Tuning Engine swap

[patches]

I picked up a 1999 Punto Cabriolet about a year ago as my next project. The body is tatty, the roof terrible but mechanically it runs like a top and I love it!

While on eBay looking for random bits, I came across a 1.4 turbo from a 500 Abarth with the transmission included and wondered if it would be feasible/practical to swap it in. My initial thought it is too much power (160 hp version) for the chassis. I'm going to sort everything else first but I would welcome views about swapping in a bigger engine...and if so, which one?

 

[AnteLo]

It has been done but tbh mk1 Punto doesn't have the strongest body let alone the carbio, you would need to swap everything. If you really want to do it more power to you but get body braces and make sure you have good breakes. Good luck in your advanture

 

[blu73]

certainly doable, back in the day people dropped GT engines in cabbies no problem, around same torque but much much heavier.
If I got another mk1 i would defo tjet swap it without question.

Is your cabbie a 1.2 16v (85) or a 1.6 8v (90)? if you have a 1.2 then its a fire engine and so pretty much to get it in you'd just need to swap your engine mounts over to the tjet and it'd bolt up, not sure about the gearbox though, and driveshafts may not be the same length. I've not looked into the ins and outs of it but it should be a simple swap as far as engine swaps go.

One word of warning I do have is the modern tjets really need all their canbus body computers and dash cluster etc etc plugged in or it just wont work, this would be a challenge and a half to do, would also mean converting the throttle to fly-by-wire rather than cable. The alternative is aftermarket ecu.

So basically yes you can do that, its a simple-ish swap but not simple as bolt in and away you go. As above, its been done so your best shout is to do lots of searching and reading. All the fiats from this era are very similar if fire engined ones so dont just look for/talk to owners of tjet mk1s, tjet swapped cinq/sei and as far back as old pandas and uno's will have lots of relevant information.