Coincidentally, I found a cheap turbocharger for sale. The charger was unused Scwitzer S1B, which fits quite well to a 1500cc engine. As consequence, this became a turbo-project now.

Building a turbocharged engine is more complicated and expensive than of normally aspirated unit. Several parts has to be replaced to more durable ones and the engine has to be modified quite radically. The story of the engine may be found here.

As the choice of the engine to be used was made, the next task was fitting it to the vehicle. This proved quite a hard task, since the engine compartment of Fiat 127 is very small (as the whole car is). Therefore, I could not fit the 5-speed gearbox. As a solution, a Fiat 128 with four-speed gearbox was purchased. The engine was finally fitted with the 4-speed box without any modifications to engine fasteners of the chassis.

Since I had no warm place to build my Fiat during the cold winter of Finland, the car was going to be painted before next spring. At begin of summer, I picked up a Rosso-Ferrari colored beauty to home.

The next task was putting the electrical equipment and wiring to the car. I decided to make new connections and wires since the original schematic was not suitable for my modified vehicle. The new schematics are found here. The wires are marked using numbered labels and they match with markings on the schematic. The connectors are soldered to the wires and the number of connectors is minimized for reliability reasons.

The dashboard seemed quite ugly without any coating. I decided to cover it using black vinyl that creates a smooth surface. That kind of material does not need very high-quality priming and the minor roughness is not visible. The fight with the board is described here.

Since the 1498cc engine was totally in pieces at this moment, the 1116cc one was fitted in the car. That engine was presented earlier in the text.

The car was built bit by bit. A suitable radiator was found from Fiat 131 Mirafiori, and the brake master cylinder and its servo is from Ritmo. Originally, the 127 is equipped with a similar brake system as the Ritmo, except the missing servo. Therefore, the discs, drums and cylinders didn't need to be changed to have similar brake system. The heating system was under major modifications, since the original setup wasted space at the engine compartment. The location of the heater is shown in the picture 9a. A pair of red pliers lay on that place.

Changing the belts requires the engine to be lifted slightly because there is very limited space in the engine compartment, especially in the vicinity of the pulleys. The five-speed box could not be used for the same reason, since the gears of 5th speed were as "additional" at the end of the box.

There were also problems with the water pump. A homemade engine fastener was in its place. Its place above the alternator is visible in the picture 9b. As a solution, the water pump was equipped with a stand containing passages for circulating cooling water. The belt operating the pump and the alternator was led using an additional wheel. This wheel takes also care on tensioning the belt and it is made of a timing belt tensioner.

It was also necessary to find another place for the oil filter and the fuel pump since they did not fit in their original places. The filter was mounted in the front of the engine using an external stand. As an additional feature, there is also an opportunity to install an oil cooler if necessary. The fuel pump is not a problem, since it will be changed to electrical one. A turbocharged engine of blow-through carburetor design always requires a high-pressure pump. The pump is described in the story of the engine.

After these modifications, the vehicle finally began to look like a car.