[DonnieDarko]

Hello friends,
I have been thinking about this for a while and thought I would share this with all of you and research on the feasibility of it. We have two palios in two different cities one driven by my father and other by me, both of them are 2002 models and are 1.2 petrol. I have been driving the one with around 70k on the odo and the other one has done around 125k. Now, what do you guys think of a engine upgrade to a 1.3 MJD for the palio with 125k on it. The car feels a underpowered as it has always been with only 72 ponies but now its more pronounced, is the 1.3 mjd engine available from fiat ? Is it going to be a feasible engine upgrade ? The car is in excellent state as far as build quality and ride is concerned, no accidents or anything close to that. We have decided not to sell that car for now so I was wondering if we could plonk a 1.3 mjd engine into it. Any suggestions are most welcome.

[dipen]

engine swap to mjd not recommended.
If you need power, trade your car for a used 1.6. This is only option I can see, else you can overhaul the existing engine.

[jyobeb]

MJD's are not available easily and the cost of the engine alone would make the whole project unfeasible.

[speedzak]

Where will you get an Mjd engine?

It's better you look for a good exchange offer for the MJD.
The whole process of swapping would be a bit difficult and not at all cheap.

[Maverick1977]

There's a 20K discount going on the MJD in Mumbai at least. See if you can Xchange your car for the new one & get a loyalty bonus.

[directinjection]

Originally Posted by speedzak

Where will you get an Mjd engine?

From Tata-Fiat A.S.S. of course! They'll be happy to oblige as long as he is willing to pay for it!

Originally Posted by speedzak

It's better you look for a good exchange offer for the MJD.The whole process of swapping would be a bit difficult and not at all cheap.

Along with the engine, the gearbox too will have to be changed since the 1.2 gearbox can't handle almost double the torque that MJD develops. Yes, it'll be an expensive exercise.

[aditya.86]

Get the engine overhauled like dipen said. Get a K&n filter and a free flow exhaust which will make the car more drivable if your dad is cool with it.

[esteem_lover]

Here's a blasphemic suggestion. Plonk a Baleno engine.

[spadival]

The cost of a new MJD engine is probably more than the sale price of your Palio 1.2 in the second hand market !! Why do you want to throw good money after bad? See if you can get a 2nd hand adventure or Palio D instead.

[abhi1309]

The fact that Palio comes with both the engine options, does not necessarily mean you can simply plonk the MJD in your old 1.2 and in this case, it definitely doesn't work that easily. It will require a lot of engineering and modifications to the existing body of your car, possibly different mount points, a different gearbox and probably even tougher suspension and braking. Needless to say, you will never drive your car, once the modifications have been done.

FIAT A.S.S, as per my friends experience (who drives a palio 1.2 NV) cannot even manage to get the simplest of spares, let alone a standalone unit of MJD and the gearbox. Even if they do, expect your bill to go north of 2 lacs all inclusive. Just get a Vista Q'Jet

[nitrous]

You're just plain looking for headaches.
I think you want to do this project to save money on buying a new Palio Multijet.
Sell this car at a good price(should be easy considering the city you're in) and bargain real hard for the Palio Multijet. You'll save yourself from a lot of mental torture.

[DonnieDarko]

Thanks a lot friends for the replies,

@nitrous, No, I didn't want to get a new MJD in old 1.2 to save money on a whole new palio MJD, the only reason was that my father doesn't really want to sell the car as what you get is peanuts, probably less than a 100k and he is emotional about that car so I thought of getting it a new engine. You are absolutely right, I will save myself from a lot of mental torture and probably physical too.

@abhi1309, I understand its not easy at all, probably it will require a whole rework. I just thought that whether it would be feasible and worth the money and effort which I now think its not.

@spadival, people are asking exhorbitant amount of money for used palio diesels, and imo I would go for a new hatchback other than palio because palio depreciates faster than the news spreads that you have bought a new one.

@aditya.86, I don't think my father would like to driving around in a free flow exhaust, although I am considering a K&N filter for my car.

Friends, the bottomline I think is that its not going to worth the pain, so we are gonna have to trade in the palio for a new hatchback. I enquired about swift VDi and Dzire VDi at Mandovi in Bangalore and I was in for a shock !! A whopping 6 months and 11 months waiting period respectively, for god sake human babies are delivered faster than that in just 9 months. Its not like anybody who buys these cars are gonna keep it with them forever like ferraris have 2-3 years waiting period for a new 430 or 599. Probably the supercars are the only other cars in the world with a waiting period more than our maruttti suzukkkis.

I visited the Sundaram Showroom yesterday to check out chevy U-va. It has been in ads from newspaper and few websites that I frequently visit that chevrolet is having some special offer for U-va with airbags, keyless entry, ABS which come only as a option on the LT variant and cost around 623k on road Bangalore. The company has been creating a hype for this offer all over and the showroom and its salesman have not even heard about it till now and they just offered free insurance and 2k corporate discount. I found the build quality to be very poor for U-va and the Spark literally feels like a matchbox. The cars feel like they should worth half the money they are asking for them. Search begins for another car.

Cheers

[vijaycool]

Endorsement of the engine is not possible with RTO, especially petrol to diesel conversion.