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Why would anyone put a 700 Horsepower 400cuin V8 in a FIAT?
 Some people said I was crazy, other said it could not be done. But with a budget under $2000.00 I was able to build a small block Chevy powered Fiat. Unfortunately in that price range I was driving a 170hp car which was respectable but nothing near what I wanted to accomplish. So the next round was to build a massive 406 cubic inch motor with steel crank, h-beam rods, 11.5:1 forged pistons, aluminum racing heads, .625 lift cam and topped off with an edelbrock tunnel ram and 2 Holly 650CFM carbs. That adds up to between 650 and 700 horse power.However, that was 5 times the budget for the entire car. The entire project took about 30 days to build the car and another 3 weeks to build the bigger motor and install it. That was working out of an over crowded 2 car garage, part time while I ran my business from home. I did not expect the process to be easy, but I was constantly surprised by what had to be modified and how much work it actually took. All a fading glimpse as I now can sit in the cockpit and spin the tires at will and make everyone watching envious, at least the real men. The ladies on the other hand, well they tend to throw things at me as the car sounds like a jet plane taking off. The 2 side pipes are enough to meet the legal requirement for an exhaust, but they do little to quite the roar of the insane motor. A few weeks ago I took a ride to the parts store and stopped at a traffic light. As the car shook back and forth, (you have hard of shaker hoods, this is a shaker car) nearly rattling my teeth out a mustang puled up next to me and gestured to race at the light. Of course I reved up the motor to about 6000 rpms and just chuckled. When the adrenaline stopped I asked myself, what are you doing? This is absolutely crazy. The car is way to fast for the street, gets 4 miles per gallon and shakes the shit out of anyone riding in it. But as a man, you can't explain why we need to have the fastest car, the most horse power, we just do. It is in our nature and there is nothing we can do about it. So we build crazy shit like this 1972 v8 fiat spyder. I took lots of pictures as I did this and have posted them here on V8FIAT.com and will try to add as much detail as possible so anyone crazy enough to try this will have at least some idea of what is involved. |
