mine is still basically stock, besides the K&N drop-in filter. im going on 16 months and 17k. however, the urge is building and its only a matter of time.

 

Stocker... I don't plan on staying stock forever, but just like OldschoolEVO, I'd rather focus first on upgrading my driving skills. Also, what little installs I have done, have been for the soul purpose of upping reliability rather than power. For example bushings, TT, oil catch can (on the way), security system... etc; and of course, on schedule and extremely meticulous maintenance. When I do start modifying the car though, like jmsrx, I'm going to focus on making a car that can be as close to having the best of the two worlds of auto-x and road course / time attack. Not a fan of the quarter mile. If I was, I would have gotten American muscle.

Oh and btw, jmsrx, I do disagree with one statement you made about keeping it Evoish. Going 2.3 violates the restriction of rally being purely 2.0L. I don't know how much of a stickler you want to be on the Evoish requirement, but personally, that is why (along with cost ) I will never deviate from the true 2.0L ideology.

 

I still think of my Evo as stock, albeit probably isn't in the technical sense. All I have is BR air filter, Hawk Pads and different wheels/tires for summer. That seems pretty much stock to me. There are a few other bits but they are merely cosmetic.

Just had my 70K mile service, with orginal clutch too. I got the 10yr/100K mile warranty with mine when I bought it so that has kept me away from mods. The dealer does every single service on it. That way if something goes wrong, they don't have a leg to stand on (assuming they wanted to deny coverage) since it's not modified and they are the only ones that have ever touched it. Once I hit 100K miles, then we'll see about some changes.

 

Stock evo's suck. They are so de-tuned from the factory its a joke.

Bolt-on's make the car 100 times more enjoyable.

U can put ur car back to stock for warranty work with bolt-on's.

U can re-sell ur parts when u take them off. If u ever choose to do so.

So pull up ur pink pantys and get sum.

 

You're right, I would be breaking the rules of rallying. But I have never been much for rules anyways. I just want the car to be the best it can in the areas that I am most interested in. I never will have the time to be competitive on that kind of scale but will still have fun driving it around the closest track to me. I also think that the things that will make it a great time attack vehicle will make it excellent as a daily driver. More excellent than it already is.

 

That's basically how my brother's IX MR is. He's had it since April 2006. It has a Works Drop-In and 6500 miles. Oh and a Perrin Shorty Antenna. He's saving up for a TT swap for his Supra so I don't think he's going to be modifying it anytime soon.

My IX MR on the other hand is not stock.

 

Im stock and am going to stay stock (engine / performance wise).
The interior: i am going to change with a double DIN unit...
So will i be able to join the stock club after interior upgrade?

What did you say to get them to give you an alignment?
My car already needs an alignment at 2500 miles
so if they deny me first try i need something to say to get them to do it.
I dont have much speech skills.

 

In my opinion, there's absolutely no reason to not do a retune of the stock boost control system. There are two vendors that I know of that sell a properly sized boost pill that replaces the stock one; this allows you to mainatin boost to redline instead of having it taper off after retuning the boost tables. So instead of having that feeling of the car falling on it's face after 5.5k rpms, it'll pull clean to redline by keeping the boost up and the resulting hp increase.

Then you can also do a drop-in air filter. Probably 30+whp gain at redline for minimal investment (~$75 for the cable, download software for free, ~$15 for the boost pill, and your time). And the car is completely stock from the outside. If you want to take it a step further, get a downpipe and high flow cat. I noticed NO increase in exhaust volume with these two components. They gained me 400rpm worth of spool during a 3rd gear pull and probably ~15-20whp. Still sounds stock, though if someone takes a look under the car, they'll notice it's not.

 

I know everyone always talks about the warranty but I know alot of evo owners.... primarily ones the drive their cars very hard..... and 99.9% have never needed warranty work. Most things that are going to take a dump tend to take a dump in the first 10k miles. Sure some 03/04 people have xfer case issues and a few have had sychro grind issues but its normally due to the beating (read: abuse) they put their evos thru.

The warranty nightmares I hear about are folks the broke their junk and want mitsu to fix it. I say suck it up an deal. Upgrade the things that take a digger and enjoy the car for what it is.

 

+1 Only warranty work done on my car was my ACD pump which was covered despite my mods (Exedy twin HD included)

I would love to buy an EVO to drive every day and leave it stock. Just not gonna happen though.....ahhh maybe a X???

 

stock 2003 evo
38k miles...
im loving it... astock killer!

 

29,000 miles, 2 year anniversary in april, still stock besides the shorty antenna...lol

 

Who's to say I'm not enjoying the car as is in stock form? Just from this thread alone you can see that there's a lot of peer pressure to upgrade, as if driving an Evo as it was made from the factory is a really bad thing.

I think many owners fail to see the difference between NEED and WANT. When you look at it from that perspective, the choice to stay stock makes a bit more sense. If I wanted more power I would have added mods by now, but in reality, I don't feel the need to.

I put thousands of dollars in my last car (SE-R) and it never had enough hp. I am content to have a ride now that has enough power in stock form to be enjoyable.

P.S. What the hell is a digger, lol?

 

nothing wrong keeping it stock, still a fun car.
But I say do what I did, drive stock til around 10,000 miles. If you have no problems with your car 99.99% your car is fine and wont see any manufacture defects because they should have surfaced by now.
Then put on a TBE and turn up the boost to 22-24.

 

28k miles, bone stock with a ECU flash. Still fun to drive, otherwise she is a garage queen, comes out with the sun only.