1980 FIAT 2000 Turbo Spider

Updated : 12/02/05



Here are some of the latest pics of my Spider.

       

Click on any photo for an expanded veiw



        Specifications:

        Color: Platana Grey
        Electronic fuel injection
        Electronic ignition
        Power assisted four wheel disc brakes
        5 speed transmission
        Twin-cam 2 liter engine
        Pininfarina coachwork (same company that builds Ferraris)




        Modifications:

        14" Panasport rims (Polished afterwards) w/ Nankang 601 tires
        Hella HB2 headlights
        CIBIE auxilliary lights
        Chromed resonated exhaust tips
        Lowered suspension
        New electrical terminals (see my electrical restoration page)
        Carbon fiber dash (laminate)
        Rear swaybar
        Custom Turbo system.
        Sparco Junior Seats.




The Turbo!

This is the second turbo system I have built for this car. The first turbo system consisted of a Serra turbo manifold and a Rayjay turbo. Although that system turned out great, I decided to build another system. I aquired a PBS exhaust manifold which was intended for a Garrett T4 but I had the exhaust outlet port machined and drilled to accept a T3. The T3 turbo I used has a trim of .36 which is about the smallest compressor wheel you can get for a T3.




So far the two main problems with my second system have been the exhaust gaskets and exhaust nuts staying torqued. If you have visited my page before you probably remember the gaskets I had made out of copper sheet metal. Well those didn't seal very well. This time I'm using an exhaust manifold gasket made of graphoil with SS rings around the exhaust runners. The inlet turbo gasket is SS. The T3 discharge gasket was really hard to find since allot of companies don't use a gasket and claim that if both surfaces are perfectly machined this will seal. I'm not convinced this is enough to provide a good seal long term but with a little digging I finally found one from this place. So far so good.

The exhaust nuts staying torqued was another problem. I'm currently evaluating these things called Nord-Locks.You can buy them from Mc-Master Carr. Currently I've only put less than 1500 miles on my car since having the cylinder head rebuilt. But they have yet to loose their torque. I'm really impressed. Another thing I seem to think helps is deleting antiseize compound on the nut end of the stud (but not the other end). Normally I use this stuff but in this case I think it causes more harm than good. Hopefully the PB Blaster will break any seized nuts loose if I have to tear the system apart. I have also fabricated a support bracket that bolts to the turbo and the engine mount bracket. The main reason for this is just in case the exhaust manifold nuts work loose, there will be something holding the manifold in place. Hopefully I won't need it. The previous system resulted in disaster.The nuts securing the manifold to the head worked loose and caused the threads in the head to strip out! At first I thought the stock exhaust manifold gasket had blowned out then when putting the second system together I discovered the exhaust threads in the head were stripped so I thought the weight of the system was the cause but later suspect the nuts had just worked loose. I also had the same thing happen on the exhaust discharge coming out of the turbo on the second system! Except in this case two studs had sheared off due to pipe just flopping around. So I tore the system down again. This time I evaluated the flaws in my system and found the Nord Locks and better exhaust gaskets. So hopefully I finally got it right. I still keep a check on the exhaust nuts once a month but I'm pleased to report they have yet to loose their torque.

The downpipe was a bit tricky to build. I had to build the downpipe on the spare engine you see here. I got the short radius pipe fittings from a local pipe supplier. The downpipe needed to fit between the crossmember and the steering components without conflicting with anything. As you can see from the photo of just the downpipe, the straight piece was replaced by a 90º elbow. Because of this, the biggest pipe I could use was 2" but the system works great and still makes lots of power. Not pictured is a flex coupling I had the muffler shop weld onto the pipe to prevent stress fractures in the system.

Unlike the Turbo Spider Legend Industries built, this system uses a totally different method for delivering extra fuel under boost. I've installed an adjustable fuel pressure regulator. As boost pressure increases, so does fuel pressure. Mounted next to the coil are three pressure switches. I made the manifold out of brass tees and soldered a bent piece of steel for a bracket that overlaps one of the bolts for the coil pack. The first switch tricks the computer by breaking the signal between the oxygen sensor and computer. Otherwise the computer would see the extra fuel and try to lean out the fuel mixture. The second switch is for the Jacobs Boostmaster boost retard system which is shown in one of the above photos. I found that by retarding the ignition timing about 4º under boost prevents detonation does the trick without hurting power. The third switch does nothing at the moment but I am thinking about using it as an overboost protection but I have yet to figure out a way to use it. One thought was to break the tach signal to the computer which will kill power to the injectors. I've been told this is not a good idea because it causes an instant lean mixture and can cause a meltdown. The other idea was to kill power to the coil. The problem with doing this is as soon as power is restored to the coil , the engine will backfire. That's why I have my rev limiter disabled on my Boostmaster. So I'm not sure what would be the best way to control overboost.

Also pictured is my overflow tank I built from a Marvel's Mystery Oil can. The brackets are made from some leftover copper sheetmetal I soldered to the can. I soldered a drain fitting and a hose nipple on the bottom so they would seal.

So how much power do this turbo give me? I haven't put this current system on a Dyno but the previous system gave me 123HP and 139 ft pounds of torque at 7 pounds of boost. If you calculate the drivetrain lose at 20%, this means power is up by 50%.

Here are the dyno results.

The breaks in the graph appear to be missfires. I upgraded to some Magnecore plugwires since then. Although the missfires could not be felt, the dyno picked them up so I don't know if this cured the problem.

Also in the photo mounted on the passenger fenderwell is a manual boost controlled made by a company called TurboX. The blue anodized device. It allows me to overide the factory 5 PSI wastegate setting so I can run as much boost as I want. Not only does it provide a low budget method of raising the boost pressure it also blocks the signal to the wastegate until it's read to open. This helps the turbo spool up quicker.

I briefly ran a dump valve but found that with this system there is practically no turbo stall between shifts. It was also incredible noisy and got on my nerves so I removed it. But I plan on reconnecting it one of these days. I had to run a Grainger valve to block the vacuum signal since this dumpvalve was not intended for a metered air system. More on that when I reinstall the valve and post some new pics.

I coated the exhaust items with POR-20 which held up OK until it started blistering. Perhaps if I had washed the items in acetone or laquer thinner before applying the coating it would have held up better. But I developed a bad oil leak from the exhaust cambox and it stained it. So during the second teardown I tried sandblasting the coating but it won't come off and now looks like crap! If I had it to do all over again I would have had the system jetcoated.



Commonly asked questions

Q: Why did you decide to turbocharge your Spider rather than go the conventional route with high compression pistons, hot cams, dual carbs, etc?

A: For one thing it was cheaper (for me anyway) to build a turbo system from scratch rather than rebuild the engine with expensive components to get the same amount of power. I figure I have less in my turbo system than a set of dual carburators. The second thing is I wanted a significant increase in power but wanted to keep my around town driveabilty. So I have the best of both worlds. Not only that but I'm making 50% more power and the car runs on 93 octane. Try that with 10:1 pistons!!

Q: So your engine is stock?

A: Yes everything with the drivetrain (clutch, pistons, etc) is stock. The only major upgrades are the fuel pressure regulator, Jacobs Boostmaster, thicker headgasket, and the pressure switch. However I'm pushing the limit. Anymore boost would probably require forged pistons, hotter coil, stronger clutch, etc.

Q:How come you didn't supercharge your Spider? I hear they are better because they don't have any so-called Turbo Lag.

A:Price, easier to mount, takes up less space, a turbo makes more overall power with the same amount of boost because it doesn't require any power to turn it unlike a supercharger which can take 14HP right off the bat. That about 20 less HP for the same amount of boost. Superchargers are great but I only recommend them if your engine is making 200+ HP is stock form. Don't be fooled that the air leaving a supercharger is not cold! They do have their limits as well! Remember no matter which way you do it, compressed air is hotter.

Q:What's this so-called Turbo Lag I hear so much about that are associated with turbos?

A:It's true that a turbo doesn't provide an instant amount of power like a supercharger but if sized for the engine properly the lag time is practically nothing. Usually cars with turbo lag have oversized turbos (when at one time, one size fit all), years ago before intercoolers allot of cars ran a compression ratio of 7.5:1 so they could run 15 lbs of boost (like the non intercooled Ford Thunderbird) so that created some lag. Personally I don't think there is any lag with my system. My main issue is the car is geared too low so it really doesn't do much in 1st or 2nd gear but really comes alive in 3rd and above.

Q: What has been the biggest problem with your system?

A:Mainly keeping the exhaust nuts torqued and exhaust gaskets sealing. But I think I finally solved those problems.

Q: How come you only run 7 pounds of boost?

A:Right now I haven't broken anything so that's the way I want to keep it until someone can tell me how much power a Spider's drivetrain can handle.

Q: How much boost could I run if I wanted to?

A:One time when playing around with the boost controller I accidently ran 12 pounds of boost before letting off the accelerator but didn't have the accelerator stomped. The road was wet and when going up a hill the tire started to spin out of control but the engine seemed like it wanted to keep going!

Q: What are the limits of the amount of boost I can run?

A:The first issue is detonation. The air leaving the turbo is so hot, the more boost the hotter the air is but there are other factors involved. The other factor which can cause detonation is running out of fuel such as exceeding the limitations of the fuel injection system. Providing the fuel pump could still provide enough fuel a fifth injector (such as a cold start valve) could be installed before the throttle body. The next thing is missfires which is exceeding the limitation of the ignition system. Providing you could get around those issues, the clutch would probably start slipping. Thw worst case scenereo are broken engine and drivetrain components. Based on my experiences, I found that running 7 pounds of boost gives me a 50% increase in HP and torque without having to modify the drivetrain. One of these days I would like to build another Spider and run as much boost and find out the car's limitations.

Q: How come you don't have an expensive fuel/ignition management system on your car?

A:Because I'm cheap for one thing but why reinvent the wheel? Actually for low boost systems, the factory fuel injection system will work on just about any car with some minor modifcations. If I were going to run 20 lbs of boost then a programmable FI system mightb e required.

Q:How come you didn't use those boost switches from the Legend Industries Spider which are wired into the FI harness?

A:Because the adjustable fuel pressure regulator works better and was easier to install. It provides a more linear increase in fuel rather than just dumping a bunch of fuel in at once. I think LI's method was too complicated and I've never seen another factory/aftermarket turbo system that used such a method by tricking the coolant temerature sensor and throttle positiion switch.

Q:Why did the LI system have so many problems?

A:I've never owned a LI turbospider so I probably shouldn't comment on my speculations. But I do have them.

Q:So are you planning on making any kits from your design?

A:I'd like to build some kits however I have three issues. One is lack of tools, like metal cutting devices. Even though I designed this system myself, I had allot of outside help. I don't have a very good welder so I cut and measured everything and just tack welded them together and then had a professional put the final weld on it. The other issue is time. Due to my work schedule my time is very limited. Being You know having to wash cloths, dishes, cook, mow the yard, etc. Oh and yes my job!


Here's a cool site for 124 turbo enthusiasts : turbo124.com




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