Daves cinquecento - brutally raped.

[dave21478]

-Done it again, aintcha Dave?

-whats that?

-Buy a car purely for engine rape purposes and despite it being cheap and neglected its better than all your other cars and even though you only drove it onto the trailer, then off again and into the garage you are in danger of getting attached to it and not wanting to kill it.

-Oh that? Y....yeah. I did that.

 

 

 

Giffer owned, 85k kilometers, not a spec of rust anywhere at all.

 

This...

 

is supposed to go in this....

Giving fuel injection and DISpack ignition to replace the shitty carb and wobbly distributer and do away with whatever makes the horrible dry rasping bearing noise from the camshaft area on the Panda.

 

But this wee chunkychicken seems a really nice thing.

Its manky and has some minor giffer scrapes, but its sound and surprisingly well built.

The doors shut with a decent thunk rather than the cheap SPANG noise the panda makes.

 

Its reassuringly smol.

 

Nice.

 

Free warning triangle and rusty hammer. 

Under the mat is an unused spare wheel, jack etc and an extending wheelbrace.

 

 

Yeah, obviously its broken, but you can have everything, right?

Very obvious signs of gasket failure, but despite this it sparks right up first turn of the key and idles smoothly and quietly. 

Its an old pushrod design so changing the head gasket should be a piece of the proverbial.

 

I will get the gasket swapped and give it a service, then take stock. I really fancy this engine in the Panda, but I genuinely feel bad about killing this wee cinq. I mean, yeah, its only a cinquecento and all, but years ago people (me included TBH) said that about MG Metros as we yanked out their hearts to make Minis go a little bit faster.

 

[oldcars]

Nice, my wife had one of these and loved it. Rare to see a solid one now. Save please

[BorniteIdentity]

Good to see you getting stuck in, Dave. That Panda looks lovely, and would certainly go well with a modern engine. But you wouldn’t be the first to fall foul of mission creep.

 

Wishing you every success with this one.

[dollywobbler]

I think we can all resonate with this feeling. I need the engine out of my spares Invacar and can no longer bear to look it in the face.

[mk2_craig]

Obvious solution to your dilemma is to buy another puppy-eyed Cinq.

[Dirk Diggler]

Put the cinq engine in the Panda and buy a cheap 1.2 out of a MK1/2 punto for the cinq; I drove one about 10 years back that somebody had with that engine and it was a lovely little thing

[catsinthewelder]

Being as you don't need to pull the engine out of the Cinq to fix it then there is some sense in running it for a few hundred KM to check it's OK after you've fixed the gasket.   That way you can find out that the car crabs slightly, gives you a bad back after 20 miles and catches fire when you operate the heater and indicator at the same time.

 

If it doesn't do those things then find another engine, preferably a Punto engine like Dirk suggested.

[dave21478]

Problem is that the old pushrod engine is unique and the later FIRE engines from Puntos etc won't fit without massive hassle.... different bellhousing, different mounts etc.

The only engine that will fit the panda is this 900 from this era of cinq.

[hairnet]

this is dave.

 

be like dave.

 

find another more knackered cinq

 

save this one

 

or kill a panda  ( modern 04 on one obv)

[Cavcraft]

They are an ace little car with a bit of character about them. 

[Skizzer]

Decent Cinqs are probably more rare than Pandas now. (Maybe even more rare than actual pandas, come to that.)

 

My vote goes for ripping the engine out of a knackered one instead, if that’s an option, and letting this one live. Your car though.

[twosmoke300]

Just a thought on your dry rasping sound- is the cam pulley rubbing on the head ? Did a punting fire engine swap and the different years had slightly different head castings and my pulley was wearing away the head

[hairnet]

not slaggin but what is it with HGF and dave

 

worse than billy for finding them

[Matt]

Nice! Another vote for fix it in the Cinq and see how it is before condemning it. Small cars are best cars.

[mercrocker]

We need a "LIVE" button

[HH-R]

Did these get the 1.1 FIRE in the end, or was that just the Seicentos? 999CC FIRE conversion for the Panda? Though they're probably not exactly plentiful nowadays.

[Asimo]

Before you do anything with the car, please put that hammer head on the right way round!

 

( Or is it a special Fiat hammer for adjusting rust properly?)

[Mr_Bo11ox]

It is right is it not? I bought a hammer like that from Bricomerde and the head was on it like that.

[cort16]

My Mrs had a a Seicento Mia with this 900cc engine from new until it popped it's head gasket 8 years later. It was 8 years of UTTER MISERY. When it died amazing she wanted to replace with another one. The replacement one was an SX with 1.1 engine, which was a bit of a revelation compared to the old one and actually good fun to drive.

I say put this engine in the Panda and find a 1.1 to put in this.

[dave21478]

Did these get the 1.1 FIRE in the end, or was that just the Seicentos? 999CC FIRE conversion for the Panda? Though they're probably not exactly plentiful nowadays.

I think the Sporting got the 1.1.

FIRE conversion isnt possible for the panda unless i find a FIRE compatible 4x4 gearbox and several other things that would need to come from a donor 4x4, which would be hard/expensive to find and more work than I can be bothered with.

 

A rotten or crashed Sporting would be ideal right now, then I could use this 900 in the Panda and use the rest for a cheeky reshell of the Sporting.

[dave21478]

Thats a standard masonry hammer here....looks normal to me.

[Eddie Honda]

But this wee chunkychicken seems a really nice thing.

 

Nicer than this chunky chicken

 

[SiC]

1.4 engine into a cinq (useful info and links)

[DodgyBastard]

I had one recently, really didn't like it so sold it the next day for £20 less than I'd paid for it.

[PhilA]

Did 160,000 miles in mine. Head gasket went at 50,000. An easy two day job (machine shop time to skim the head inclusive) with the engine in the car. Access is moderate, the only arse is getting the exhaust manifold off.

 

Rust got mine in the end but for cheap motoring, bit of a laugh (lowering springs a must) it was really a very good little car.

 

41 horsepower, 41 lbft of torque from 41 cubic inches.

 

Because it wasn't all 42, it was all wrong but in the end it was a willing little engine and withstood a huge volume of abuse.

 

What's the drag coefficient of the Panda? The Cinq is 0.32 and that sees it run out of geegees at about book (87, about 4500 rpm) and mine would be difficult to get to return less than 35mpg even when driven everywhere flat out.

 

Oh, one hint, get it to 85 in top, drop it into 4th until about 95, then back into 5th and it'll accelerate off the end of the speedometer. The cam has a flat spot at 4500.

 

Guarantee by now the radiator is probably toast (and likely the reason the head gasket went), found that the ones that look like air conditioner radiators are a lot more efficient than the multi-flat-tube traditional type.

 

Also, if it runs like a bag of spanners disconnect the battery for 30 minutes and the ecu will "forget" the learned parameters of the engine and start over. Important to do after changing sensors.

 

Slow? Sure. Practical? Yes. Good little cars for what they are? Definitely.

 

Phil

 

Edit: also yours is a later one without the bleed screw in the top heater hose. Bleeding it will be a challenge

[dave21478]

 

Its an old pushrod design so changing the head gasket should be a piece of the proverbial.

 

 

Aye, no shit. Literally the easiest head removal on anything thats not a lawnmower. Seriously, i have played with Lego Technic that was harder.

 

 

 

Not much to it.

 

She is well clagged with goop though.

 

Forgot to get a photo but the gasket is well jiggered with loads of evident leaks between oil and water passages.

 

 

And a new _numbers recommended product - these Nitrile gloves....holy shit they are awesome. Thin enough to allow delicate fingering [joke goes here] but tough as fuck, one pair lasts forever without ripping and you can even take them off, have a sandwich and put the old ones back on again.

 

 

Will order a gasket and filters etc tonight which should arrive early next week.

[Parky]

Orange gloves? You are Edd China AICMFP

[Fabergé Greggs]

Y R U so good at this stuff? Not fair.

 

That’s definitely some impressive gunk levels too.

[hairnet]

french tv is merde

 

name change to chunkydave

[Tickman]

And a new _numbers recommended product - these Nitrile gloves....holy shit they are awesome.

 

They do degrade over time so don't keep them for best. 

I get given the not safe anymore ones from the Mrs work due to this.