hi there
i have a 1.1 ies uno and wondered if anyone had any tips on how to improve the performance for not a lot of money and without major mechanical work?

any help appreciated. thanks guys ( and gals of course)

What do you consider as not a lot of money?

well £100 is not a lot of money but £50 is even less

remove stuff u dont need from inside the car...i.e weight saving...cheaper still at free...

100 quid wont get u much!

induction kit. any cinquecento jobbie should physicaly fit but you might have to drill some holes to bolt it on etc.

that should do the trick although wont boost performance that much.

yep, weight saving is the way to go....

chuck out as much as possible, rear seats.... etc.... well, there isn't much to remove from an uno is there!

The old classic was never to have more than a fivers worth of fuel in your tank!!!!

Make sure it's serviced as well, that's about your limit mate.....

Get rid of the air filter housing etc. Install a freeflow filter as K&N or Green. This will do NOTHING on acceleration, but the torque will improve a bit on high speed, as speed forces air into the intake. The original air intake is blocked by some strange reason...

If you have the i.e version you don't need to think of pre-heating or carburettor icing. The engine starts nice in -30 C without the pre-heater hose going from the manifold to the airbox.

Wheight is important as stated. Never have passengers or full tank. This decreases acceleration and torque drastically. Get rid of rear seats. Throw the steel wheels and replace with aluminum rims - not too wide as this increases wheight again (also wide tyres are heavy).

Chop off rear silencer and replace with straight pipe. There are 2 silencers on the 1.1 i.e. anyway, so you won't need 2. The rearmost is heavy!

Morten.

get some 13" x 5.5" alloys on 165/55 tyres. smaller wheels does wonders for acceleration.. trust me!

along with better pads/shoes infact a refresh of the whole braking system can be benificial

Morty,

You would be surprised how heavy alloy wheels usually are!
Unless our friend wants to run wider rubber, I don't know that they're worth the money in this case?

This might sound a strange one but I notice that FIAT Brazil have increased the compression ratio on their FIRE engines, to 11.65:1. Power has gone up to 65bhp - for the 999cc! I wonder if it might be worth trying a similar stunt on the 1108cc FIRE (1.1i.e.s engine) - perhaps shave the head to increase CR to 10.5:1, might be a quick power increase? Assuming that you can remove the head yourself, it shouldn't cost much for an engine shop to machine some aluminium off.

I understand that the FIRE is a non-interference engine (valves don't hit the pistons if the cam stops turning) so this should give a small amount of 'distance' to play with.

The next thing would be a special camshaft. Something aftermarket for the Cinquecento Sporting? Perhaps there is a source for reground cams - I don't know of one, but ask a friendly engine shop who they would recommend.

After the camshaft change, you'll need more fuel. I really don't know how you increase the performance of the SPi (injection) system. With a carburettor, you can increase the jet sizes slightly. But with fuel injection, I would imagine it involves tinkering with the fuel pressure (I don't think there is an airflow meter in this application). Perhaps get a tuning shop to run the car on a dyno once you get to this point.

Unfortunately I suspect the cost of the high-performance cam will blow the budget... but check it out anyway and let us know?

Thanks,
-Alex

for £100 your probably find another bigger engine, and fit it your self, the amount of times that spares or repairs unos come up on ebay due to rust is mad, they always sell for 99p.

Proper induction kit is around £100.

Taking off head and skim it is about£30 to £50 depending where you can get it done. But you need head set and and preferably new bolts (they are reusable because they are stretch bolts but I will never do this). At the same time I wolud renew timing belt and tensioner. These parts come to another £60.

Multi angle valve cut increases price by about £95.

Porting and flowing incl. skim is about £200.

Reprofiled cam is between £100 and £150 plus shims.

Exhaust starts from £80 new.

Throttle body improvement can be done by yourself. If you can't you will have to pay between £50 and £120.

thanks guys, i am taking all this on board. unfortunately i cannot shed too much weight as i still have ti use it for the family car as well.

i have been offered the 1.4 engine, what sort of a job is it to put that into my uno? aren't the 1.4 multi point injection? will i need a new emu?

no the 1.4s are still spi but run off a completly different system to the 1.1. the 1.4 isnt a fire engine so will need quite a bit of extra work to get it in and running. wiring, ecu, gearbox, drive shafts, cooling system, alternator etc. its all different. you would just be better off buying a 70sx and selling your 1.1 you can pick them up for under £300 in decent condition. i got mine for £200 and apart from the faded paint, its in very good nick!