We’re not new to the intricacies of the Alfa Romeo 4C, but we’ve been fortunate to work on many of these fine examples of Italian works of art. If you were to explain the Alfa 4C to a general car nut, you’d be met with frowns of intrigue and confusion. It has a frunk, but can’t open, it’s mid-engined and has boot space just in front of the engine. Speaking of the engine, it’s still the 10-year-old 1750TBi released in 2010, with some refreshed components that most won’t bother mentioning; but for interest sake, it has a special aluminum block, coil packs, and maybe turbo…some would disagree on the latter. It also has the TcT gearbox which gets love and hate from Alfisti, most love it in the 4C, but hate it in the Giulietta’s. The chassis, made from carbon fiber, needs regular caressing by retorquing all the bolts to the correct spec, and only professionals can do this daunting task.
Now that you have a brief history of the quirkiness of the Alfa 4C, it is an understatement to call this car a head-turner. There are very few 4C’s for sale, it is a very popular Alfa to own, those on the market will not be available for long as they’re scooped up to complete or start someone’s collection. Others only buy it out of curiosity, this baby Ferrari has a Jeckyl-and-Hyde reputation with the media, and we think this is why it’s so popular.
This brings us to the 4C you see here. The owner brought it for a service and things got out of hand quickly.
Comprehensive Service – Ensuring Longevity
We did the big Alfa 4C service on this vehicle, which includes special spark plugs, a cambelt, tensioners, and water pump. To put things in perspective when we speak of the quirkiness of the 4C, the entire rear section body panels must be removed to do the cambelt service. Yeah, it is dramatic.
Improving an already incredible car
We agreed with the owner that a nice bump in performance would be achieved if we do our Autopitstop special; BMC performance filter, KSpec custom tune, and high-quality stainless steel downpipe. We also recommended improving the cooling requirements for the vehicle, seeing as it’ll run much higher power, and the 4C is already constrained in this department. We enlisted the skills of Cirrus Coolers in Pretoria to design and develop a custom intercooler for the Alfa Romeo 4C. We’re looking at a 200% increase in volume.
At Autpitstop we only entrust the skill and quality of the Kspec Tuning team. After the custom tune was loaded, we headed to the dyno. We saw a jump from 158wkw to 220wkw.
We also increased the track of the 4C by developing custom wheel spacers (we’ll release this product soon) to improve an already agile vehicle, at the front, we opted for 16mm and 25mm for the rear, while changing up the brake discs and pads with Brembo’s best. Speaking of handling, we enlisted the solution offered by Alfa Workshop in the United Kingdom and installed their suspension blocks to eliminate the fabled Alfa 4C wandering steering. The kit consists of 8 quality spacers designed to ‘fix’ and improve the suspension geometry. Facets such as the camber, caster, and toe are improved with this kit, and we highly recommend it for all Alfa 4C’s.
The 4C spent some time in our shop, a great portrait for all visitors to drool over. Our customer is over the moon with the results, we’ve managed to improve both the handling and speed of this 4C making it a great all-round sports car, some would argue it’s now a mini-supercar.
We’d like to thank Cirrus Coolers and Kspec Tuning, and of course our team at Autopitstop for their dedication and involvement in this project. If you need any of these products for your Alfa 4C, be sure to reach out to us and we can turn your 4C into a menacing street and track machine!
Check out the full photo dump on our social media pages – EPIC 4C