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Cinquecento PEX - my return to cinq ownership

Stripped, caged track toy

Introduction

Well I've been out of the cento game a fair while now but yesterday I went and picked up PEX to start a new cento adventure.

Sure many will know him already, I'm not going to go into every single detail in this first post. But a quick rundown: it's fully stripped inside, buckets, harnesses, custom cage. It's on avo coilovers, had pgt3 front brakes, Oz racing wheels. Arch extensions, skirts, lancia delta bonnet vent, zender spoiler, carbon front splitter. Engines a wolf racing engine, which is a 1242 block, the rotating assembly has all been balanced and has a knife-edged crank with a lightened flywheel. A ported and flowed p75 head, I believe cam is a reground 866. Intake is a carbon dexcraft bob with BMC CDA. Exhaust is a 421 manifold, custom mid section with 200 cell high flow cat and a sportex centre exit back box. It's painted white and blue with red bumpers and bodykit, with martini inspired stripes and loads of decals. Think that covers most the general things about it.

Don't have a set plan for it, was all rather an impromptu and unplanned acquisition lol.

Feels good to be in a cinq again!

More pics soon ;)
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Chris.....if you remove the coilpack holder, the end of the cam will be stamped up if it's a WDR spec cam ground by Piper, it'll say BP285 or BP270 etc.

I have asked Piper about the specs but they don't have any records of the cams :( but they are more than happy to measure it for you for a cost.... I did it myself.
 
Cheers Brooky, I do want to open this engine up for a look at some point. It's not that I don't trust it's not what I've been told but I'd like to have a look over it myself.

Well, first update, sticky throttle.. Apparently some "specialist" had looked at this and couldn't figure it out.
So took bob off top, had a quick look and everything looked okay, took the throttle cable off, which is brand new, and then the flap snapped shut as it should.
So I thought this has to be something sticking in the cable or the pedal itself. Both look fine, move freely.
It was now time to take the throttle body right off for a closer look, and on inspection I noticed a mark where a spring would sit on the cam the cable joins to.. rummage in parts that came with car uncovered a spare throttle body and yep, that has 2 springs and is way harder to turn.
So quickly swap them over and presto, the pedal doesn't just stay where it was when you stopped pressing it, which made the drive home the other quite interesting lol.

https://youtu.be/BlnfACl9GXY

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Few little bits done

Removed the 2nd air filter
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Decided to have a look why the interior fan wasn't working.. so after taking car apart and doing some electrical tested turned out there was a missed plug behind the dash, so that was easy.
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The speedo isn't working so while that was out i twiddled the speedo bit and the speedo moved, so probably not the actual clocks. The speedo drive cable is all new so not likely that.. So looks like I'm changing another speedo worm drive, don't think I've had a Cento and not replaced this piece.
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I'll fit that up soon and finger crossed that's the issue, will be obvious when I take old one out though lol.
Anyhow, while clocks were out I pulled the white carbon wrap off the surround and the mobil1 sticker off the tacho.
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And some more blacking of stuff, the wiper..
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Bare metal'd
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Primed
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Painted
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....and the wrong clear, sigh
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Start again..
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Won't bore you with the whole process again, but ta da, one black arm with a new Bosch flat blade wiper
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There is some more updates soon, but parcelfarce has the parcel so god knows when it'll arrive.
 
Well parcelfarce finally managed to get my parcel to me.

Full flexeo hose kit in black silicone, had my eyes on these for while, even back when I had a Cento but with the pipes being slightly different on my turbo and 16v I had previously I couldn't justify it as I'd would have had to cut and chop them up to fit.

Bit of luck I'll find time to fit these at the weekend, and I suppose then remove the samco stickers off the car lol.
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thanks eklipze3k, although just sticking flexeo into google would have found it lol. :shrug:

Maciu, be aware cause the inlet manifold is different the pipes aren't 100% bang on, you need to extend the bit for the inlet manifold. Just bear that in mind before you go an buy some as i know you have the p75 engine same as me ;)
 
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Well life well and truly got in the way for a while, can't believe how long ago the last post on here was :oops:

With my Suzuki getting to a point I am happy to leave it as is for a while figured I should unbury Pex and give it a look over. Just getting it out the garage was no small feat lol.. but..
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ta da!

The suspected fuel leak is definitely a thing as it had a full tank when parked and it was bone dry empty.
Put the battery on charge over night and went got a jerry can of fuel and...



He lives 🥳
So last thing i was doing before he was buried in the garage was changing the coolant pipes - I connected these all up and topped up the water for this start-up and it worked, ran up to temp and the fan cycles and cools it back down. But there is a drip from the heater box so assume the heater matrix is leaking (new one ordered), I've also ordered an inline bleeder as with these flexeo pipes I have no bleeder and despite managing to get most of the air out there's still some in there as it gurgles when you fire it up and turn it off.

There's a tiny little split in a fuel line, the fuel rail supply one, pretty sure i have a roll of fuel line so that will be a simple fix.

The master cylinder seems to be a bit sticky, sometimes you press the brake and the pedal doesn't want to move and then suddenly frees and sometimes you press the brake and they don't release when you let go... new master ordered.

Beyond that I just need to figure out how the fuels getting out of the tank, it had a brand new tank just before i got the car so i assume something isn't sealed back there, and I think at that point it will be 'ready' to be used. There is of course a thousand things to do but think I could drive it to an MOT after those bits, although I probably will do some work on the wiring first.
 
Well decided in order to make this mine changes are required... so after actually quite a long time and resulting in very hurty fingers....

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All the stickers are gone, shock horror. Undecided on the future design but this was the first step.

Some other really big changes due to start soon, but first a road trip is required to obtain bits. Scheduled for next weekend, so all being well expect another update in about a week or two.
 
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