Anyone seen the reviews on the Vishnu stage one plus kit in the new Car and Driver? Sounds like they bashed on it pretty hard after reading the review they end saying:

"Sure it was ridiculously fast, but with so many problems in such a short amount of time, even when it was running right, you always felt you were driving on borrowed time......"

"After the Evo was returned to stock, it felt darn fast, and we wondered why we'd tried these mods."

Their numbers:
381 bhp @ 6000
368 lb-ft @ 4000
Zero to 60 .... 4.1
Zero to 100 ... 10.8
Zero to 130 ... 20.6
5-60 ............... 5.5
1/4 ................. 12.7 @ 109

There's also a 40k mile long-term test.

Good reading, thought I'd share.

 

Ouch!! They are pretty harsh this time when all other tests where positive. I wonder what's going on with this Evo???

 

Turbos hitting hard is where many people get their "rush" factor from, and hence make a lot of judgements for and against the EVO. Sometimes fast is not really factored in until you look down at the speedo in the EVO. With many other tunes on the EVO, I'm sure Shiv and the gang look for total "area under the curve" type power with the EVO. One gets used to this power quite quickly. With more power its also quite easy to really thrash on any car. Perhaps they didn't have time to really sort out their Stage 1?

Driver confidence in the machine is another. I could be mistaken (personal opinion), but Car and Driver people love their V8 powered anything that performs well. Is it right, or wrong? Neither ... just a different demographic than probably our EVO ownership.

Thx Vish. for at least trying to give C&D reason to judge the EVO in their pages.

Cheers,

jcnel.

 

C&D attempted to run the 25 hours of thunderhill with a Vishnu tuned evo and had nothing but problems....... maybe they were still pissed about that....

 

Curious what were the problems?

 

Looks like the love affair between Vishnu and C&D is officially over...

Brent

 

Yeah, I though C&D had a big hard-on for Vishnu. I'll have to look for this April article then. Why would they return it to stock anyways??

 

Ok, what all does the Vishnu stage 1+ include?

 

www.vishnuracing.com Look it up man.

 

Interesting!

 

www.vishnutuning.com that is...

 

They still liked the evo when it was stock after the 40,000 mile long term test, but their ending phrase was:

"Our 40,000 miles showed that the price of replacing the Evo's track-ready parts isn't cheap, but as long as a $30,000 sedan with this level performance exists, the world will be a better place. And hey, don't get the spoiler."

Their main ragging started after they had problems with their Vishnu Stage One Plus. Some things they didn't like about it were:

"While undergoing acceleration testing, the Evo developed a dire knock that scared the engine into a limp-home mode...."
--They continued to fix that problem with their tuner (Devin Pearce of Payn Technologies in Troy, Michigan... www.paynetechnologies.com)

"But after a couple days of full-throttle acceleration, the car developed a guttural-sounding exhaust leak.... it was discovered that the oxygen sensor had backed out of the downpipe. So it was screwed back in. We picked up the car and immediately noticed that when revved beyond 4000 rpm the Evo would act as if the throttle were sticking and the engine would race all the way to the 7700-rpm cutoff."
---this problem was due to a 'sticky aftermarket blow off valve' so they replaced it with a stock one.

"...we were ready to go retest the Evo. But before we could geto ut to the track, the oxygen sensor again unscrewed itself. Pearce screwed the sensor back in, and we took off for the track as quickly as we could before our house of cards collapsed again........."

"..after just three runs, the clutch turned into an expensive pile of dust and the one-two shift felt noticeably more difficult. A new clutch set us back $1600, and we were ready to de-Vishnu-ize our Evo."
But I guess problems are part of modding your car, so what do you expect. I guess it wasn't anything too major, but still they maintained their opinion and returned their Evo to stock after spending $2995+$1731(installation)+$1600 clutch.

 

It's reviews like this that makes me think twice not to mod my car just yet...

 

Lol ...

Thanks for the article quotes ...

Mods are mods, and mods have to installed with a little bit of knowledge in mind. The O2 sensor backing out could be a tolerancing problem on the threads or something. I'm sure just a tiiny, tiny dab of high temp loc-tite would have solved the problem.

With the tuner ... did the XEDE get tuned by Devin Pearce? Was it a slight lack of piggyback tuning knowledge that caused the knocking? What is the report about something as simple as the spark plugs?

As for the "'sticky aftermarket blow off valve'" ... was it a true blow off valve, or a recirc. valve? Hehe ... EVO owners played that game from the get-go in 2003. If it was a true "blow-off valve," shame on C&D, if not, I digress.

I suppose in all the article was good, but it develops more questions than answers in my mind.

jcnel.

P.S. I also hope Vishnu (and Paul Gerrard (spelling unknown)) do the One-Lap-of-America this year, and whoop it up, again! j.

 

What about the fact that it's a press car that has been abused so much that problems just get escalated when u tack on aftermarket goodies.