standard JTD at the time (I think this one was a long stint, a 2 weeker iirc) but only one pic of mine and Danny's car
Here you can see the difference between a standard JTD and a mapped one Bit of wheelspin in 2nd uphill
https://www.fiatforum.com/gallery/data/1139/MOV00127.3GP
https://www.fiatforum.com/gallery/data/1139/MOV00129.3GP
And also a JTD very similar to my own and an HGT very similar to danny's racing on our private drag strip
https://www.fiatforum.com/gallery/data/500/MOV00019.3gp
It was at this show that I first spoke to Peter (Oldschool) about the new GSR kit he was developing for the JTD. Bushboy had tried it but had run into problems with the MAF sensor iirc so I offered to be the guinea pig and bought one. It wasn't until the Stanford hall show that it was ready, paid for and actually fitted but I was really impressed with the sound it made
I now needed to have the car mapped again to take advantage of the GSR kit and Peter arranged for me to visit ChippedUK in the midlands. So I went over and had the car mapped, and here were the results:
Now I mooched around for a few months after this, and if I'm being honest didn't treat the car well at all. It hadn't had any fluid changes for nearly 20,000 miles and was driven hard at all times, even when cold. I ended up paying the price for this...
January 2007
My car had been starting to run strange recently, when cold I had no power at all when off boost then as soon as I hit around 2200rpm it suddenly kicked in a flew off! Added to this when idling the whole car was shaking, at first it was only slightly but it then started to get worse. I put this down to an engine mount starting to go, but it turned out I was wrong.
At the end of the month I was taking my sister to work one morning when part of my modified wiper linkage came loose. So I pulled over to put it back together but when i put my foot on the clutch as I came to a stop, the pedal felt crunchy and there was a horrible rattly grindy noise coming from the engine bay. Managed to limp the car home and booked it in to a garage for them to inspect the damage and change the clutch and oil while they were there.
February 2007
The car went into the garage at the start of the month and had a clutch change, I also asked them to check the engine mounts while they were there. The car came back and the clutch was perfect, so it looks like the release bearing had given up. However on the receipt from the garage they had put that the engine was running poorly, which by then it really had started to. The cold problem was still there, also the shaking which wasn't the engine mounts as they were all in perfect condition.
So it was booked into Fiat to be put on examiner and also have the EGR valve replaced, as this is what I suspected was causing the problem.
When I went to collect the car from Fiat, the bloke who worked on the car came out and had a chat with me, he explained that they had changed the EGR valve and put the car on examiner, but that didn't turn up anything that could be causing my problems.
I was basically told that unless they stripped the engine they wouldn't be able to tell me what was wrong with my engine. My thoughts were "**** that am I paying Fiat hundreds of pounds to strip my engine when I can do it myself!" Finally decided that I was going to buy a replacement engine, fit that and then strip down my old engine to inspect what went wrong with it.
Coming soon, the engine swap :devil:
But decided to put together a short timeline of my time with the car that I can add to as time goes on May 2006
Traded in my 1.2 Active for a ELX JTD with similar mileage. Well I say traded in, it was actually a straight swap! Which wasn't bad
My Active
And the JTD the day I got it (Don't worry I took the alloys off of the Active before I traded it
)
Mmmmmm sexy red interior :yuck:
Decided the interior had to be changed, so when Jug had a Sporting/HGT one up for sale in the classifieds I was in there like swimwear!
Unfortunately things didn't go to plan, and I made a mess of the rear seat bolts that were rusted into place. So in this pic it was only the front seats that were fitted
I also bought a red OMP strut brace, which there are pics of later in the post
June 2006
Booked my car in for a remap, as this was the whole reason I bought the car! Angel Tuning came out and mapped the car at my house, and suddenly my 80bhp Punto was ???bhp (Somewhere between 110 and 130bhp)
July 2006
It's about time for a random shot of Whiley and Serin in my boot don't you think?
I took my car down to Frensham Pond near to where I live for some photos as I hadn't taken any proper ones since I bought it. I think they turned out alright
September 2006
While all the pissheads where at Skeggy; Me, Alex22, Bushboy and dannyhgt went to brooklands for an Italian day. I've got some videos of me, Alex and Chris doing the hillclimb. Chris had a standard JTD at the time (I think this one was a long stint, a 2 weeker iirc
) but only one pic of mine and Danny's car
Here you can see the difference between a standard JTD and a mapped one
Bit of wheelspin in 2nd uphill https://www.fiatforum.com/gallery/data/1139/MOV00127.3GP
https://www.fiatforum.com/gallery/data/1139/MOV00129.3GP
And also a JTD very similar to my own and an HGT very similar to danny's racing on our private drag strip
https://www.fiatforum.com/gallery/data/500/MOV00019.3gp
It was at this show that I first spoke to Peter (Oldschool) about the new GSR kit he was developing for the JTD. Bushboy had tried it but had run into problems with the MAF sensor iirc so I offered to be the guinea pig and bought one. It wasn't until the Stanford hall show that it was ready, paid for and actually fitted but I was really impressed with the sound it made
I now needed to have the car mapped again to take advantage of the GSR kit and Peter arranged for me to visit ChippedUK in the midlands. So I went over and had the car mapped, and here were the results:
Now I mooched around for a few months after this, and if I'm being honest didn't treat the car well at all. It hadn't had any fluid changes for nearly 20,000 miles and was driven hard at all times, even when cold. I ended up paying the price for this...
January 2007
My car had been starting to run strange recently, when cold I had no power at all when off boost then as soon as I hit around 2200rpm it suddenly kicked in a flew off! Added to this when idling the whole car was shaking, at first it was only slightly but it then started to get worse. I put this down to an engine mount starting to go, but it turned out I was wrong.
At the end of the month I was taking my sister to work one morning when part of my modified wiper linkage came loose. So I pulled over to put it back together but when i put my foot on the clutch as I came to a stop, the pedal felt crunchy and there was a horrible rattly grindy noise coming from the engine bay. Managed to limp the car home and booked it in to a garage for them to inspect the damage and change the clutch and oil while they were there.
February 2007
The car went into the garage at the start of the month and had a clutch change, I also asked them to check the engine mounts while they were there. The car came back and the clutch was perfect, so it looks like the release bearing had given up. However on the receipt from the garage they had put that the engine was running poorly, which by then it really had started to. The cold problem was still there, also the shaking which wasn't the engine mounts as they were all in perfect condition.
So it was booked into Fiat to be put on examiner and also have the EGR valve replaced, as this is what I suspected was causing the problem.
When I went to collect the car from Fiat, the bloke who worked on the car came out and had a chat with me, he explained that they had changed the EGR valve and put the car on examiner, but that didn't turn up anything that could be causing my problems.
I was basically told that unless they stripped the engine they wouldn't be able to tell me what was wrong with my engine. My thoughts were "**** that am I paying Fiat hundreds of pounds to strip my engine when I can do it myself!" Finally decided that I was going to buy a replacement engine, fit that and then strip down my old engine to inspect what went wrong with it.
Coming soon, the engine swap :devil:
