Tuning Punto GT

How to enhance Punto GT performance?

Several users asked me how to get the best from their Punto GT. The Punto GT is one of the cars that can be tuned very much due to the presence of the turbocharger. This page is under construction!

I list now some modifications you can make to the Punto GT. The list shows modifications sorted by increasing difficulty/cost:

• pop-off valve(also known as greedy blow off valve)
• ECUs and chips
• special collectors
• gas flowed big valves head
• Mariani Tuning parts
• BF2000 intercoolers
• final drive ratio
• Water sprays for intercoolers
• Water injection kits

Special collectors

Negrente Tuning has in its price list special collectors for Fiat Punto GT. This component should be properly used in the case of bigger turbochargers, than the original IHI VL7. The collectors are completely in INOX steel and they are equipped with an hook to install a temperature probe. More information is available on their site.

Here you can see a picture of the INOX steel collectors.

Gas flowed big valves head

This article is available for the French UAD Motorsports. I'm collecting full information about this part. Its price is 750 Euro.

Pop off valve

When you add a boost controller, the turbo spins faster than normal and the boost is increased over stock boost. When accelerating hard the boost picks up really fast and during gear changes the pressured air flows back into the compressor and this results in reduced volumetric efficiency or the worst case, it will damage your turbo.
What this blow off valve does, is that during gear changes the pressured air is released through it preventing the backflow of air into the compressor.

The specialist of popoff valves for Punto GT is undoubtly Bonalume. They have a great site with a lot of stuffs also for Punto GT. Their site is available in Italian and English too, for benefit of most GT owners.

Mariani Tuning

I have found a complete price list from Mariani Tuning, one of the most known Italian tuners. I extracted from their price list all the parts regarding Punto GT. If you want to contact them, here it is their address:

Mariani Tuning
via Montalbano, 205
51030 Casenuove di Masiano (PT)
Italy
Tel. +39-0573-380103
Fax. +39-0573-382621
Email: mariani.tuning@tin.it
Web site: www.marianituning.it

Part	Price
Exhaust collectors	929,62 Euro
Adjustable Ergal pulley	165,26 Euro
Wastegate valve	201,41 Euro
KKK system popoff valve	232,41 Euro
Wastegate valve support	36,15 Euro
Airbox and air filter	206,58 Euro
Bigger intercooler	506,12 Euro

All the prices don't include VAT (20%).

BF2000 intercoolers

BF2000, thanks to its forty-year experience, produces a special water intercooler for Fiat Punto GT. This part can be generated from the stock intercooler, although we substitute it with another one, which is better as production unit and it is even cheaper.
That intercooler is modified in order that the air flow, which comes to the intercooler, moves without any interruption or deviation, just behind the left light and enters our special intercooler, which remains exactly in the filtering original box, whose size is 420x190x60mm. This solution lets us save more than 1 meter of tubes.
Our special intercooler is seated in the same area of the original one, so that we reuse the original filter support and the engine look is not altered.
Various water intercoolers shapes can be chosen: the last one we used has a total surface of 250x290mm, with a minimum of 4 litres of circulating liquid.
We have also different solutions for the water pump: the first one is electrical, which is expensive (about 400 Euro), whilst the second one is a mechanical one, whose price is about 70 Euro and it is retrieved from the motorscooter engines (Aprilia SR50) and its installation requires a lot of care and experience.
Some pictures are just coming very soon.

ECUs and chips

The Punto GT has a separated engine management, with two different EPROMs. One EPROM chip stores basically the ignition and injection parameters about the engine. The latter EPROM chip stores the parameters to handle the turbocharger unit. Several options are available to tune the chips of the Punto GT:

• installing a ready-to-go EPROM chip in substitution of the original one
• fine tuning of the EPROM chips on the car by real-time remapping

Ready-to-go chips

The first solution is cheaper, because you need only to remove the original chips, which are already been sited in sockets, and putting the newer chips. A good electronic man is able to complete the work in less than two hours. This solution is however not to best if you intend to maximize the performance of the car you want to be assured about the reliability of the car. The ready-to-go chips are chips with several parameters modified with respect the original configuration, and when they are built, the programmer expects the chip contents will be uploaded in car with low-medium engine tuning. Those chips are in most cases acceptable for several Punto GT's, which host a sport air filter, a pop-off valve, another exhaust system. These chips are expected to increase the car performance from 130-133 HPs to 147-150 HPs, not more. For all the other cases, the ready-to-go chip is not the right solution, but could be even risky.

Who sells ready-to-go chips:

• Castelli Tuning, from Milan (Italy)

Prices for ready-to-go chips could vary in the range 200-400 Euro.

The best way to do chip tuning is making it in real-time. Best engine tuners do the job on the race track or on the workbench, so that they are looping while changing each parameter and viewing immediately the effect of that change. They could change any injection period, any ignition timing at any load and any value of rpms. They could also customize the curves of power and torque on customer request.

This activity could require also 4-5 hours for an good work. Excellent works could take even a whole day. The real time reprogramming even maximizes the performance of the engine, because each parameter is optimized for that car and it is not a compromise with an average equipment expected on a soft tuned car.

This way is of course more expensive: several tuners ask for more money because the EPROM chips to be reprogrammed are two and they require to spent a considerable amount of time to fine tune both the chips.

Who makes real-time chip tuning:

• All Car Racing, from Rome (Italy)
• Negrente, from Verona (Italy)
• Powerontheroad/Turbocrime, from Naples (Italy)

Water injection and sprays

There is an English specialist, who made us it gives technical support for high tuning modifications on the Punto GT, through the installation of intercooler sprays and water injection kits, to enhance performance when the engine is hot. Kits from Canward racing technologies have been successfully installed on several cars, like Subaru Impreza STi, Mini Cooper S, and so on. Even the Punto GT suits nicely to their kits. Please check their own website here.

Main tuning page

Punto GT2000 Turbo 16V by Mariotti