DaveMcT said:

You seem to be missing my point. I'm using bikes to show that 100bhp per litre is not difficult. The 1.4 litre 100HP Panda should easily make 120bhp with some careful mechanical tuning.

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I’m really not sure why bike engines had to come into it either ? Anyhoooo

In all honesty you could probably gain up to 10-11hp with some mods to help in breath better both in and out, and a quick check online tells me that an engine remap on these will give 9hp improvement on a standard engine so with tweaks probably above 9hp almost certainly 120hp would be achievable.

Back in the early 2000s I knew a lot of food tuners and at that time the Zetec was king. They were tuning the 1.8 focus zetec with thousands of pounds of heavy engine work lightening balancing, stainless customs high performance exhausts, lightened fly wheels you name it they were doing it all on non turbo charged engines, and If very lucky they could maybe manage 180hp at the top from a car with 120hp to begin with so you could argue by throwing thousands of pounds at it you could gain 50% on a standard engine, but these highly strung Ford engines were not exactly reliable often needing to go back for more work and tuning every 5 minutes and breaking down.

I’d say £1000 with intake, exhaust and a remap would get you around the 120hp mark which is pretty good as improvement on a NA car with a small engine like this. To go any further is going to cost a fortune and damage the reliability of the car. I’d say 120hp is achievable on that budget.

The only thing is and it has to be pointed out (at worst) would adding 20hp to the 100hp without any other mods destroy the way the car feels and drives or (at best) make no discernible difference to the way the car feels drives or accelerates because it’s only 20hp

Also is it worth modifying a potential future classics and ruining its future value and desirability (look how many Punto GTs got scrapped because they were badly modified) is it worth spending £1000 for a very small gain in actual horse power.

to give an example. This is a 4G15 race engine and the proof of the pudding on a dyno


completely stripped and rebuilt. Every part matched. Rings gapped bearings oversized, balanced and so on. Everything is standard including the ECU


cost over £10,000


increase in BHP from stock 99 to 111 revs


not my engine I don't have that kind of money.

unless the car is detuned like the Corsa C there normally isnt a cheap way to increase power

koalar said:

cost over £10,000

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Now..... I wonder what else you could have bought for that??

Back in 07 the panda 100hp was highly praised but in 2020 your average Ford 1litre ecoboost has 100hp as does pretty much most things. 120hp+ is standard for even the most average car these days

AndyRKett said:

Now..... I wonder what else you could have bought for that??

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Absolutely, but spending all that money to get 11% more power was plain silly. You could have done that with a new exhaust manifold and a fancy back box.

For £10,000 you could have bought two used Abarth 500s and gone twice as fast twice.

DaveMcT said:

Absolutely, but spending all that money to get 11% more power was plain silly. You could have done that with a new exhaust manifold and a fancy back box.

For £10,000 you could have bought two used Abarth 500s and gone twice as fast twice.

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the point is its was competitive front runner in its class back in its day

the engine is Good for an easy 350bhp with of the shelf forged pistons and turbo for a hobbiest but that isnt allowed


as far as I have seen bolt on air filter, exhaust, fuel pressure regulator mods
either made a loss, same or small gain. However any small gains are normally within testing errors. This is from rolling Road about 10 years ago.

I don't remember seeing a fiat most were jap and Ford from memory


There are exception normally where the same engine is fitted to two different models at two power and price points

AndyRKett said:

The only thing is and it has to be pointed out (at worst) would adding 20hp to the 100hp without any other mods destroy the way the car feels and drives or (at best) make no discernible difference to the way the car feels drives or accelerates because it’s only 20hp

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Hmmm, I'n not sure about the *it's only 20hp* that is a 20% increase in power and that is not insignificant. Upgraded brakes at least would be needed. Suspension too possibly. I'm not sure £1000 would be enough to cover everything.

I'm more than happy with the power, I find it a real fun drive, you have to *rag it* to a certain extent which can make for a frantic drive, compared to my Focus estate (which has 182 hp) it is much more fun round the lanes.

My first thought for performance upgrade on a budget was a remap. Anything else in search of more power could get expensive.

If your ultimate aim is to cover ground more quickly, then as a completely alternative suggestion, have you considered some advanced / performance driving tuition?

It will almost certainly make you (rather than your car) a quicker driver, and safer too. Could even lower your insurance costs rather than send them skywards for a modified car.

But then if you want to beat the boys off the line it's clearly not going to help.

If I wanted to improve the performance of my car I would be investing in decent shocks, brakes and tyres, personally. A 4-2-1 manifold is tempting but might not pass the MOT.

rmjbn1 said:

My first thought for performance upgrade on a budget was a remap. Anything else in search of more power could get expensive.

If your ultimate aim is to cover ground more quickly, then as a completely alternative suggestion, have you considered some advanced / performance driving tuition?

It will almost certainly make you (rather than your car) a quicker driver, and safer too. Could even lower your insurance costs rather than send them skywards for a modified car.

But then if you want to beat the boys off the line it's clearly not going to help.

If I wanted to improve the performance of my car I would be investing in decent shocks, brakes and tyres, personally. A 4-2-1 manifold is tempting but might not pass the MOT.

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mmmm


A Punto 75 engine with 282 cam ,4-2-1, higher compression with remap

made 77bhp on the rolling Road according to Facebook. I think if you just left it alone you get 73bhp

you get different results on different rolling roads

with different humility

and different temperatures

its still within a margin of error in my opinion 4bhp. Of course the error could be the other way and its making 8bhp more but I doubt it


I don't want to put anyone off tuning there engine. Put as far as I know the F.I.R.E doesn't respond to bolt on mods

you could search through the Polish forums. There is a wealth of knowledge over there for some reason. But I would have to use another browser Edge doesn't work well for translating on the fly


A power run on a rolling road is around £40 and a proper remap around £500

there's plenty who just bang any old bought remap from a database in which may or may not work on every vehicle

Unfortunately there's no easy or cheap way to get a significant amount of extra power out of a NA engine..... unless going down the turbo/supercharged/ITB route......which certainly isn't cheap.....done properly that is.

I remember some of the Cinquecento's that had the Van Aken turbo kit fitted..... fairly sure it was a low boost turbo so as not to damage the engine. I think those running high boost had to have forged pistons and rods etc.

I suppose the 1.4 could take a fair amount of extra power. Is there much difference between the internals of the 1.4 in the 100hp and the internals in the T-jet?

I've taken a T-jet apart, as I've got a Cinquecento project that I've fitted it in to, and I fitted forged pistons and rods.....but I don't know if they are the same parts as in the 100hp 1.4.

start with a car that has a One-make manufacturer racing series attached to it would be the best way down this route


development work is already done and parts off the shelf


given enough time and money any car can be made to go, stop and handle.

Manufactures spend billions developing a car. If they could get an extra 10 bhp by adding a performance air filter they would have add a bit more paper to there factory filter for the few pence it would cost.


everything works in harmony. To get any noticeable benefits it has to be taken as a whole and that ain't cheap.

koalar said:

mmmm


A Punto 75 engine with 282 cam ,4-2-1, higher compression with remap

made 77bhp on the rolling Road according to Facebook. I think if you just left it alone you get 73bhp

you get different results on different rolling roads

with different humility

and different temperatures

its still within a margin of error in my opinion 4bhp. Of course the error could be the other way and its making 8bhp more but I doubt it


I don't want to put anyone off tuning there engine. Put as far as I know the F.I.R.E doesn't respond to bolt on mods

you could search through the Polish forums. There is a wealth of knowledge over there for some reason. But I would have to use another browser Edge doesn't work well for translating on the fly


A power run on a rolling road is around £40 and a proper remap around £500

there's plenty who just bang any old bought remap from a database in which may or may not work on every vehicle

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The older fire engines respond better to bolt on mods. The newer the are, the more the manufacturers have pushed them to a reasonable cost effective limit.

enough money can make almost anything happen, but the cost isn't always worth the reward at the end..

miksfiatpanda said:

I'm looking for best bang for the buck. Maybe £1000 total. Was quoted just under 300 for a full custom exhaust, 200 odd for BMC CDA intake. Anything else worth looking at? I don't mind spending money if it brings in real performance gain.

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All those upgrades cost too much money for the little gains you get.
A Rotrex upgrade is just a add-on, and cost more but give much more gains, like 50-80 hp (Talk to TTS-performance)
With a turbo upgrade there need to be done much more to the engine and is not worth the money IMHO.
In that case, better do a engine swap to a T-Jet engine, enough around of those.

How about £1000 of driver training to make the most of your existing performance. It will not only make your car faster but Much safer at the same speed. Also no insurance issues.

Tim

IAM drivers sometimes get cheaper insurance.

Fiat made it pretty much perfect with 100 HP as it was - do the Cooperman intake mod (to make it sound/feel faster!) keep it in third, hit the B roads and it's far more fun £ for £ than any other car I can think of. If you want to spend money then spend it on tyres and suspension and it *will* be faster.

Dervdrain said:

If you want to spend money then spend it on tyres and suspension and it *will* be faster.

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The 100HP could easily handle an extra 20 or 30 bhp on smooth fast roads. But the original power is pointless when you can't handle the normal roads. Get the handling right and you can use the existing power on normal roads. Our 60 bhp 1.2 (which rides smoothly over and surfaces) can embarrass a Golf GTI on bendy rough roads. Set up a 100HP with rally spec suspension (though with a normal ride height) and there won't be much to touch it.

Hi, interesting post. You have to listen to peoples opinions(but many are talking bull!). I have done most mods mentioned here, and more. My 100hp is now way faster than stock. Really takes off with a scream once you hit 4000 rpm.I'm no "expert", but mods as follows, in order. Cold air intake ducted from fog light apperture. Silicon/alloy intake pipes, Ramair cone filter. Intake is boxed and sound deadened. Home built 2.25" s/s exhaust system built from cut and shut 500 Arbarth sections, straight thru centre box and Raggazon group N r.box.Punto 1.2l s/s 4-2-1(bolts straight on. Standard cat/man seems a big restriction. I cut cat out of the manifold and welded a section with twin cats that can be swapped out at will for straight thru pipe. The standard exhaust ports are a lot smaller than aftermarket manifold so could probably benefit from port matching with a die grinder at a later date. All these changes have made for a slightly louder but much "quicker" car. It's a real hoot. Definitley doesn't spoil its chatacter. It's a different beast.The exhaust note is deeper and more aggressive. I love it.

Standard 100hp exhaust ports vs s/s manifold(£189).

I forgot, I also have fitted a "chip tuning box" may or may not add power(10% gain quoted).

If you want to fit a s/s 4-2-1 exhaust manifold make sure you get tbe right stud/port layout. As there seems to be 2 very different layouts. Number of studs and port shape are different. I found out the hardway and now own a spare manifold that wont fit 100hp!