hey there, well when it comes to the fire engine you can go quite far. they made them all the way up to a 1.4 with 16v. i myself installed a 1.2 (1242cc) 8v multi point injection engine to my old panda 4x4 from out of a punto 75. from 50 to 75 hp. however it was nice just getting in and starting when cold, plus the engines with ECUs are very water proof so perfect for a 4x4.
so with the FIRE type engines, any engine from 1.2 up has an extra 2cm added to the block in height. usually this is not that much of a big deal. on the panda you have to extend the down pipe by 20mm and cut out a bonnet support then the engine fits nicely. also on anything 1.2 and up the bolt pattern for the intake manifold changes.
my advice would be if you want ease, look for a scrap punto 55 or a cinquecento or seicento sporting with the 1.1 (1180cc) engine BUT nothing newer than 2002. old is gold when it comes to keeping things simple. yes these cars will have ECUs but on these engines you will be able to swap all of the original ignition and intake/exhaust components over to the new engine.
now if you want to go crazy, any of the FIRE range of engines will fit with the above differences however some slight modifications rectify them. the wiring of the ECU is not hard and it is all on here. you just need to remember to get the ECU, CODE box and key from a scrap car. the CODE box is what the little aerial around the ignition key fits into. make sure to cut all wires off at as longer lengths as you can and cut nothing in the engine bay as well you dont need to. only about 5 wires in total go behind the dash from the engine bay and most of them are power wires. one is for the CODE box to ECU, one is for an engine management/injector light, and one is for the RPM gauge. quite a lot of wires from the new engine can be ignored like the oil light wire (which i remember is yellow) and cylinder head temp sensor because you can just use the original old wiring.
i guess it all comes down to how much time you want to spend on it.
i am interested to know how bad the old engine is? low on compression? if the cam belt has snapped, just replace it. the engines are non interface so suffer no damage when that happens.
get a thread set up, we would love to see its progress!
