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Stilo My new abarth stilo!!!

Introduction

Just bought myself a lovely stilo abarth selespeed. I'm going to be making a few modifications such as some punto abarth badges, a throaty back box and possibly some engine mods but nothing too extreme. Does anyone have any tips on squeezing some extra power out of the engine aside from exhausts, inductions and remapping? Any advice would be appreciated.
Just bought myself a lovely stilo abarth selespeed. I'm going to be making a few modifications such as some punto abarth badges, a throaty back box and possibly some engine mods but nothing too extreme. Does anyone have any tips on squeezing some extra power out of the engine aside from exhausts, inductions and remapping? Any advice would be appreciated.

Looks nice :D

Aside from exhaust, induction and remap you could get a custom decated branch manifold made to increase gas flow. You could also port/ polish the cylinder head and fit uprated camshafts. You'd need another remap after doing all that. If hazard a guess at 220+ if you did all that but I'm not an Abarth owner lol

Mark
 
Unfortunately I disagree with Mark on this occasion :) his advice is well-meant but I highly doubt there'd be much gain from changing the manifold arrangements and it would be at the loss of low-revs torque. The standard exhaust manifold on the 2.4 is a multi-branch design with five individual stainless steel tubes. The standard inlet manifold is a variable-length design to give the best of both worlds. Both are pretty much as good as you can get.

However, the exhaust manifold branches do all join together at the first catalytic converter, which looks suspicious. On a four-cylinder it was always desirable to have a long dual downpipe - one pipe from cylinders 1 and 4, one from 2 and 3 - joined under the car's floor. But with a five cylinder - who knows? :) maybe you need three downpipes?

Ohhhhh... reading Mark's post again, I see the word I thought was "dedicated" is instead "decated", meaning a modified exhaust manifold with the catalytic converter removed. That makes more sense now! sorry, maybe we don't disagree after all... :ROFLMAO:

To make a more powerful 2.4, I reckon the most cost-effective approach would be to graft on the cylinder head and turbo (and pistons?) from a Coupe 20V turbo engine (2.0 five cylinder) - then perhaps run a slightly bigger turbo.

Failing that, there are Colombo and Bariani camshafts available for the 2.4 to do what Mark suggests.

I never understand why people think the 2.4 is short on power. A 1.2 FIAT 8v engine has 69bhp (an average kind of output) and the 1.2 16v, in Sporting form, has a comparatively excellent 80bhp. The 2.4, while being twice the capacity, has 10bhp more than twice the power of the Sporting 1.2. Where's the problem? ;)

-Alex
 
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I must agree with Alex and say that the manifold is actually pretty good. Its a steel tubular one and looks to flow quite nicely. If any modification is to be made on the exhaust then I would go for removing the 2nd cat. It won't effect your MOT and could release and horse or two

If its more wellie your after then a remap and a decent exhaust will see your power up to around 200bhp any more than that and you'll need fast road cams, bigger injectors etc..... All this is available but very pricey! For instance a brand new set of Colombo and barrini cam shafts (a trusted and well known make of fast road camshafts) are around £800!!! which is a heck of alot hence why highly tuned stools are rare

The other option is like mark suggested and drop a 2.0 turbo engine in from a coupe. It's more or less the same as the non turbo 2.4 that's in your car but in smaller 2.0 litre form but has a standard power output of 220bhp. However I've never seen one yet and it's way out of my capability lol
 
+1

Also bear in mind it's a normally aspirated engine. The kind of power gains possible from remaps etc on a turbocharged engine just aren't there with NA...

Exactly :) and that's why I suggested a turbo conversion (easy if Coupe 20v Turbo parts are available) as I think that would bring much greater potential gains for the money spent.

It's going to be a slightly different story in different parts of the world, but personally I think the days of modding/tuning engines for more power are almost gone in NZ. It's usually cheaper and easier just to buy a car with more power in the first place, particularly as big old beasts lose far more of their value as they age. E.g. we used to put 1500cc engines in Unos once, but looking back it seems hilarious now you can buy a Stilo Abarth for next to nothing and get far more of a car in the process.

Of course, creating a one-off special gives a close personal involvement and reward like no other - I'm just saying it might not make economic sense. Then again, raising children probably doesn't make economic sense either! :D

-Alex
 
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Wasn't a coupe 20vt conversion attempted in the past at great expense and ultimately failed?

If 20vt power is the talk then may I point out that coupe 20vt's are available in the UK for between 1-3k which would give you everything you need to make a 20vt Stilo but swapping over 90% of a coupe parts, stripping 90% of a Stilo then fitting nearly a full coupe into the Stilo would take a lot of time and effort.

Still...I'd like to see a supercharged 2.4 Stilo :D
 
Still...I'd like to see a supercharged 2.4 Stilo :D

Me too! :D ....... Yes someone did try and was 99% there but couldn't get it to run then just broke it up and scrapped what he didn't sell?? :confused: it was a 2.4 turbo conversion using bits from the 2.0t and the research he done was immense! He had managed to identify which parts from the 2.0t engine would fit into the 2.4n/a engine and discovered by cross referencing part numbers that quite a lot was interchangeable like the cylinder head and the exhaust camshaft etc......... Much to the disappointment of the "you can't do that it won't work" brigade that sometimes like to p**s on the chips of some people's projects :D
 
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