Ben was no stranger to TTP Engineering. Looking back through our files, we have done work for him since 2005-2006. A great example of a performance oriented Evo enthusiast he has had plenty of experience with racing his car. Unfortunately close to a year ago while road racing at Sebring Raceway he was having trouble with his GReddy Profec B Spec II controller which caused large spikes in boost which caused his engine to fail.

Knowing the reputation David Buschur has with his engines he decided to give a call and try out one of his 2.0L shortblocks and stage III head. Ben has been happy with his purchase from what we gather. He had his engine installed elsewhere and was unhappy with the workmanship of the installer so he brought it into us to run through it and fix the issues and recommend changes to optimize the setup.

Mods consisted of: BR 2.0L engine and stage III head, GSC S2 cams MIVEC, external dump O2 housing, ported exh manifold, FPRed 64mm (smaller housing), 3" TBE, 1000cc injectors, BR FMIC & LICP, INJEN Intake and pipes kit, Forge RS valve, EGR blockoff, Aquamist HFS-5 @ 50% water, EXEDY twin, MR 5sp conversion, M&W Pro12 + 300m coil on plug ignition.

The meat and potatoes of the work was to rebuild the EXEDY twin disc clutch, flush out the break in oil and replace with Brad Penn oils, custom tune V7 Tephra mapping for Aquamist HFS-5 @ 50% water as well as pump map, tune in ECU controlled boost for both maps, repair or replace 3 port boost solenoid, get map switching to work and so on.

In our work and observation we noticed that the Forge WGA was set on the tight side, the radiator fan was hitting a coupler and burning up the electric motor, the idle was horrible, the car had not run in 6-8 months since the engine install, there was no PCV line running to the valve cover, the external dump O2 housing leaked at idle affecting the AFR reading a bit, the altmaps cable was not connecting with the ecu pin and the meth pump would turn on and pump into a closed solenoid once the power was turned on with the Aquamist controller. (This is not supposed to happen).

So its not the first time that we have had a customer drift away to test the waters elsewhere only to come back to get their Evo running correctly again. To be honest, we really don't mind that much. A customer deserves to explore options so they have workmanship to compare us to. The only downside is that what happens in between then and when they come back is sometimes a mystery, other times a horror story.

This time the customer wasn't terribly unlucky despite a broken engine harness, missing clips and fasteners, stripped and mismatched tranny and tcase bolts, a clutch that started slipping within days of picking up his car from there, a broken 1bar MAP sensor throwing P0069 OBD-II code (the same sensor with a broken harness), missing engine ground, fouled spark plugs, FPR with improper base fuel pressure, a dangerous fuel leak, a radiator fan that would not turn on and that's about what I can think of right now.



Anyhow, onto the recovery process. The car came in with stock UICP with meth jets top and bottom and a coupler hitting the fan. My recommendation was to replace the pipes with an INJEN intake kit before tuning. The injen provides for a lightweight pipe set with a great surface for tapping meth jets as seen above. We placed them both below where they are out of sight and out of interference with the hood and moving parts.



Once installed, we continued to run through the car it began to have starting issues. We pulled out the plugs and they were as black as could be. Once in the ECU we monitored STFT and recognized the injector latencies and scaling was not correct for the car. The plugs were replaced with new OEM ILFR7H NGK units and it ran much better. Onto the the dyno we got the car strapped in and noticed a fluid pouring onto the dyno roller. Once I got done confronting a tech, he pointed out that it had nothing to do with the fluids just changed and that it was gasoline. We checked the engine over and sure enough there was a sizeable fuel leak from the fuel pressure regulator return line to the hard pipe back into the tank. The FPR used an aftermarket hose back there and the stock clamp and hose diameter was not sufficient. We rectified the leak using a UK make JCS Hi-Grip worm drive clamp and she was good to go. The Forge WGA was reset to proper spec to eliminate creeping and we moved on. The next issue we noticed was that the meth pump turned on when arming the HFS-5. This was not supposed to happen. We investigated the wiring of the v10 control box and found that the system was set to MPS boost activated mode, however there was no signal for boost. It was tapped into injector pulse width. We changed over the jumper to place it into PWM mode and set the spray on point and she was ready to go.

We opted not to baseline the car as a quick look at the map indicated that nothing good would come of testing it out, especially seeing as the injectors were already improperly scaled. We moved into loading Tephra V7 Bigmaps to the ECU and running the pumpgas tune to the goal of 414whp on 93.

Soon thereafter we noticed that the altmaps cable was not signaling the ECU and began tracing the electronics end of things which were less than pretty and pre-existing. What we found was this:



The Altmaps cable install on an Evo 9 is a little tricky. It was a decent effort by the installer, however we immediately noticed the pin was not inserted correctly in the ecu harness, disassembled it and installed the harness the way it should have gone in and locking it in place.



Once the harness was repaired, it looked like this pic above.



In the end on a conservative tune we achieved 414whp on 93 octane with 468 peak on 93+water/meth @ 50% content using jets 1.0 and 0.4. With the external dump diluting the AFR reading and an idle that was still erratic after tuning we opted to limit boost to 30 peak tapering to 24-25psi. Unsure of the TRUE AFR reading and the need for some parts swapping in our opinion to optimize the setup we left it there for the time being.

Some of the recommendations we had for Ben were to switch to 100% meth injection, move to Megan O2 housing, ditch the COP plug for OEM coils again, replace radiator fan, move to jets 1.0, 0.9, and change WGA to FP's. I hope to be able to work with the car some more once some of the adjustments are made to the hardware.

Ben came in this am to pick the car up. Pulling the car off the dyno and taking it around the block with the crappy idle despite our attempts to rectify it in the ECU as well as at the throttle body itself and giving it back to him in its current state just was not sitting well with me so I pulled the CEL code again and once again P0069 was popping up. Searching the facility over, I came across a oem 1bar map sensor and said what the hell, lets change it and see if it improves the idle. Crossing my fingers and hoping it did the trick we swapped the sensors out, the old one looking notably wet on the inside. Started the car and voila, perfect idle!

The car both idled and ran great after that. We adjusted the idle set speed back downward into normal range as before no matter how much air was bypassed at the throttle body, the idle was still so low, it would shut off the car. Once the MAP sensor was swapped, it went back high again and had to be closed up at the bypass screw.

Anyhow the numbers were a little lower than he wanted to see but we have a short term plan of attack to address a few areas and I'm sure we will get the beast back on the rollers at a higher boost level on 100% meth. Dyno charts uncorrected @ 1.00%

 

i felt like i just read a book ahah...u failed to mention most of his mods though? turbo?

 

Updated with mods list.

 

Outstanding work, thank you for what you do,

 

Why do you suggest him to switch out the COP?

 

Thanks for the good words. Good to see the customer happy. I don't see a reason for him to get rid of the COP since he already has it. Seeing as he is on the stock ECU he probably didn't have to have it but I don't think he needs to can it now that he has it.

The dyno numbers I actually tend to agree with for a change!

 

Amazing numbers and tune! I definitely can wait to go down to TTP to meet you guys, and get some goodies from the Buschur camp!

 

All I can say is, TTP has my business from now on. Most shops can put together a decent build and get results. On the other hand, Scott @ TTP is a specialist; he can take a car thats been battered and abused (by me of course), hacked up by another shop, and fix every single problem I could throw at him (and affordably I might add).

Like Scott said, the results are dismal, but the tune was safe enough to get me home so I can save up for the right parts to finally get the car where it should be. Then she will be back on TTP's dyno to post some real numbers!

 

Glad to see you guys are buddies now.......

 

its always good to see half molested evos get fixed up nice.

 

i was about to post this too , all evo vendor should agree to each other.

 

2 thumbs way up he really knows what hes doing and will have my business after hati

 

Thank you for the kind words.

 

How Cute.

BR 2.0L FTW