He said it was going to be in the ballpark of 10k, which is more than reasonable considering a dogbox is around 8k

 

With the additional mods, I bet it will be more than $10K.

 

dumb question but with all the money pored into this project wouldn't it be more reasonable to just mod the GTA auto trans? i know it is weak but the money spent on a custom bell housing, machine work to the TC, and stuff could be put into making the GTA stronger. plus it is a auto 5 speed. wouldn't this be better?

 

I gather from this thread that the physical components of the GTA trans are smaller and therefore inherently weaker.

 

Much smaller. The parts inside that trans simply aren't stout enough to take the punishment.

 

The supply to get a GTA trans seems impossible we tried before and couldn't even locate one. When you consider the fact that some of the quickest/fastest cars in the world run a 2 speed Powerglide trans I don't see the 5 speed being a benefit. This trans appears to be very strong, the 4th gear is an overdrive that has my EVO running less RPM at cruise than the 5 speed with 4.11's did. The rest of the stuff you mentioned are all included in the kit we will sell if this pans out for the $10,000. The GTA trans, again, is hard to get and we have no idea what would have needed upgraded and improved on that to top of the price.

 

Another update. I drove the car more this weekend. It is simply astonishing to me how awesome the car is with this trans in it. Now that everything is consistently working correctly my mind is moving onto improvements for it all.

I can't say enough about the torque of the car. The HTA86 is not a big turbo by the standards of a lot of EVO's today but it is no baby either. The power the car has in overdrive with that turbo is ridiculous. I can't even imagine this car with a Red on it. There are some hills here that I use to have to down shift to fourth gear for to go up easily without lugging the car down. There is no problem with that now. The converter lets the engine rev and the way the turbo spools is amazing.

The torque converter bolts have stayed put now longer than any other time the car has been together and I don't expect to have anymore issues with them. Each day my confidence grows to drive the car a little further and relax more doing it.

The electric power steering to me is not noticeable. The only time I notice it is when I look under the hood and see how clean it is without the pumps/lines and reservoir.

I just sold my spare set of Volks and slicks, I'm not sure WTF I was thinking at the time I did it. I'm ready to take the car to the track and see what it will run. I guess I'm going to skip to my second goal......first I wanted to see 8's on slicks and then my plan was to move to drag radials and try to do it in a full legit street car fashion. I guess drag radials will become my primary tire.

Have a great day everyone and thanks for following this project so long!

 

Looking forward to track results & congrats on everything going smoothly so far DB!

 

I'm being contacted about the sale of these transmissions again. I want to comment on that.

When I started this project it was all an "easy" swap. The first trans we used was from the Outlander, reality is the swap is easy. The other reality is the trans is extremely weak and will never work at any decent EVO power level. We found the trans we are currently using and found the weak points in that one too. Broken cases, broken input shafts, flex plate and torque converter bolt issues. The project has now taken 3 years of steady work enough money invested in the trans in my car that I could have bought a used GTR.

Over these three years I have watched, sadly, more and more parts be copied that we developed, dropped some vendors etc. Reality is it's rare to find a stand up person with integrity and honesty in the world.

This brings me to the sale of these transmissions. As much as I like money and as much as I'd like to at least get my money back I've invested in this, there is a very real chance that the product will never be sold or if it is it will be sold to people I know on a very personal level and can trust they won't stab me in the back on it.

At this point it is too easy to have the entire project copied. The huge money for development and breakage is done, the huge money for drawings and programming of the CNC is done. It's all simple reverse engineering now and that is actually called "stealing and copying" and I don't like either one.

I've got three guys on a list now that if they want to buy this they can. The problem is to build ONE more complete trans I have to pay for 10 more CNC'd billet cases. If I make a run of ten of these kits it would make me about break even on the investment, problem is I don't have ten guys I trust to not break a knife off in my back.

This is just a heads up that these will be rare, if built at all. Hell if I have to deal with one crap comment or being copied I'd rather just have the one in my car and that's it.

 

My heart! Best of luck man, I hope it all works out. Look forward to seeing it at the shootout.

Michael

 

Can't wait to see your product make history again buschur. looking forward to more results..

 

Man that sucks that you can't trust people to not copy your product, no integrity nowdays.
Could you do something like a group-buy style and sell 10-15 but not ship anything until everyone commits to the buy? That way you make some money on the product. I know its expensive but if you could get some people to prepay or at least put in a large deposit you might come out with a profit.

 

No way to put a patent on this? Or is it a grey area cause technically started off as a Mitsubishi product?

 

As far as I know he could only patent the parts that he made. Im no expert on patents though, but as far as I know it is a pain to do and it can take a LONG time to actually get the patent, and even then anyone can take the idea and change it 10% and legally it is not infringing on the originators patent.
Too much BS involved and way to easy for people to still copy it and sell their own version.

 

There should be a legal agreement signed between the purchasers and Buschur for these kits. I for one would sign, he can seize my car if I don't comply. If that could be done that's the way I would do it.