Inspired by TeflonTom's thread, I thought folks might be interested in seeing some pictures of the work in progress that is my Felicia Rally car.

It's got a 1.4 MPi Fabia engine in it, with a Kent Group A cam, ported/skimmed head, Helix clutch, works-spec kit car exhaust and inlet manifold and Suzuki GSX-R 600 throttle bodies in a twin-injector per port configuration.

And from another angle...

I'm just finishing off the wiring loom, and hope to start it up for the first time this weekend, all being well

its a felicia! the 1.4mpi is still a felicia lump, so your defonatly still flying the felly flag.

good work that man. would love to see it in the flesh.

why the long distance between the throttle bodys and the block????

is it something to do with the twin injector set up?????

as you can tell, i'm not very clever, but willing to lurne

(as long as its not spelling)

Pinkskud if thats the works type manifold its probably to do with intake length tuning I would imagine to set up the peak torque correctly.

I remember when the fabia was launched and a dealer told me the 1400 engine was still the same old skoda engine the idea struck me then to do the conversion. It was a few years before I got some guys at a scrapyard to check out the bolt patterns were the same for the gearbox mounings. I then ordered my 1.4mpi engine which promptly sat in the shed and was measured up for all the important dimensions I could think of at which point I though "yeah, that'l go straight in. " now what do I do about ignition and fuelling etc... Then I swapped my 1.4 engine for a roll cage and sump guard and decided on enduro rallying instead. But by then the idea of 1.4 fabia engiens "dropping straight in" had got quite a hold on skoda owners. I believe fruit bat is the first Ive known to get as far as having it all the way in. Certainly the first Ive known to report the flywheel and water pump issues :(.

Still its good to see someone finally getting the idea off the ground I know of at least 3/4 people with the 1.4 lumps as "projects"

good work!!

longer lengths in the intake tract gives you more low down grunt

Isn

It is indeed a works-type inlet manifold, which already has injector pockets in it, and then there are more injectors in the bodies themselves.

If you look at these pictures...

Which are of a genuine works 1500 kit car, you will see it looks pretty similar!

With hindsight, I'm not sure whether it wouldn't just have been easier to get a longer throw crank to increas the capacity, but you live and learn.

UGLUK (I assume that's you, David?) is right - there are problems with the flywheel and engine mount to get the Fabia engine into the Felicia, but if someone with my meagre engineering skills can solve them, then they can't be too hard!

which engine management system are using using?

It is indeed a works-type inlet manifold, which already has injector pockets in it, and then there are more injectors in the bodies themselves.

If you look at these pictures...

Which are of a genuine works 1500 kit car, you will see it looks pretty similar!

With hindsight, I'm not sure whether it wouldn't just have been easier to get a longer throw crank to increas the capacity, but you live and learn.

UGLUK (I assume that's you, David?) is right - there are problems with the flywheel and engine mount to get the Fabia engine into the Felicia, but if someone with my meagre engineering skills can solve them, then they can't be too hard!

Yep its me, as far as I know it was me who started a few people thinking about this conversion as a "cheap" way to get to 1400cc, certainly long throw cranks and short rods arent cheap to come by but when I was doing my initial measureing up I didnt think it would need much engineering at all to fit.

I keep looking at the engitec kit thinking it would be nice to see what the 1500 goes like. But of course thats an entirely different capacity class.

I do think theres possibly more to gain on these engines from valve sizes and head development than capacity increases, BUT you need to increase bore size to get the larger valves in.. and so you start down the money pit road in trying to increase performance, at least the fabia engine is a "package" Traditionally I prefer a strokers performance increase over a big bore increase. Engines, endless ways to spend your money .

edit:-

Just noticed on your pics you havent got anything holding you oil filler cap on yet, just to check you are going to put something there to hold it in place, they DO blow off at inconvenient times resulting in a lot of lost oil. simple way to do it is as shown in the works pics, just a bit of bent metal, allowing the cap to rise to vent but not to be lost.

Cool

Any idea what power that's putting out? 140BHP should be possible from a full KC spec 1.4

I often thought it would be nice to put a 1.4MPI Fabia engine into an old Rapid, bit more refined than it used to be in those days and the extra torque would help it along too. Any ideas how easy that would be?

which engine management system are using using?

An Emerald M3DK3. I did think about using Megasquirt, but that all looked a bit hard, and besides the emerald has four injection drivers, so it can drive the injectors semi-sequentially, which will help preserve fuel pressure in the line.

I don't know what power it will make, since it's not running yet - I hope to start it for the first time this weekend. Assuming it runs OK on the base map, I'll trundle around for a bit to loosen up the new bearings I installed when it was in bits, and then get it properly mapped on a rolling road.

I don't really know what to expect - it's not a full KC spec - they have bigger valves, and apart from balancing, the bottom end is standard.

What do people reckon? 100-110 bhp?

I don't really know what to expect - it's not a full KC spec - they have bigger valves, and apart from balancing, the bottom end is standard.

What do people reckon? 100-110 bhp?

That depends on the rolling road operator get him to overindulge on transmission losses and run the temperature sensors next to the radiator and you could easily see yourself over 160hp

Im going to guess 115-130hp I had 90hp out of the old felicia running a unmodified engine. youve got an extra 100cc a good cam and some throttle bodies. Remember the GP a Favorits ran standard valves and made 115hp breathing through downdraught carbs.

An Emerald M3DK3. I did think about using Megasquirt, but that all looked a bit hard, and besides the emerald has four injection drivers, so it can drive the injectors semi-sequentially, which will help preserve fuel pressure in the line.

not with 2 banks of injectors it cant (not unless they changed that.. there is updated software being released all the time:thumbup: )... i'm not 100% familiar with the skoda engines, but to run the emerald in sequential mode you need two input sensors.. crank position and cam position... on the felicia gearboxes you have the crank sensor on the top of the bellhousing, but i'm not sure where the cam position sensor is on the 1.4 skoda engine(if it even had one!) the 1.3 skoda engines dont have a cam position sensor fitted

What do people reckon? 100-110 bhp?

i should hope you would see a little more than that.

I'm pretty sure that for semi-sequential (e.g. fired in pairs) it only needs the crank sensor to tell it when No.1 is at TDC - I agree that for fully sequential, it would need a cam sensor (There is one on the Skoda engine, as it happens, though I'm only using it to prevent oil from gushing out the hole that would be left if I removed it.) From what I've read, sequential injection doesn't deliver any more power than bank or semi-sequential, but is more fuel efficient - since I don't care about that on the rally car, semi-sequential seemed a sensible compromise. Emerald have sent me a base map that includes firing both banks of injectors.

There is the crank sensor on the bellhousing, but because I had to fit the Felicia flywheel to the fabia crank (which demanded re-drilling of the felicia flywheel) I ended up with a weird crank trigger pattern that the Emerald ECU cannot interpret, so I mounted a 60-2 wheel on the crank pulley and used an aftermarket sensor. The original crank sensor is now just preventing crap from getting in the hole that would be left.... etc...

Well, I'll be intrigued to see what power it does make. Whatever its output, it should sound awesome!

remember when you make up your loom to pair together cylinders 1+4, and 2+3

the only downside to semi and fully sequential injection is the need for injectors with a higher flow rate because they operate at a lower duty cycle than batch fired systems, and they cost a lot more....

Well, after the crap weather and the need to earn a crust intervened over the summer, I finally got around to ironing out the bugs yesterday, and it runs!

It's not been on the road yet (ran out of MOT and Tax over the summer, hence declared SORN at the moment) but it started up about half a dozen times yesterday, and run on the drive for the requisite 20 or so minutes at 2000-2500 rpm to bed the new camshaft in.

It's not been properly mapped yet, but it feels quite eager to rev, doesn't leak and sounds magic....

Time to book it in for a test later this week.....

cheers

James

what are you running exhaust wise???

Tubular 4-1 works kit-car spec manifold and two-inch system...

custom made i take it???

No - I was lucky enough to find one for sale in the small ads in motorsport news a couple of years ago.

They are available off the shelf though in Czech - try...

www.speedpro.cz

James

Isn't it a Felixxer?