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Fiat 124 SportCat Installation Notes

Posted: Sun Aug 05, 2018 10:23 am
by Brian
Likely this job is too involved for average customer at home, most will need to hire good mechanic. But for those who will plunge ahead and do it anyway, here is an outline of the process. More details are in the factory service manual. READ ALL OF THE STEPS before you start, might be a tool you don't own and need, and/or you might decide to hire a Pro.

Step 1. Create the necessary space under the hood. Remove black metal cowl panel at base of windshield to create the space needed to pull factory downpipe up once it is disconnected, and lower the bigger replacement downpipe down into place. Close up of this black metal cowl panel in third picture below. This process starts with pulling off rubber seal that runs all the way across back end of hood. Remove caps at base of windshield wipers, pull the windshield wipers. Pop plastic caps at base of windshield to find nuts that hold plastic panel that runs the full width. Notice from our pics below that big plastic panel running full width is actually two sections that reveal a separation when you go to lift them. Remove that full length plastic panel to get access to black metal cowl bracket (if you have shock tower brace then remove it first). Fourth picture showing you need to gently move the lines running along firewall to get the black cowl panel removed. Finally, remove the black metal cowl mounting bracket shown here in third picture.
panels3.jpg
panelsremove.jpg
CowlA.jpg
lines.jpg

Now get the car on lift ideally (or safely on jack stands).

Step 2. Remove engine lower shield, result looks like this with shield removed.
E3.jpg
engineshield.jpg
Step 3. Notice the slave cylinder, pictured here:
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Step 4. Disconnect slave cylinder (2 bolts), let it hang free as you see in second picture below. Remove the M6 nut that holds the O2 sensor line, which is about 5 inches from back end of the sensor. Now take out the O2 sensor from the crosspipe. Be very careful, the O2 sensor is delicate and easily broken. When you put the O2 back in, be sure the wires are not pinched at a hard angle because the sensor breaths through the back of the sensor.
sensor.jpg
Disconnect the black painted metal deflector shield in front of slave that protects slave cylinder from heat.

Step 5. disconnect midpipe at arrow below (two bolts).
mid1.jpg

Re: Fiat 124 SportCat Installation Notes

Posted: Sun Aug 05, 2018 11:04 am
by Brian
6. Remove the crosspipe by disconnecting the two nuts at the front of the crosspipe.
7. Remove the bracket that supports bottom of the downpipe shown here. As the second picture shows, this is a rather complicated bracket with three pieces of bracket, notice how it assembles now so it will be easy to put back together in same manner later. Notice in picture a thin gasket bottom of stock converter, you need that in same position with replacement!
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bracket3.jpg
8. Now back under the hood of the car and remove nut that retains upper O2 sensor wire shown with RED arrow here.
O2a.jpg
9. Remove the upper triangle shaped bracket above the turbo.
tri.jpg
10. Remove Turbo heatshield (lower 10mm and two upper 10mm).

Re: Fiat 124 SportCat Installation Notes

Posted: Sun Aug 05, 2018 11:16 am
by Brian
11. Now grab crow's foot O2 Socket (and if you don't own one then stop and get one instead of destroying your O2 sensor, standard O2 Socket doesn't fit the space well).

12. Remove the VClamp holding the upper half of Downpipe to your turbo. IMPORTANT, I write this knowing one of you will fail to notice very delicate and thin little gasket in VClamp between upper connection of Downpipe and exhaust side of your turbo housing, it's very thin and easy to miss and shown here so you can find it and put it somewhere safe so it cannot get lost during the next steps!
gasket.jpg

Re: Fiat 124 SportCat Installation Notes

Posted: Sun Aug 05, 2018 11:26 am
by Brian
13. Factory heatshield from the stock downpipe is removed and will expand and stretch over the bigger SportCat. Note factory converter is smaller at 4 inches by 4.5 inches, SportCat is full 5 inch body so the stock clamshell heatshields need to spread a little to get around the wider body of the Sportcat, but with some effort it will go on as you see here. Just one stud and nut holds the stretched shield per side. This was done for several reasons including that our converter body is bigger diameter and yet shorter as you can see here.
ClamA.jpg
Additionally, shield is being stretched over bigger body converter and needs a little free play for heat expansion, we eventually discovered that one stud per side opposite ends gives it enough play with heat expansion to stay mounted around the bigger body converter. Somebody asked why not ceramic coating and reason is that the factory heatshield is a well designed item that is many times more effective and will easily outlast any ceramic coating on the converter body.
Clam2.jpg
clam1.jpg
c2.jpg
C1.jpg

14. Once you drop the completed assembly into place, REMEMBER the thin gasket already pictured in last post. It must go back in the V band to the turbo on this car, easy to miss, easy to drop, easy to lose. It MUST go back in with the install (most V band setups do not use a gasket, this one does). Get the Vband merely finger SNUG but do not tighten with wrench...YET.

15. Reinstall the three pieces of the support bracket for the bottom of the SportCat. Hand tight max, that gets you the alignment for the downpipe at the lower end. Now go back up under the hood and full torque the VBand. Once VBand is full torque (which is only about 60 INCH pounds), then go back under the car torque the support bracket nuts. Now install Crosspipe again (see separate instructions in separate thread here).

16. First O2 sensor under the hood gets installed again, then heatshield, then triangle brace. Three 12mm nuts.

17. Reinstall black metal cowl bracket by reversing everything done in first 5 steps top of this page.