Fiat 500 Tuning Guide
One of the best cars seen from Fiat in a long while is the Fiat 500. It already attains a cult status because of its part to fuel sipping and chic looks. It compares in cash with the original 500 which sold up to the mid 1970s.
It is also considered as a popular city car and is everything like the classic mini. The question is what can be done for improving the Fiat 500 and from where the tuning project of Fiat 500 can be started.
The engines range from a little 1.2 to the supercharged 1.4 Abarth. The cars are not very heavy and have a handling like a go cart and the engine mods on the smaller engines can even be distinguished by the driver.
The preferred can be the 1.4 or the Abarth while these are give a reward with a good power gain and a very enjoyable drive in the tuning project of Fiat 500.
If the 1.2 or 1.3 Diesel is in possession, fairly a few performance parts can be acquired from the 1.4 engine models. The brakes are a popular upgrade in these as the 1.4 Abarth is provided with some good and attractive brakes. The rear drums can be converted to discs also and an upgrade to the master cylinder is probably needed.
The larger wheels don’t appear to work better while the smaller engines tend to swamp down with their additional size. A 15 or 16 inch is better to stick with on the 1.0 and 1.2 and the 1.4 engine with 500s give a look good with 17 inches but is performance is desired then rims of 16 inch combined with some sensible suspension mods are better.
The components that will push power on the 1.4 to around 135bhp are the panel air filter, full sports exhaust system and a fast road cam. The Abarth will positively see closer 190bhp with the same mods. It is interesting that the Abarth can be pushed reliably to 225bhp because of its turbo engine and there are few which have high power figures than this. The terrible torque steer and a major traction issue is the trouble with too much power in a comparatively small chassis.
The standard car is an enormous package unless one desires to push really hard like on a track day. A lot of Fiat owners have reported the problem of brake fade when the pads really get hot, this is quite normal in a city car. The solution of this problem is to install fast road pads like the ones in Ferodo DS2500 using a dot 5.1 brake fluid. The brake discs can be ideally upgraded to larger grooved and vented discs with comparatively bigger calipers but better pads will result in a reasonable improvement.
Cautious has to be taken because some race spec pads are entirely not suitable for the road and they must not be used on a regular commuting car.
If more information is required on tuning the Fiat 500, then Torque Cars can be consulted for the comprehensive articles of Fiat 500 tuning, friendly and helpful new Fiat 500 forum are also very active where there can be interactions with other Fiat 500 owners for tips and other issues.
