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Figured I'd share the whole story with you guys! Hold onto your hats....let's rewind to May, 2010:

Last saturday I drove possibly the most beat up evo X I've seen to date. I walked away from it disgusted at how someone could be so careless with such a nice car. Then, the more I thought about it, the more I thought about what a great opportunity this thing could be to get an X for cheap and turn it into a mean machine with my own personal touches. Plus, from about 15 feet away, it looks nice and mean, just my style

When I first saw this thing from a distance, it made my heart flutter. Tien coilovers, dark-*** tint, some sort of exhaust...excellent combo! But the damage, OH, the damage...there's scratches on every fender and door, rock chips, dings, gouges, and curbed rims. It's gonna be a project, a long project, but for now I will have to just dub thee: BeaterX!







Looks alright eh? Now look closer:





Tien coilovers, sweet! Driving them through winter w/o washing, bad bad bad!


Has an MBC, and a custom UICP, FMIC, and exhaust made by Excessive Autosport in Sioux Falls.


Rear passenger qpanel:



The thing drives straight, has decent brakes, makes decent power, and all of the SSS package options: fastkey, rockford fosgate stereo w/ sub, HIDs, sat radio, and bigger spoiler (this probably won't stay long! ). If anyone does pro body work and wants to earn some brownie points, LMK!

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Now for some serious bidniz! These took HOURS AND HOURS to install, but have completely transformed the interior:





Note the seat in this pic, about where your right thigh would sit...ugh, IDK what's on it.


Now, a small pile of parts! Off with the steering wheel, apart with the console, power up the dremel! Woohoo it's bluetooth! Also, relocated the AWC controls (tarmac, gravel, snow) to the center console to make room for the 2010-spec steering-wheel-mounted radio controls. Yummy.

I did this while watching HIMYM








I didn't bother taking a pic of the bluetooth module or the mic, they get stuffed behind the dash and ceiling lights. Gonna wire in my valentine1 up there too, just need a few vampire clips!

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May, 2010:

Welcome to another installment of '*** this beater!'

Well today was an interesting day. Found out that the pads I was expecting to come in Thursday would not even be shipping TO MAP till next Tuesday I knew I needed front pads asap so I just decided that I'd install my used front pads (ferodo ds2500's) off of my crashed evo8. I canceled my order with MAP and put the money towards a new order: Megan test pipe, perrin intake pipe, and AMS street front motor mount inserts.

I made a deal with Lomker to help him with his brakes if he helped me with mine. Holy christ did the guy come through for me! He was waiting for me when I got home, and he happened to have a fresh set of Ferodo DS2500's and two cans of ATE Super Blue in a box waiting to go in his car (but not for a few months). Gah! I about hugged him (maybe I did, I don't remember!).

Front pads were a *bit* thin!


Matt D. came by too to give me some cash for parts he picked up from my part-out (LOL I just realized you forgot to give me the cash nukka!), and I'm glad he did. I got the front pads done in about 20-30 mins, but the rears gave me all sorts of problems...actually one big problem: the ******* pins that hold the pads in place would NOT come out! Seriously, its like they were machined too big or something, they were mother****ing impossible to get out! With some persistance, swearing, cussing, and bloody knuckles, they came out, kicking and screaming the whole way (both me & the pins).

We got the whole mess installed and did a full flush of the brake fluid--not taking any chances on this damn beater!


This thing stops like a ************ now! Needs some summer rubber stat.


While we had the wheels off, we scoped out the suspension that came on this thing. Figured out its the Tien Monoflex coilovers, they're $1999 on MAP's www site! I was so pumped I did the peanut butter jelly dance.




They handle awesome, but as-is they're a bit bouncy, and I have no idea if they'll last another winter (or three). I'm going to get the keys to adjust them and see what happens.


Last thing, we test fit my thrashed Rota P45F and they fit great! The offset is about 8mm wider than stock, and should look decent when I get them on! The replacement rim I ordered should (finally) be here on Thursday, so hopefully I can get the tire mounted and these things on for dyno day!

Thanks for reading '*** this beater'

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May 2010:

3/4 Rota P45F's were left intact after the crash, one with a few scratches and curb mark, but it was straight and the tire was good, so I kept it. I ordered one new 18x8.5, 37offset P45F from wheeldude.com and one new Sumitomo HTR ZIII from tire rack. The tires on the other rims had about 300-400 miles on them, so I figure should be good to go.

Thanks Ricer Pete (polishmafia) for mounting these for me! Maple Grove Goodyear FTW!
Attachment 337615

Lots of doubters/haters, but I think they suit the car just fine




Also, I had wired in my V1 to the dome light, but it seemed to be killing the battery, even though I'd unplug it each time I turned the car off. Fun fact, that is a computer-controlled circuit, so it lets current continue to flow and the battery drains away. Thanks rosey for helping me route it down to the cigarette lighter! Now it's on/off with the ignition too, woowoo!

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So, what else can go wrong? The battery is only putting out 10.5v now, woohoo! I still have the stock battery from my evo8, it seems to be in good shape so I'm going to toss that in there until I decide if I want to put a mini battery in this thing or a big red-top for extra long music-while-hanging-out power.

This week has been crazy at work, but somehow karma was nice to me and inbetween running around fridley/St. Anthony for client stuff (I'm normally way out in Eden Prairie), I was able to drop the car off and pick it up from Custom Soft Trim. These guys do seriously professional work. The pics are just iphone quality, sorry, but I'll post up better pics once the leather has tightened up a bit--they said it would take a few weeks, and from pics of other people's cars I've seen, I believe it.

So yea, latest mod, heated front seats and black leather and perforated leather on all seats, door panels, and armrests.

Attachment 337613

Attachment 337614


The headliner of this car is all effed up from the previous owner. Looking at it, IDK if cleaning will really even fix everything. Thankfully, I found a solution, hopefully I'll be able to get it done sometime this summer (post BBX I think).

Hoping to get some time to wrench on the car tonight, I picked up a few goodies this week, and figured out a few things that will fit from the evo8 onto the X.

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May 2010:

I picked up a used (but good condition) Magnaflow catback from Ron @ RS Motors (off of his X) on wednesday. This thing looks identical to the Buschur Crossflow catback I had my heat set on--it even has the neckdown near the cat cut off for full 3" pipe all the way through.



Also picked up a megan testpipe from MAP. I've been reading on the X forums a lot lately and it is insane the amount of newbness that people pride themselves in. Preferring to pay for quality and guaranteed fitment over price, blah blah blah. Some parts are kinda the exception to the rule, and this is one of them. $130 on MAP's site, I got a package discount with a few other things, insane bang/buck:



While the exhaust was off, I slapped in my Beatrush rear diff bushings from my crashed evo8. Beatrush lists the same part number for both, and voila, they fit great!

Beatrush on the left, stock on the right:


10 minute install, very worth it:


Next I scooted forward and ripped out the stock driveshaft bushings and replaced them one by one with the Beatrush propellershaft bushings I salvaged from my crashed flipmobile:


Little bit of lube on the hangers and everything was snug and fit perfect. This exhaust curves down ever-so-slightly to provide more clearance for the carrier bearings, but as luck would have it, it slightly scrapes ever-so-slightly in my tiny non-steep driveway, despite missing the big muffler right in the middle.



Next, around to the front of the car:

AMS Front motor mount insert (street, 70 durometer). No press needed, just a sawzall to cut the old bushing out and a 5 pound hammer (with TKR driving it!)to get the new one in. The car was already in the air, literally 5-minute install once the bushing was in the mount, 3 bolts.

Lastly a quick oil change (for good measure, enough else has gone wrong on this car) and then off for some testing! Ended up turning the MBC down 1/3 of a turn for ~26psi peak. The front motor mount and bushings made a pretty insane difference, the shifting feels fantastic. There is a *tish* more vibration in the cabin but it is hardly noticable. I ended up bumping up the idle by 100rpm just to see if I could get it to go away, and it helped. Anna commented, but said she didn't hate it.

I also deleted the rear o2 sensor and installed my wideband sensor from the LC-1 (again, from the crashed 8). I'll wire that up next week, for now its just plumbed in and no CEL yet (I disabled ecu options #2, bit 1), we'll see what happens in the future. The ability to log right through the ECU will be way worth this!

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May 2010:

Ugh, its been a rough week with the X. Nothing serious, but lots of little stuff is adding up to big levels of annoyance.

First thing's first. I *finally* got my openport 2.0 cable from the post office, it had been sitting there for a f*cking week. I did get stand-alone logging working in about ten minutes, pretty slick. Just insert microSD card, plug in flash cable w/o laptop, and it logs right to the card for later review! I love it.


That's where my luck ended though. I wired in my wideband from my evo8, and have been struggling trying to get logging working with it through the stock rear-o2 input. I've rewired the damn thing twice and literally tried like 10 different formulas in evoscan to no avail. This input is read as a 2-byte value (1024 values) vs the 1-byte value from the 8/9 (256 values) so the formulas need to be reworked. My latest one seems to be best, as it sees 14-15afr at idle/cruise and dips down to 12-13afr at light throttle. However, WOT it sees 13afr, which is not right at all. I even richened up the fuel tables just to be sure, no effect.

current formula: ((22.39-7.35)/1023)*x+7.35 = (0.0146*x)+7.35



Next pain in my ***, my little art project. No pics of this **** yet as it looks like garbage. I'm trying to fill in the holes around the stock rectangular openings that I've put my circular seat-heater controls into. Bondo + 600 grit sanding the entire thing seems to have worked best, but this paint I got just makes it look like ****. It's shiny and you can see all the details of the surface, including the clear differences between the bondo and the plastic. Needless to say, it looks like ****. Anyone have any ideas, or know anyone good at stuff like this? It's just a basic piece of plastic, kinda krinkle black.


Ok on to more reasonable things. Rosey's clutch fork stopper fits like a glove. X guys, add $50 for the X-tax, rosey has a ring to pay for!


Next, AMS shifter-gate bushing. Less slop = good. This goes inside the gear selector arms that bolt to the transmission.


AMS underhood shifter bushings. The stock ones were surprisingly firm, idk if this is a new thing for the evoX (vs a regular lancer), because the 8/9 evos seemed awefully squishy. Still worth doing.


Since I had the intake out, why put the stocker back in? Perrin intake pipe:




And, I deleted the stock airbox and test-fit an aFe intake. This was recommended to me by several people. It looks simple but well designed.



I'm missing a stock bracket though, the part that this thing mounts to. IDK if I'll bother finding it, or just zip-tie this thing in place. For now, I put the stock air-box back in, and I'll swap this in when I get the car up to shane for tuning (or if I get my damned wideband working!).

oh, two last things. I had a small exhaust leak where the downpipe meets the testpipe. Fixed that, the car sounds a bit quieter, and better at WOT.

Also, Anna bought me a simple tool kit for the trunk (for my birthday). I never carried one in my evo8, and well, *** it. Worth having in case of emergency, and it fits in place of the stock foam ****.




The previous owner went ahead and spilled a coke (or something) in the trunk and never bothered to clean it up. There was corn-syrup goo all over the floor of the trunk and in the spare tire well, and I never noticed it, but through the camera view-finder you can clearly see a big brown stain in the trunk carpet. See it?

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Got this thing on the rollers tonight. Not the 300whp I was really hoping for, but meh, with my luck and how solid the tune is, I'm happy. Shane says it's really in line with other cars similarly modded, and I believe it. Good solid fun power on the stock turbo. 278whp/287wtq.

AFR curve sooooo flat, thanks shane!


25psi@3000rpm, thanks mivec!


280wtq@3500rpm, yippee!


Here's 4 runs overlayed. The Black line is NOT MINE, but another car shane had pulled up with similar mods. I'm a little short of it, but again, meh. Upper red line is current tune, green line is shanes 5-minute tune when I was on the test drive, and the lower red line is the car as it rolled off of the dealer's lot with the old catback, mbc, uicp, and random fmic.



A few notes:
-the perrin intake tube didn't lean the car out at all
-the aFe intake did lean out the car about half a point between 4000-5500
-peak timing is a bit down from your average X, maybe I'll get some better fuel in it some day and pick up that 15-20whp.
-my LC-1 wideband is within .2 AFR of DB's, good enough for me! I started geting a CEL the other day, turns out it was a rear o2 code...I didn't get it for like two weeks after not running a rear o2 (at all) and it came on the day I fixed the line to the FPR. Weird. There was one DTC I had left enabled, disabling seems to have gotten rid of the CEL now. So, no rear o2, no CEL's, yay!

I'm sorta at a loss as to what to do with the car next. BBX, Ported Exh Mani, and o2 housing/downpipe is what I'd like to do, but there's other things I'd like to do...sunroof, bodywork, etc. Budget is now getting very very tight. I'm pretty sure I'm just going to keep the car as-is powerwise for a while and just rock it. It's good clean fun and should be enough to keep me smilin for a while

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So, more fun issues? I had a roadside consultation yesterday. Tint = 16% front, 18% back...oops He also informed me that my registration is goofy, and the plates I got from the dealer have no year on them! On the left they say JAN, on the right they say MAR, but I bought the car on april 30th, and it was registered well into MAY? I'll be calling the dealer about this monday, ****ing idiots.

Got a video of the car on the dyno yesterday, I'm really happy with how it sounds now, the aFe intake really makes this a turbo car

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oL-iWsi2T4&hd=1

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June 2010:

Ok weekly update. I pulled the car apart (forgot to take a pic it looked funny for a few days!), took the trunk off and some stuff under the hood. Small but good stuff.

Some GOOD friends I have at LaMettry's in EP took my trunk lid filled the holes from the wing, removed the badges, and cleaned up the massive screwdriver marks from whatever retard tried to remove the old 'evolution' badge. Then it got painted and cleaned up, and I installed it back on my car before wagner's tonight.

While it was off, I pulled my Mynes hood struts and my janky (but functional) UICP and ran it over to Primo Performance for powdercoating. They did a nice glossy black on the hood damper mounts, and a crinkle black on the UICP. No polished bling on this car, nice and simple















You can still see the big ding in the passenger quarter panel. That's getting taken care of next, then PDR, then buffing/detailing. It HURTS to spend the money on this and not making the car faster, but ******* its starting to look good (IMHO).

While the car was sitting, I dinked with the coilovers a bit and decided I hate them, I cannot adjust them at all, the clicky things on top are missing. PB Blaster on top to keep them lubricated, that's about all I can do for now. I also yanked out the motor mount again and added two holes, and enlarged two holes from 3/8" to 1/2". I'm pretty happy with where it's at now, but some good time at traffic lights with the a/c running will be the real test.

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All of the above is the first like 40 days of ownership, May, June 2010.

MAP Proving Grounds 2010!







http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKoK0kA7q1w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg9qDobiixw&hd=1

And then:



Yup, toasted the clutch racing this weekend. WORTH IT!

I got home late Sunday night to a whiny wife (she missed me, what can I say!) My ****ty little compressor took a crap a few weeks ago, so I ran out Monday and picked up this thing from harbor freight (thanks for the tip mark!), and cleaned up my tool area (took a LOT of them with me up to BIR):
Attachment 337612

Nothing fancy, but then again I don't do any pro work, just work on my **** and some friends' cars. Anyways, yesterday I was talking to Jim (TalonEvo/Fiero) and after spending the weekend racing together he was ready to help me rip into my car and just get this thing fixed in my garage. I've done a clutch job on a 1G DSM before, but my 2G and evo8 I paid someone else to do, just a real PITA. We started around 7:30pm, Anna brought us some PeiWei around 8 or 830.

We rigged up a sweet tranny jack:


Trevor stopped by after work around 11 or 1130? and we got the xfer case off and most of the trans bolts out. We later found a few secret trans bolts, and got the whole thing free of the block. We then spent about an hour or two wrestling with the thing and massaging it out of the car. Around 2am, trans was on the floor, I yanked the clutch/flywheel, and we crashed. Trevor nearly fell asleep on my garage floor while holding the jack, LOL.









A few notes:
-we did pull the downpipe
-we did putz with the TOB a bit, but got it off by doing one side, then turning the motor over 180° and then popping off the other side.
-we did not disconnect the driveshaft
-we did not fully remove the transfer case, it sits nicely on the frame
-we dropped the subframe about 1" and hung it on its mounting bolts for the final 1" of clearance to get the trans free.

8am I'm at a client for work, and feel pretty damn beat.

Flywheel is getting machined today.

Damn it murlo, forgot about the diff pins and the stupid plastic master cylinder on these things.....something to noodle while I wait for my clutch to come in I guess. ACT 6-puck spring (HDG6) is the plan.

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Check out this sweet plate that Rosey machined for me! I'm going to get it powdercoated over at primo sometime in the near future.

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Suspension, suspension, everywhere! I was trying to get some sort of stock-ish suspension setup together for this thing, and a few fridays ago I ordered a set of eibach springs for it. I had no shocks and no hats, so there was a lot of little suspension components to either buy seperately or find whole assemblies. I had been hunting and hunting for a decent deal on a set of Bilsteins out of an X MR, but I got sick of people wanting a fortune for them or them being potentially damaged, or whatever.

Ordered up a nice clean set of full GSR suspension, 8k miles on it. As (my) luck would have it, two days later, a set of MR Bilsteins popped up for a great deal, and the came complete with a set of Cobb springs!



I swapped the Eibach springs onto the Bilsteins and started ripping out teh coilovers.



Bolting down the last few bits. You can see the big whiteline swaybar up there, bolted in a few days ago.



The Tein MonoFlex coilovers, already sold. Awesome coilovers, but not for me. Hopefully I don't miss them


And, the leftovers (for sale):


After buttoning everything up and putting some miles on these this weekend, I am SO HAPPY with the results! The new suspension sits about 1/2" higher than the coilovers were set at, the drop looks nice, the ride is absolutely fantastic, and the car still corners like its on rails. I have an alignment scheduled for Tuesday @TheAlignmentGuy, and I'll be doing some more testing and an autoX in a few weeks

Whenever the extra bits sell, I think it'll be BBX time!

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Okfine, after pics. It's not super clean, but seeing as its raining out while I took this, it's not gonna get much cleaner than this for a while :P

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So let's see, got the turbo Wednesday, was supposed to help Rosey with brakes Thursday. His parts weren't in so I went ahead and started ripping my car apart Thursday night. Thursday morning I had an interview and dropped off the hotside at Modern Automotive Performance to get ceramic coated (it already had a good, basic port job by CBRD). Got home late, helped Anna with some stuff around the house and then got busy. mlomker showed up to put his WGA arm back on and ended up sticking around to hand me wrenches, hold the light, and generally motivate me! I got about 2.5 hours or so in and called it quits, the bolt holding the turbine housing to the block was all that remained.






Friday after work trevor came over and we went to town. I made a joke long ago when doing an IM install on my evo8 that this would be similar to doing a turbo on an X. Boy was I wrong. An IM weighs like 5 pounds, all aluminum. A turbo weighs like 35 pounds with the o2 housing, clunky and awkward as FOK to get out.





Shortly after this pic was taken, Anna walked up and started poking me in the *** and I threatened to kick her in the face...I was frustrated, she didn't like it too much, I felt really bad Sorry baby.

Lots of room once the turbo is out, but it's about to get filled again:


The BBX comp wheel kinda dwarfs the stocker. It's not a 4202 or anything, but this is actually a pretty sizable turbo. 58lbs/min.









After a bite, we swung over to MAP and got the turbine housing. THANK YOU Modern Automotive Performance for the QUICK TURNAROUND! These guys do great work.





After a few hours the turbo was back in and we fired up the car. Thank god, no leaks! I put ALL new copper crushwashers and gaskets in, save for the head-manifold, manifold-turbo, and turbo-o2 housing gaskets. Oh, FUN FACT! My stock turbo had no gasket on the compressor outlet, to the comp outlet pipe. Unreal. It didn't leak though, when I tested it. I put one on this time :P





Made a few laps around the block and 24psi on the 100% stock fuel system I'm seeing 11:1 afr up to about 5500, that's as high as I've taken it for now. I'm going to try and turn it down and rev it out, then slowly turn up the boost and try find the limit of the stock fuel system. I have a set of 800cc injectors to go in sometime in the near future, and asked Shane@DB Performance to give me a shout if he has any last-minute cancellations next week. For now, I'll just drive the thing, log it, and start enjoying!