The Broken Fiat Club

Seems like an age ago now, but my car was leaking from around the exhaust manifold area. I decided I wanted a new exhaust manifold rather than stripping the car down and finding the manifold was cracked, The manifold was fine as it turned out but that's a story for another bedtime.

Obviously if changing out a part you want to upgrade it if you can, but there weren't any options that I could find for upgraded manifolds. Undeterred I purchased a new manifold from Fiat, had RRM port and polish it and then had a local guy ceramic coat it. It cost a lot, but I was happy with the result.
NGen Performance has recently started offering a manifold that is ported, polished and coated. That looks nice as well, and is substantially cheaper than the price I paid. The work is also done by GPOP so definitely a quality piece.
Then over the weekend I saw this on one of the European facebook groups.
It's a custom designed, fully flow tested manifold. It has been shown to add another 18hp to the car on dyno tests and is part or some really strong builds.

Now 18 horses seems a lot to me from just the manifold, but I've no way to dispute their testing. They are not cheap either, as you would expect with anything custom made. I just thought it was a very interesting piece and I'm feeling unhappy that I don't have one. They are made in small batches so I'd be grateful if you guys would buy them up before I'm tempted further.

Here's a weblink with more info
https://abgastechnik-chemnitz.de/websho ... t-motoren/

i dremeled out my ATP v-banded unit by hand (and then had a friend shove it into a drill press to get a bit more volume), cryo'd it and cerakoted coated it for a couple hundred; i get sweetheart deals on all of the above, but usually the port and polish is the most expensive because it's hours of relatively skilled labor. imo for most people, just dremel it out by hand while you have it out of the car and then pop it back in.

a new cast tubular manifold is interesting, but keep in mind we're talking about putting hundreds into a manifold for an longblock that costs 1500 new.

If you're going to start talking about practical value then I'm not going to fair well in that discussion.

texanbrit wrote: ↑Mon Sep 24, 2018 9:59 am If you're going to start talking about practical value then I'm not going to fair well in that discussion.

There is another option in the works....

I thought euro Abarths had totally different motors? Why are the Germans building a manifold for our cars?

Not totally different. It's really the same engine, with some differences. From a tuning perspective very different, as one uses the T-Jet valve automation and the US Abarth uses the multi-air.

It is interesting that FCA hasn't switched all of the engines to multi-air though. As I don't think they use the T-Jet in anything else now. Maybe they have a warehouse full of T-Jets to get through.

In terms of the manifold it eyeballs the same, but I don't know for a fact if it's an exact fit.

texanbrit wrote: ↑Mon Sep 24, 2018 2:19 pm Not totally different. It's really the same engine, with some differences. From a tuning perspective very different, as one uses the T-Jet valve automation and the US Abarth uses the multi-air.

It is interesting that FCA hasn't switched all of the engines to multi-air though. As I don't think they use the T-Jet in anything else now. Maybe they have a warehouse full of T-Jets to get through.

In terms of the manifold it eyeballs the same, but I don't know for a fact if it's an exact fit.

Based on what I've seen from the Euro guys, multiair tends to be a bit ... no ... a lot more finicky about things. Since the Abarth is an exlusive vehicle there, I think it would upset a lot of buyers if suddenly the platform that had been reliable became less so. The only reason we get multiair is it allows for a compromise between power and economy, so in theory should get better fuel economy without sacrificing low end efficiency. Ie, keep the EPA happy.

How hard would it be to source parts from the UK and convert a US Chassis to T-Jet? What would be the obstacles aside from $?

You’d need a new a ECU; would that require a new ViN? And of so, registration/emissions/insturance could be a PITA.