Hey guys! I'm planning on buying an Evo within the next year, most likely on here, so I figured I'd get registered and introduce myself!

I've been running with a 450~ AWHP first gen 3000GT for a couple years now, and I think it's time to move to something a bit more family/passenger-friendly, but still extremely sporty. As you can see, I love putting in the time to make my cars like like they just rolled out of one of the "Fast" movies; I have a few ideas already for what I can do with an Evo, but that will come in time :




So here are my questions for you guys :

-Are Evos as notoriously unreliable (especially when modded) as DSMs and 3/s's ? I realize that a lot of that depends on how you drive / the vehicle history, but at the same time, I have never heard a DSM owner say "I am done! This is nothing else on my car I need to fix!"

-Silly question, but on the 8s and 9s, roughly where does horsepower start to seriously affect daily drivability? I realize I'm not going to be driving a 400 horse modified Evo and expect it to be the same as stock, but I'd still like to tweak things to bring myself a bit higher than stock power without seriously impacting daily drivability / reliability.

-How are tuning options on Evos? With the first gen VR-4, there was literally nothing I could do directly to the ECU; The choice is to tune with a piggyback such as a SAFC2, or swap the entire ECU for a later year flashable ECU / aftermarket ECU.

Thanks in advance, guys!

 

First off welcome to the forums, I owned an Evo 8 that made great power on pump gas and it was my DD. So maybe I can be some great help and I'm sure others will follow below me.

Question 1: Evo's are reliable, not unreliable as you stated in your question. These platforms are a great built and the problems I've had were small ones due to overtime of having a 10 yr old car.

Question 2: Driveability was still good when I was hitting mid 300s to the wheel and still did very well the closer I got to low 400s high 300s. Stop and go traffic does suck and MPG has been crappy with "my vehicle" ever since I've modded it. Personally 350-365awhp is a good happy medium for driveability in my opinion.

Question 3: Piggyback systems are available for the Evo's but there is ECUflash/EvoScan. EvoScan is for logging and etc where ECUflash helps flash the ECU with the new tune for it. More options are available for these cars than the DSMs in my eyes.

Hope this helps . . .

 

I had a 93 VR4 with a little over 400whp that was one of the most reliable cars I ever had.
I noticed that after 540whp is when you want to make sure your EVO is built with quality proven parts.

 

^^^ Good answers. From what I have seen, the Evo is far more reliable then any DSM, and as you said, it's all in how it's been treated, I think that goes without saying.

I'm on my 4th Evo and I've made just about every mistake you can to these cars, if you're worried about driveability, do not get a light weight fly wheel and do not do solid motor mounts all around. The front motor mount is really the only one that needs to be replaced, unless you're going full race car. I currently drive an Evo 8 making 450+awhp on 93oct. IMO, Either an 8-9 with an Evo 9 turbo and supporting mods on a stock engine with E85 is probably the best way to go if you want more then stock and still be reliable, not to mention, fun as hell. My last Evo made 371 awhp and 397 awtq on a mustang dyno. (if you want the mods list, let me know, it wasn't a lot.)

As for tuning options, the stock Evo ECU can be tuned and with multiple maps. There really is no reason to use something other then the stock Evo ECU, unless, again, you're building the hell out of it, and even then, I'm not sure what power you'd want to swap the ECU at... Plenty of 700+awhp Evos out where I live still running stock ECUs.


Then again, it's all up to you and how fancy you want to get. Do some research on here,... a TON of good information too.

 

Appreciate the answers, guys. How well does the OEM 16G turbo hold up? I'm actually running twin 16Gs on my VR-4, and my only complaint is spool time. Is the spool time long enough in Evos to make it worth spending the money on, say, a ceramic ball bearing turbo swap?

And yes, Zerokei, I'd love to take a look at your mod list.

 

spool is awesome! the turbo is twinscroll which has characteristics (spool) of a smaller A/R turbo with flow of a larger A/R turbo.

there are numerous people running 600mustang(650whp dynojet) on stock blocks with plenty of longevity.