'73 Fiat 850 Spider

Here is the car as I bought a couple of years ago.

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I first planned on building an N/A motor with a bigger carb, cam, and compression, but meh... where's the fun in that?

Time to experiment a little bit and have fun. I then decided to go turbo. I was going to go blow-through with the bigger carb but that seemed like a pain and as well as lacking in engine control. Enter MegaSquirt2, EFI, and EDIS. That sounds like a much more interesting project. It's only engine for now, the car comes later.

Engine specs when new:

Bore: 65mm

Stroke: 68mm

Displacement: 903cc

HP: 52@5300rpm

Torque: 44@3600rpm

It's small. One of the big reasons I like it so much.

Below is the engine that came in the '73.  It still has the carb on it for now.   The water pump doesn't look like it belongs yet.  It's a 'shorty' from PBS Engineering for use with an electric fan.

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Observant viewers might have noticed a lack of oil filter (or place to put one). These models didn't use oil filters. They used a centrifugal oil 'filter' built into the front pulley as seen here:

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The idea was to open the cover and scrape out the crud and change oil often. Not the greatest idea I've ever seen...

Speed part from the 60's:

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This is going to look so sweet! Exposed, cog-driven timing belt right behind the new pulley Kyle is helping me with.

John at Extreme Turbo Systems does amazing work.  He fabbed the headers, downpipe, intercooler, and intake.  Thanks, John. 




Yuck, my engine looks so filthy with these nice, shiney parts on them...

The turbo is an older T25, oil cooled, compressor A/R of .48, turbine A/R of .63. I need to take off the compressor housing so I can figure the trim and compare it to some compressor maps I have. Hopefully it matches one of them as T25 maps aren't easy to find.

Currently, the intake pipe runs to a '91 Honda Civic DX TBI. The TBI is sitting on an Alquati Webber 32/36 carb adapter with another adapter in between them. Fits like a glove, though. The reason for the TBI instead of direct port is that the intake runners are cast inside the head. There is only one opening on the head and that is where the carb base sits. A bit odd, eh? Of course, for a mere $2 grand I could buy a PBS 8-P head with individual intake runners and then do ITBs...

PBS_8-P.jpg (48414 bytes) Maybe later...

I picked up this '72 from a guy in Portland who had it under a car port for the last 10 years. He planned to get around to it, but never did so I made him an offer. It's in way nicer shape than the blue '73.

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I've never seen a dash in this good of condition:72_Dash.jpg (381059 bytes)

Along with the car, I got a spare engine.  I gave back the distributor and carb as I won't need them.

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I'm currently tearing down both of the engines.  The one in better shape will be used for the turbo set up.  The other will be put back together and run while I learn how to tune MegaSquirt with fuel injection.

teardown.jpg (113005 bytes)Teardown2.jpg (88106 bytes)Teardown3.jpg (101009 bytes)Teardown4.jpg (95211 bytes)

Block_and_vise.jpg (121095 bytes)It's not a lot bigger than the vise.

IHOP_to_go.jpg (101409 bytes)Here it is ready to go to Tom's Performance machine in an IHOP 'n go bag.  Perfect fit.

More later when I found out more about the blocks...