Fiat Uno Diesel Start Fabulous,flexible usage, honest, unpretentious, uncomplicated, van, estate,workhorse,car. Mine has just returned 73mpg for the past month, although I do no urban driving and drive at 40 mph most of the time in 5th gear. It must be magic because 46mpg combined is more usual with these, and I think mine is usually nearer 57mpg. Amazing little fellow with Ferrari personality. The gearbox will need replacing in a few thousand miles but this is a 1995 vehicle on an M plate with 122900 miles, I cannot complain. Last year several 200 mile runs along the motorways with a smile on my face at the sheer fun of the old Uno diesel. I could have taken the leather, lumbar comfort seated Saab but laughed and sang at half the cost in the Uno. Surprisingly capacious load space for small vehicle, with the rear seats down it carries several bales of hay or many bags of feed for my livestock. Brilliant design for people with horses because the back is fairly square and the rear door not unduly slanted, so allowing greater cubic capacity. Mine has fairly clean rear seats since they live under waterproof covers only popping up at MoT times,( I think we have been through 5 Mot's together now ) and most of the time I use the car as a two seater estate. I doubt I shall have another car as reliable and fuel efficient as good and my husband wants me to change to an estate car, yet even the newer estates (in my price range 98 to 02), I have seen have more rust, higher mileage and are not more economical to run than my beloved, untidy Uno. Let's face it, there is no further depreciation, spares are available from the Punto engines if necessary and it is a basic vehicle with no computer to leave me stranded with ecu faults. My Uno was bought as a non-runner years ago and my husband fixed the head gasket and cam, so no problems in those departments for the past 4 or 5 years. Customer service is not applicable, I do not buy new. Security comments, well, not many street wise lads or exporters have old diesel Uno's on their want lists. The less my car costs the more I can spend on my horses. (My other car is a lorry with horse partitions....and I am saving up to get the project finished and on the road.) Hope this helps someone, but I don't see many Uno diesels come up for sale.
Advantages -Costs less than 8p per mile in diesel, has lots of space with rear seats down.
Disadvantages -Only if you are image conscious.
Reviewing a 1995 model.
Fiat Uno DIESEL Start
Owned for 5 years.
This is our second car which my wife uses. I drive a 2002 Alfa 156 JTS and very nice it is too!
The Fiat has been in my family since new - 1990.
Other than general servicing the little Fiat Uno Diesel has never failed. It is very comfortabe to drive - even more so than my Alfa with full leather seats!
It delivers well over 50mpg, and whilst a little noisy when cold (it is an early Diesel) once warmed up it is fine and indeed very happy to cruise at 70mph all day long.
It has no major rust, servicing is very cheap - cam-belt change was £90 compared to my Alfa at £450!!. It uses no oil or water and is a brilliant little car.
It do suggest though that you fit good quality tyres as due to the small wheels this really does make a good difference with levels of grip and overall handling.
I know of some of these cars covering well over 250,000 miles and I am sure this one will do the same!
The Fiat UNO 60S has been at the garage for the past two weeks.
First it was the sample that was leaking after I knocked a pothole. When they removed the sample they found that a sieve like gadget was broken, I had to replace the oil pump and the sieve. Next the exhaust could not be put back properly and currently is delicately attached with gun gum.
About two days ago I wnet tothe garage and was given the car. I was extatic thinking my problem days were over. But no..... after a short distance it just died midstream..... and after 3 days of potting around the mechanics (who I also blame for my woes) tell me it's the MODULE....what's that I ask....some small gadget on the distributor that has got to be replaced.
It is nowhere to be found in Kenya.
I have to contend with a two hour public transport hassle-full drive to work every morning,a harsh working environment adn quite honestly I am going mad.
If it's not sorted by the end of next week I am going to tow the car home!
QUOTE:- "just bang on a ansa exhaust, k7N AND A SUPERCHIP and your away i raced rs turbos, 5gtt, toyota twin cams ,325i was only beaten in all my street races and that was a 911 turbo ,speaks for its self"
Got an Uno Turbo myself, and you can't just "bang on" a Superchip, 'cos they don't do one. If you paid a garage to fit a "Superchip", then you handed over about £220 for a bleed valve and uprated overboost switch you nugget. Speaks for itself....
my uno is 1988 model uno 45car,it is reliable car,i face a problem with the radiater,and the ignition module,my car is in sri lanka,hardly to find some spare parts in sri [Log in to view email]
If anyone has replaced the rear brake shoes..could you tell me is it normal that the springs on these are so highly tensioned even after releasing the hand brake and keeper clips. I don't want to remove the shoes incase I can't get them back on again!
Why are the hand brakes on Uno's so dismal? It can't be cable stretch as the rear cable springs beside the drum are fully compressed (ie the cable is being drawn to its fullest extent)..is it just bad design?
I have a Fiat Uno 45 Fire, i bought it second hand for £380, since then ive spent £200 getting a new head gasket because i was losing water rapidly out of the heater and bout £130 for new tyres, a few weeks later im hearing the same water sound and once again an losing water, if i find its the head gasket again im taking the garage that fixed it to trading standards, i hope its just a pust pipe thats easy to sort failing that im going to a scrappy to see what they can fix me up with, if anyone has had similar problems i would like to hear about them, email me and tell me how you sorted them.
Aside from these never ending problems i like the car it gets me from A to B and its a great wee running, if only i had looked at the engine better when i bought the bloody thing.
uno 60 ,a decent exhaust, a k&n and 116mph ,group 2 insurance, 50mpg what more do you want
uno turbo ie ,145mph and acceleration to pin you back,just bang on a ansa exhaust, k7N AND A SUPERCHIP and your away i raced rs turbos, 5gtt, toyota twin cams ,325i was only beaten in all my street races and that was a 911 turbo ,speaks for its self .
I have had 2 Unos and covered a total of almost 300000 miles between them. In total I have had 2 geaboxes fitted ( scrap replacements) 2 head gaskets ( LEGO engine makes them really easy) and the usual tyres exhausts etc. Every day I drove 120 miles at about 80 on the motorway. When I was early, I went on the A roads and reveled in the cars handling. The 1 and 1.1 FIRE engines are just amazing. 50mpg no matter how they are driven. In the dying days of my last UNO, 180000 miles I tried to see how high the engine would rev withought blowing up. And the answer? i never found the limit. These cars are amazing. No style, not much pace and a talent for rusting. But reliable as the day is long and fun to drive to!
170,000 miles! What else can I say? Okay, so mine's an F, old model, but it's got the fire engine! The earlier ones don't have a catalytic converter. My father runs a late model with the cat, and boy does that cat take the wind out of the power!
Italian electrics are always dodgy, as are their handbrakes.
If the ignition module on the distributor plays up, try cleaning the contacts on the module. ( I mean, really clean them, in fact get a mate with a sand blaster to give them a clean) It's worked three times for us!
47 mpg, round town, almost always on choke!
If you can't fit enough stuff into the cavernous boot with the seats roled forwards, take the back seats out! There's only two bolts hold them in. Whilst you're there, check out the carrying capacity of a Uno, then check the carrying capacity of an Esocrt or Astra. I'll not tell you, coz you won't believe me!
I paid £175 including a new clutch six months ago for my Uno, and it came with tax till this May.
I've not washed it, not topped up any levels, it starts first turn and goes like sh** off a shovel.
WQho could ask for any more to get to work and back?
God how I hated that car! Small, puny and tinny. A motorised shopping trolley with suspension that bottomed out when loaded with four medium adults, and an extras list that didn't even run to a fag lighter.
So why the hell did we buy it ? Well, a double dose of scumbag car-thief treatment left us with no no-claims bonus and an aversion to paying a grand or more for the pleasure of insurance. Our only alternative was to look for cars that were cheap to insure.
There isn't that much choice in the group 1 and 2 categories. We were left to choose between the Uno, a Mini or a 2CV. I love Minis but they're just too small for our needs, and quite frankly I would not be seen dead in a 2CV, no matter how skint I was! So the Uno arrived and I hated it straight away. It had to go as soon as possible!
Well, now it has gone, it's just that it took 6 years and 80 odd thousand miles of pleasureless motoring before we got round to getting rid of it. The damn thing was just too reliable, and when it did break, the replacement parts were just too bloody cheap.
Its total parts replacement, apart from the usual consumables, came to a grand total of two exhausts stlg 55, clutch stlg 70, a water pump stlg 20, two front discs stlg 20, one hand brake cable stlg 10, two fuel pumps stlg 10 and some rear light clusters stlg 10 all from the scrappies.
It did have it's little foibles mind. The first set of points lasted three years before I even found out it had any. Subsequent sets have lasted about three months and never any longer. Strange indeed!
The wiring on all Unos seems to be made out of some kind of spaghetti and put together by Gianfranco on a Friday afternoon after too much vino. If you buy an Uno, you must get a wiring diagram and a circuit tester and be prepared to learn, or else your local auto electrician will soon be on first name terms with you and will be able to recite your credit card number from memory. Rear light clusters tend to burn out the connectors - I was lucky enough to find a set on a relatively new front end write-off. Finding a good set at the scrap yard will become increasingly difficult as the now defunct model gets even older. Don't worry if the lights seem dim when working, just be glad they come on at all.
Ours also had a less than amusing tendency to block up its top breather, resulting in back pressure blowing out the dipstick and spewing out oil at an amazing rate, some of which finds its way onto the exhaust resulting in smoke constantly blowing out from under the bonnet. This meant though, that the under body never suffered from the infamous Italian rust worm. It didn't help the firewall sound proofing mind, which soaked up the excess for a couple of years before spontaneously combusting on the motorway one morning. After forcing my way panic stricken (with flames billowing out from under the bonnet) across two lanes of rush hour traffic - filled with commuters who would rather see my flaming car and me burn than let me in a gap - and onto the hard shoulder, I ripped out the sound proofing and threw it into the adjacent field still burning. I had to replace the plastic water bottle, washer pipes, motor and nozzle stlg 5 (scrappies again!) but I didn't bother with the sound proofing and just put up with the extra couple of decibels for the next three years.
The fuel pump on these models is an example of mechanical simplicity, shame then that they give up the ghost, without warning, every couple of years and can't be repaired!
The only extra on this car was a sunroof (which let the sun in quite adequately, but never managed to keep the rain out and a pair of plastic bags were always kept handy to keep the rain off the seats when parked).
The only other minor niggle was with the rear brake pressure regulator. The damn spring was so tough it wore out the mounting arm and lead to brake problems when towing.
Towing you ask? - I kid you not! Ours pulled a trailer tent (and not a small one at that). 'A' roads and motorways weren't too traumatic but somewhat slow up the slightest of inclines. A trip up some Pennine 1:3 country lanes probably accounted for the clutch failure mind! Fully loaded up with trailer, two mountain bikes, two large dogs and a boot full of gear, it always got us there and back wherever we went (though I did spend most of the trip praying).
Uno's have a strangely tall, square body which does mean they are surprisingly roomy inside, allowing you to stuff loads of gear in the back. Folding down the rear bench lets amazing amounts of junk to be squeezed in. For its size its almost tardis-like. This does mean that the driving position is oddly van-like and upright but, the steering and controls are the complete opposite - light, delicate and precise, excepting the gear lever which is similar to moving a cocktail stick in cotton wool!
The plastic wheel trims are tacky and tend to break when you take the wheels off but the wheels look better without them so chuck them in a skip and do without the hassle. Tyres wear out surprisingly quickly but are so small that replacements are dead cheap anyway (providing you avoid big name "tyre/exhaust/clutch" type outlets).
Handling is quite good in a sort of bouncy underpowered way but, nowhere near as much of a giggle as a Mini. To get into serious trouble (in the 45 S version at least) you would need to be rather short of a few marbles upstairs.
The same can't be said for its towering performance. Overtaking flat caps on a Sunday outing can need lots of patience, waiting for a gap large enough to wind the sewing machine up and there isn't much in reserve if you get it wrong! Luckily, the brakes were always sharp and predictable.
Fuel economy was always reasonable without ever being startling - 40mpg being about average, irrelevant of how you drove it or how heavily you loaded it.
So, now its gone. Maybe I should look back in fondness at a cheap and reliable car, which really should have been a second car to take the wife shopping or drop kids off at school, (which it would have done with aplomb), but instead was abused mercilessly, but thing is I still really hate it - the most reliable car I ever had and I detest it with a passion.
If you want a cheap reliable easy to fix run around and you look at cars with your head and not your heart, then this could be the car for you - and just for an added bonus - nobody EVER wants to nick one!
PS. An Uno 60 S with 5 speed box would be just spanking.
Practical and cheap, the turbo provides awesome performance - especially once modified. Normal models are excellent reliable runabouts with bags of space.
THE UNO TURBO IS GOOD FOR LEAST 95MPH, GREAT CAR (BY THE WAY 0-60 COMES UP IN A SLICK 10.6 SECS).
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Never owned
Preloved Visitor
Reviewed February 2004.
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NO UNO TURBO IS A MATCH FOR THE MK1 FIESTA XR2, IT WILL LEAVE YOUR GUTLESS TURBO PANTING FOR BREATH.
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Never owned
Preloved Visitor
Reviewed February 2004.
Performance
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I rated the form but i don't know how true it is. A week ago i bought my first uno turbo. It's a 1.3 turbo i.e from '86. I'm a BMW fan and i really wanted a e30 318is but i couldn't find one in 1200 euros, so now i own a fiat... I was really imressed by the performance of it's engine. Couldn't belive it even! OK, one week has passed and the problems begin to appear. Today, i returned from college, and i parked it near the place i usually do. After i got out of the car, i realised i have parked it in the wrong place. ok, no problem, put the key in, turn, and..... nothing! Only the buzzing sound of the gas pomp. I tried again and again. NOTHING. What can it be? I know that the italian cars have big problems with the electrical systems, rust and other minor things. Now, i'm really mad and i know this s**t would never happen in a german car especially in a mercedes, bmw, or audi...vw even. Can you please tell me what can it be? Could it be the notorious ignition module on the distribuitor? HELP
Never owned
Preloved Visitor
Reviewed October 2003.
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Many moons ago I had a Mk1 Uno Turbo. Looking back, the car was trouble, with a dodgy turbo unit and rusty doors being the main problems. A broken cambelt,two bent valves, and some door skins later (plus paint) and I had a small, insurable pocket rocket that puts a smile on my face ten years after I passed it on (due to inept attempted theft). My advice? Don't mess with the engines, they're fragile enough as it is; just lower it by about 40mm and leave it standard, because right now they got what it takes to become an appreciated classic. Much loved, much missed.
Owned for 2 years.
Preloved Visitor
Reviewed November 2001.
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1990 had this 12 years nearly I had it broke into on the drive once. I know it was broke into because I left the doors open through the night and they were locked in the morning. This car has been extreemly reliable apart from the rear top bushes on the suspension which have been replaced severval times but I do have to go off road often though. The ride is not good although it corners well, very economical and been a great runner
Owned for more than 5 years.
Preloved Visitor
Reviewed December 2000.
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who put the windscreen wiper switch on the dash???????????????????????????? apart from trouble adjusting handbrake and electronic ignition module on distributer braking down, a fantastically cheap and cheerfull car with a loading bay like a tardis, as good as any small van
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