just thought id say hi, joined this evening.

im an abarth technician at vospers in plymouth, ive worked in the fiat brand for nearly ten years and am currently in the middle of doing my second esse esse kit.

just to put straight a point i read on another thread on here regarding not hitting the rev limiter, the way i interpreted the information given us when we went on the tech's course in italy was that when we connect the fiat diagnostic tool to the vehicle before fitting the kit, the maximum allowed time of overrevs was 60,000msec, which i understood to be a minute.

after this has been exceeded it was considered the engine would not be in a condition suitable for fitment of the esee esse kit.

other parameters are also considered before the kit is fitted, such as the ecu must never have been reflashed.

as you can see from the pics on the thread john501 posted, it is a very in depth job, with basically everything forward of and including the exhaust manifold replaced. the oil cooler and pipework is all changed, as is the thermostat housing. also the turbo inlet and outlet pipes are changed, along with the coolant inlet/outlet and oil inlet/outlet pipes,the MAP sensor, turbo boost sensor and housing pipe, and the injector rail and injectors.

ive listed the stuff that perhaps people may not consider would be replaced, as obviuosly there is the larger turbo etc.

its nigh on impossible to get to anything when the front nose cone of the punto is still fitted, so as you can see from pics this is all removed, which also involves an aircon degas/regas.

when the esse esse kit is finished, the oil is changed for selenia abarth 10/50, and the new oil change schedule becomes 6000miles, although the service schedule remains 18k.

hope some of this info may have been helpful.

well i took the 60,000msec info from a powerpoint presentation that the Abarth guy showed us. he then e-mailed it to us.

it was a little difficult to get down all the figures in the notes as they were being translated by a guy that spoke fluent but not perfect italian so there was a little confusion a couple of times, maybe thats where the 10micro second thing came from.

yeah the ecu will still be ok to reflash if any further are required, but the esseesse kit cannot be fitted if the ecu has already been reflashed, eg if any one has tried to tamper with it or chip it themselves. the engine ecu upgrade is only downloadable from abarth and is tracked. its also a one use only file.

another point i read on here was having the esseesse kit fitted then taking the white/graphite wheels off and replacing them with the originals. its just that when in italy they were very, very inisistent that the handling kit must always be fitted before the engine upgrade, its not permissable to have the engine upgrade without the handling kit. im not sure it would still be recognised as an esseesse if the handling kit had essentially been disrupted by having smaller wheels put on?

is it possible this might have insurance implications too? 

the camber and caster are non-adjustable.

the front tracking spec is front wheel toe in -1 +/-1mm, the guy in italy said its best to set it to parallel.

there are no changes to the chassis as part of the esseesse kit.

i agree with you on the wheels, i much prefer the standard alloys, however they were extremely insistent that the kit wasnt to be tampered with. i guess at the end of the day its your car and you can do with it what you want though! 


i cant speak for the rules fiat have made. i would hazard a guess theyre just trying to ensure the utmost reliability, we were fairly suprised at some of the constraints put on fitting a kit, such as the parameters must be sent before the kit is approved/supplied, but at the end of the day its abarth that make the rules and we have to adhere to them.

I too prefer the standard wheels to the esseesse supplied wheels.
What happens to the standard wheels when you fit the kit?

And do the standard wheels fit over the upgraded brake discs? I presume that they are the same size?