500 Potential owner

[mj2k]

Hi,

I'm shortly looking to create a 500c Abarth and this forum looks like it's full of interesting technical info, so thought I might as well join up...

I'll be asking some daft newbie questions on the 500 / Abarth forums no doubt, in my quest to discover whether turning a 1.2 or 1.4 500c into an Abarth is a viable option before I spend any serious cash.

I've got quite a few years experience tinkering with classics (including Alfas, for my sins), sticking old, rusty thingies back together and building Subaru frankencars; my latest project involved taking bits of 4 different Subarus from 3 different continents, persuading the electronics to communicate and turning a fairly mundane 140bhp wagon into a 350+ bhp monster. But since I only wanted an extra 20bhp to make overtaking a little easier before the modding bug well and truly bit, it's ended up a little too frisky / thirsty for everyday use, so I'm now planning something slightly less ridiculous

 

[jrkitching]

Hello and welcome to the forum.

...my quest to discover whether turning a 1.2 or 1.4 500c into an Abarth is a viable option

This kind of conversion would require so many components to be changed that it would be far cheaper just to buy an Abarth 500C in the first place.

I've got quite a few years experience tinkering with classics

You're not in Kansas anymore. On a modern canbus car like the 500, almost nothing is plug 'n play; you can't just swap parts from a different version and expect them to work.

 

[mj2k]

Hi, thanks for the reply, can bus really doesn't scare me much as long as I can find out the info from somewhere, last project involved rewriting the eeproms, resoldering the bcu and rewiring part of the (new) loom to make a UK spec bcu talk to a JDM spec ECU from a completely different model I've not needed to disassemble the ECU code though and hope that won't be necessary since it's been a very long time since I was that involved in machine code.

As for the cost, assuming I can pick up a crashed donor, I'd expect the project to cost around 5-6k compared with 18k plus for a 595c comp so it'll save a few quid if it works.

I think the biggest issue will be working out how the power hood motor works, and how much repinning of the rear loom would be necessary if I was to use, e.g. a 500 Abarth hatch as a donor and a 'pre facelift' (assuming it's called that?) 1.2 / 1.4 500c as the shell. I'm guessing the hood motor also runs off the CAN bus so I'll need to work out if the Abarth ECU will talk to a 500c BCU (assuming the ecu was 'freshened'), and if not, if an Abarth hatch BCU will have the capability to control the hood motor.

 

[mj2k]

Think I've answered my own question on the power roof - browsing through the wiring diagrams I've discovered the motor's not on the CAN bus - it only takes a power and vehicle speed feed from the BCU, everything else is just a simple switch. So nothing to worry about there

 

[Ralf S.]

Sounds like you won't be afraid of the job, at least... anything electrical is bad enough for me.. but the CAN is a proper nightmare. It'll be handy to have another Forum member who has experience of the sorcery.


Ralf S.

 

[mj2k]

Sounds like you won't be afraid of the job, at least... anything electrical is bad enough for me.. but the CAN is a proper nightmare. It'll be handy to have another Forum member who has experience of the sorcery.


Ralf S.

Agreed, the CAN bus is a bit of a 'mare, especially if you're trying to get things which shouldn't be able to talk to each other to, er, talk; lots of waving chickens over a fire and other voodoo practices involved in that

I used to know someone on the Peugeot 306 cabriolet forum who actually designed / built CAN bus components for a large manufacturer as part of his job, and he really was a whizz at this sort of stuff, but with a few basic tools (well, a home-built microcontroller) and the manufacturer's documentation you can usually work out what's happening by 'sniffing' the CAN bus.

Luckily for me on my last project someone had already worked out where the security info was (and odometer reading) in a separate EEPROM in the BCU, ECU and speedo, so I just needed to pull the chips, get the info out, and work out what the various bits meant before reprogramming them to match each other. But from what I can tell the Fiat doesn't 'code' the speedo to the ECU / BCU, and there seem to be lots of companies who can 'virginize' an ECU, so this might actually be a less bumpy ride than my last experiments with a bit of luck...

 

[mj2k]

Just got a quote from Chris Knott, and there's virtually no difference in insurance costs between a 'proper' 595 Comp and a homebrew for me at least, as long as all parts are brought up to spec, so I think this project is worth a try

'course resale value for a modified Fiat 500 will be almost nothing so it'd be broken when I've finished with it, but I suspect most ICE cars' values won't be an awful lot by then, so that doesn't really bother me.

 

[mj2k]

Umm, well, that didn't quite go to plan, I seem to have bought myself a somewhat better donor than I intended - 2015 595 Turismo hatch on 33k with 1 owner!

It's got a bit of a broken nose, but looks quite good apart from that:

Anyone recognize it?