Get the hanky ready for my tale of woe!!! Got a dreaded phonecall from my dad who i let use my 16na. He had broke down and lost power.Went to meet him and straight away realised that the ruddy cambelt had gone!!! I honestly could have cried due to about a month or so ago i bought a 16v off ebay and got shafted big time.The car lasted about 5 miles before the bottom end called it a day.Anyway i decided it wasnt worth the expense of repairing it so i stripped it down.I have a garage and garden full of every 16v part thats worth having.Started putting the bonnet and bits on ebay but no joy.Think you just have to be selling at the right time when somebody has had a bump and want that colour etc.Anyhow im waffling.The only part i have sold a couple of weeks ago is yes you have guessed it the bloody cylinder head!!! I sold the complete head ,inlet manifold and throttle for £38 I dont want to break it, i just could do with advise and price ideas for getting it back on the road asap. Please any help ideas advice parts etc would be gratefully received or if anyone wants to swap parts i need for anything i have(bonnet, lights etc etc)thats cool too. many thanks Spencer

I am going to be harsh. Scrap it and buy a 20v na. Newer / Better engine and less likely to have been abused.

Cheers mate its worth too much to me to scrap.It has one of the last brand new bonnets on it (cost me £530) I also have a 20v with 56,000 on it so thats covered too

Im going to raise your harshness by ^2.

Scrap both the 16v and sugerbears idea of a 20v and buy a 16vT


Phill

I raise pfoe ^4 Then Scrap the 16vt and buy a real mans car

Yes a 20vt

Right please please please nobody be offended but i asked for information and advise because i need some help with this and am in an awkward situation getting my 69 year old father back on the road in the coupe.I love a laugh with the best of them especially when its at someones elses expense.Turn it round though and its you that needs advice or help and its a different story.I thought the whole idea of a community and forum was to help,share advice etc and help keep as many fiat coupes on the road.It makes no odds whether it is a 1.8 a 2.0 16v or a 20vt and sneering at so called lesser cars that arent 20v turbos is pathetic.It is still the same car and still should be helped to stay on the road.This weekends top gear has the potential to show the coupe in a better light but equally make it a laughing stock.Ive had 4 coupes over the years and love them to bits through thick and thin.Ok i may not frequent on this forum so much but i hope any newcomers to the coupe world after sundays top gear, are greeted and receive far more helpful advice. Otherwise the laughing stock tag wont matter if it happens or will i just laugh because mine is a 16v na and the one being laughed at is a 20v turbo which is a different car.Sorry for ranting on because im sure you are wonderful funny people who donate for fluffy kittens to be sent to disneyland! All i wanted was a little help THANKYOU and goodnight its time for my medication and lockdown!

Serious hat on.

Source another engine, if you can find one its going to cost in the region of £400 and then that again to get it fitted. You could have a go at getting the head redone or sourcing a second hand one but the 16v engines seem to suffer more from cambelt breaks (imho) and the big ends usually go soon afterward (or at least that is what I seem to hear a lot on here). There is no magic pill, unless you want to chance your arm that the cambelt hasn't taken out the valves and just refit another cambelt.

So its up to you, if you have an endless wallet then anything is possible. I was just offering you some friendly advice and it wasn't meant to be a "my cars better than your car" rant. I had no idea that you had a 20v

And no. I hate cats.

and you can post in the wanted section if you are after a new head/engine.

Don't know what you want to hear to be honest bud. If the cam belt has gone chances are you've got a busted car that is not worth much and will probably cost a fair bit to fix up.

I'd suggest that you:
List your parts in the parts for sale section
See if one of the guys who breaks coops would want to take a job lot
Post for parts you want in the 'parts wanted' section - people will definately have the things you need
Do some maths and ask yourself whether the best financial choice is repair or not.

Crossing posts with Sugarbear there....

Cheers! see that felt much better! nice one.

"and am in an awkward situation getting my 69 year old father back on the road in the coupe"


Am I missing something ?

(Oh bugger, was only meant as a joke coz your question got answered )

If you have the £1k in cash to fix it then you could instead break it and put that £1k + £all the parts towards a newer / more powerful coupe

I would ignore what some people say about upgrading, as we all know that the 16v N/A is the best engine out there

I started as a humble 16v tipo, then a turbo'd tipo, then got a 16v N/A coupe and made it a turbo, so my under pinnings are and have always been a 16v, so ignore the snipes of the 20vt owners, i think they have some inferior complex or something

Barnacle has a lovely 16v which he has had since the launch, Nigel (400bhp 20vt) recently said he would like a 16v N/A, the Lickyl's said the 16v engine is better and they both have a 16vt and a 20vt, even sedicirich has 210bhp from his N/A engine.

So don't fret, we all love each other, regardless of the models and everyone is just trying to make you smile again and look on the bright side of life

Your 16v is the daddy of all coupes, the original with a classic and generally very reliable engine. Source another head and get it back on the road. Just think off that off throttle snarl and burble, then get a head from somewhere! One of the usual breakers on the forum may well have one, if not, keep your eye on ebay and the spares section on here for a spares or repair 16v, plenty about as they are usually broken if anything goes wrong.

Don't just look at the 16v n/a head though, search on Tipo etc as they will be pretty much interchangeable. If your handy with a spanner, you could assess the damage and tackle it yourself.

There are other people on here that could advise which heads would work, but I'd imagine that any 16v N/A head would work from a Tipo, Lancia Dedra, Lancia Thema etc (Might be worth regestering on the Fiat Motor club forum and asking the experts on there also).

Anyway, chin up, it's a common failure on the coupe engine in both flavours, the 16v is slightly harsher on it's belts than the 20v, the power delivery and free revving nature doesn't help matters, I know that when I've had these engines in cars before, Deltas and a Tipo, that I've always been told to change the belt at 32k, and always done it at 24k or 2 years, better to be safe than sorry, my 16VT is on it's second belt in 8k, but its 2 years since it was last changed, so I'm getting twitchy myself!

Hope it all goes well, if I spot a 16v engine or head, I'll PM you.

Cheers

Gareth

If you're handy with the spanner then remove the head yourself and inspect for damage or take the head to someone to check it over for you. Given that you've stripped a car before then this shouldn't be too much of a problem.

You may want a trained mechanic to put it all back together again for you though. If it's not a Coupe specialist they might have a problem with you giving them a pile of bits and asking them to put it back together. It may end up costing more than giving them the car to take apart to start with.

Next time don't pay 530 GBP for a new bonnet and then sell 1/2 an engine for 38 GBP!!!

John

Cheers for some of the reply`s and the emails.Wheels are in motion to getting it back on the road.Have hopefully got a freshly recon head for a very very nice price and am going to start stripping the old one down.Have a mate who works at a fiat garage but even with his discount seem pricey so wheres best for belts,thermostat,gaskets etc? cheers people.

Cheers for some of the reply`s and the emails.Wheels are in motion to getting it back on the road.Have hopefully got a freshly recon head for a very very nice price and am going to start stripping the old one down.Have a mate who works at a fiat garage but even with his discount seem pricey so wheres best for belts,thermostat,gaskets etc? cheers people.

Alternative Autos

Note that you *can* repair the head; odds are it's just damage to the valves, which will be severely bent. Though you'd probably be cheaper seeking a head from an engine with a wrecked bottom end, and just dropping it on.

I would, though, if you go this route, invest in a new set of bearings for the crank - the big end bearings at least, which you can change with the engine in situ I believe.

The *approved* way would be to pull the engine and replace all the bearings, but I suspect the worth of the car precludes that.

And of course, you'll always get the 'buy a 20vt' from the people with small willies turbo engines; ignore them, most have never tried to keep up with a 16 NA on a twisty road...

If you find somewhere decent in Lancashire, let me know, I want my tappets and belts doing soon, I'd do it myself, but, you know how it is!

Cheers

Gareth

Thank god there are more of us out there! Biggest mistake we made was selling our 16N/A.
As said earlier in this thread, we have both turbos and we still prefer the 16N/A, so well done to you for sticking with it.
You have the best car and in years to come when people wake up and smell the coffee, they will wish they could find a 16N/A because soon they will be harder to find than rocking horse smelly stuff!

Thanks for the encouragement and advice. Right i have sourced a local mechanic who has worked on fiats,alfas and lancias before.Pretty sure i have got a recon cylinder head. What i need now is a shopping list to price the parts up from various sources.The water pump isnt very old at all so should be ok.The thermostat wanted changing anyway so thats on the list.So im thinking cylinder head,gasket set,thermostat,belts(are there tensioners?)coolant,oil and filter and new head bolts. I have prob missed some things so can anyone guide me please? thankyou thankyou thankyou!

That looks a pretty good list. AA can supply most if not all, and I believe there is a tensioner. You might want to pull the old head first, to see if all the nuts come off the studs, or if you're lkely to need a couple of spare studs.

If it's any consolation... daughter just rang me up while she was waiting for a pickup truck to collect her overheated punto - I too now have a head gasket and cam belt to do when I get home

Cheers for that Barnacle hope the punto is straight forward for you.Weather no good for doing anything so ive just been limited to soaking all visible nuts bolts connections every few hours with wd40.Hopefully less knuckle rash when it comes to doing it! Will start pricing parts and ordering on monday. Hopefully coupe parts wont have quadrupled in price due to sundays top gear

Nope Euro car parts Much beter prices on the 16VT, Cam belt and tensioner for £36!

If they really are cheaper for the same identical parts then maybe Steve at AA would be up for a bit of price matching

Then you get the added benefit of top class service and advice from a coupe enthusiast

Just want to say that I really admire you for what you've said here. I've found in the past that no one seems to care about coops unless they're 20vt on here. When Mr L put a post on not so long ago about the 16v n/a being the better car, all we got was a lot of abuse and one mod telling us not to make pathetic excuses for "buying the wrong car"!We've long thought that too many people are only interested in the coop for the power. Let me ask you - how many people on here would still own a coupe if it only came as a 16v n/a?

Good luck with it mate.

are they cheaper on 20vt parts

I dont know, I havent checked anywhere else

They are local to me, so I like going to collect rather than waiting for deliveries which I'll probably miss.