Thill writeup from the Friendly Fiat Folks

Of the Fiat team, the UBird was our favorite.  Sorry to get it wrong.

One of our crew supports an SCCA Mercury Cyclone (9.0L, >900bhp) - so the Superbird is much admired.

Update on our motor - figure some good automotive carnage is a great way to start the morning....

Engine coming out of Bernice's Saab for teardown...

Flywheel turning blue, means some overheating.  The clutch started to get slow to return early Sunday - we think it was heat related.  This says it's likely.

Flywheel bolt holes starting to ovalize, meaning the flywheel was trying to shear off.  We put dowel-pins in the crank and flywheel as a safety measure.  Well worth the effort.

This is what happens when you DON'T pin the flywheel, and you do shear off the bolts.  You get to cut the end of the crank off for use as a drililng fixture so you can put dowel pins in the next crank and flywheel.

Piston #1 - conspicuously missing half the top ring...

Piston #2 - started to melt and stick to the bore...

Piston #3 - also starting to melt...2 and 3 are inboard of the engine, and therefore run hotter.  We also found cracks in our exhaust manifold on #2 and #3 cylinders, probably leaning out the mixture, leading to further heating.

Piston #4 - more top-ring hyjinx- half missing, other half cracking.

Bottom end - crank journals look clean, maybe we can save that.  Block will have to be bored if we're going to re-use it - bores are toast.

Great writeups and good comments from the X1/9 folks. Hell, ANY comments from X1/9 folks are good. I thought they were extinct!

How many 900-horsepower Cyclones can there be in Northern California? I took that shot at a track day at Infineon about a year ago, and would have given the Mercury the Coolest Car On The Track award... if not for this thing. Only 500 horsepower, but totally street legal!

Excellent documentary, thanks for the read.

Just to clear some things up, Weinerschmoker Car #30 had a 92 325 m50 non-vanos motor in it. Not much more power than the m20 that was in it before, but still puts them slightly over-budget at current market prices hence their penalty laps.

Also Uberbird was a 6 series!

It was great racing with you guys out there..............

I am VERY impressed at the X19......  I was skeptical that it wouldn't last...but it held up very well...far better than our 928 "estate".....  I would have to say your engine "carnage" is WORSE than ours ....WOW its amazing it lasted as long as it did....

Great write up and thanks for all the kind words of our 928 estate team!

We will be back for Infineon and I look forward to racing with you guys again!!

We considered MS for about 30 seconds, and it would be far easier/cheaper to graft the efi system from a working scrapyard car than to try and get MS working on this.  Maybe the throttle body setup from a Dodge Omni or a Suzuki Swift.

In the end, the Keihin carbs have been dead reliable without all those pesky sensors and connectors to fail.  As long as the air moves, they squirt fuel.  And the individual runners do a lot for head flow and torque.

On the engine, we've got a few spares, each was a freebie - for a reason, of course.  For example, we've got good pistons in another block, but that engine lost a thrust bearing and the crank had torn into the block.

So we're picking parts from here and there to piece together another motor.

Never fear, we'll be raging at Sears.  Possibly as the "Fixed It AGAIN, Tonys"

snap!

That was our 2nd gasket of T-hill

Yup,
One on Saturday after about 6 hours (our thermostat disintegrated and jammed our water pump = overheat)

One on Sunday after about 6 hours (the overheat warped the head slightly)

People said the moto carbs wouldn't work either - but they do.

Sure!  If not for the Lemons car, for another project.

We're running 38 degrees fixed timing.  We've taken out both the mechanical and vacuum advance.

We've talked about a turbo, as it's easily done.  For a street car, it's fine.  But the pistons would melt (faster) under race conditions.  Not to mention the reliability problems of oil and coolant plumbing.  We're gonna just keep it n-a, and drop weight instead.

I'll figure out how to shoot you an email separately.