I recently bought a 2004 oz rally edition lancer 2.0L engine. With that being said I have a couple (actually a lot) of things I wanted to do performance wise with my car and wanted to get input. Some of these parts I have already looked at I will list it the same just so we are on the same page

First off, I want to get a exhaust system on the car. I'm looking to upgrade from the headers to the exhaust tip.
I am also looking to lower my car using coilovers, I have read a lot about the different options and i'm looking for coilovers with good performance and a smooth ride
Cold air intake (self explanatory)
I have recently been made aware of a system called a "piggyback" and that's a whole new monster to me. I understand very little about it but I have been reading about it on the forums.

Now i'm not a car expert but I know there are somethings I haven't listed that would help the performance of my car. I'm not looking for tires or weight reduction on the car, other than that, I was wondering what my options for upgrades (that I haven't listed) are.

I was also wondering, if I upgrade these things in my lancer, and then decided to turbo my lancer, would I have to reupgrade all the parts I would have put in my lancer again, such as exhaust and header parts?

Thank you for your patience reading this, I am looking at a lot of forums for answers. I am hoping I can get some great help and answers from you guys.

 

Coilovers and smooth ride don't really go together unless you are talking about pristine tarmac. any bump in the road on a lowered car and you will feel it because of the increased stiffness.

Honestly I wouldn't waste a dime on "performance" unless you went with the turbo route.

A quick search will find many a thread just like this one with every senior member rephrasing how terrible our car is engine-performance wise.

 

HA HA! lol

Quite an odd place to ask this question but I've been wanting to put together a new "Just got a lancer I'm new where to start" thread.

I've done a lot of modifiacations to mine and as eusgen said, dont waste your time with engine performance mods. They will get you no where! piggyback included.

So what do you do? I have some suggestions. Depending on your age/income just go turbo. You can do it for about $1800. If thats out of the question due to parents or money there are other tastful things to do while getting experiance.

One thing that is overlooked about our cars is it has a pretty decent suspension. Upgrade that. The obvious choice is coilovers. That's about $1000 or so if you cant find a sale.

Too much and just want a drop? Lowering springs will work until you can save or get to that point. Those are about $250. Still too much? Used ralliart springs go for about $75, give about the same drop due to their shorter but stiffer springs. (Fits OZ's only. Other models with more parts)

So springs out of the way. Next Id say do your brakes. There are swaps you can do to a twin piston up front and change out those rear drums to disks. About $200 or so front or back. So brakes are done.

Steering? Swap in an Evo steering rack thats about $120. Things will be butter there.

Change out that grill, thats about up to $150 depending on what you get.

Wheels + tires entirely up to you

Headlights will make your Lancer stick out from others.

Powder coat your valve cover

Paint the headliner and pillars black

Carbon 3m wrap the trim peices

all easy, doable, but good mod suggestions

 

Was doing a search earlier for the Evo/Lancer Compatibility thread and ended up here somehow lol

https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/la...eriance-6.html


dang I still need to do these to my OZ

- Powder coat your valve cover

- Paint the headliner and pillars black

 

Really? I am willing to sacrifice a super smooth ride with more performance geared gear(?). It was just to my understanding when I was looking through forums talking about them, that some coilovers actually do have a smoother ride with performance. But who knows, maybe I misread as well.

What's wrong with the oz rally performance? I'm not looking to get 8 second track times, I just want to modestly increase the performance and look of my car, that's all.

Is this really that weird to post this here? It does say "Lancer How To Requests / Questions / Tips if you have any questions, post them here." I don't see how that's odd!

So how come you are saying to not waste my time on engine performance mods and then telling me which mods to do? Are you saying it's not a fast car but if I still want to go ahead with the mods, here are the best ones to do it with? I hope this doesn't come out in the wrong manor, I am just a bit confused is all.

With the turbo, is the $1800 just a kit or buying various parts from various companies? Not that I have a problem with that, I only have seen turbos for around that price, not that kits. Also, what brands or companies would you recommend?

Coilovers for sure, what brands/companies do you recommend?

With brakes we are looking at $400 for both or just $200 for both? That's surprisingly less than I thought.

A evo steering rack? How come? What's the difference between the OZ and the evo?

What would I change the grill to?

Personally I love the stock oz rims I have, I was also looking at getting the Pilot Exalto A/S, from what I have read and looked online they are good price and good tires. Also I have no snow here in sunny Arizona so it doesn't matter much if they don't do well in snow/ice.

For headlights I was looking at getting projectors with HID 8k-10k HID's. Haven't decided which one yet. I was also going to get aftermarket HID foglights, wondering what you and other people think about them. Some people love them, some people say it makes a "Tuner" car look like a "rice" car.

How do you carbon wrap the trim pieces on the exterior? Do they just pop out? I really have no experience at all with that.


Thank you for the awesome suggestions, this is actually helping a lot. Hopefully I can get some follow up answers about somethings you posted and I can start doing my research. I appreciate you putting in the time and effort to help me out so far

 

You'll find out soon enough people on here are very quick to saying "use the search button for any questions you have". Thier is honestly a dozens threads out there like this one though.
So unfortunately you have a car that will never be fast. I havent turboed my 03 oz yet but im researching and with stock internals you can only run about 7psi (someone correct me if im wrong) before **** starts to go bad. So with every pound its about 10hp so you're like to be in the 180-210hp range. You can go on the force induction forum and see for yourself most the turboed lancers are between what I said. Reason why their isn't to many turboed lancers out there. Bolt ons do nothing at all so its either go turbo or deal with a slow car like I have and worry about the exterior only

 

Oh really? Check out the attachments with my reply. I just wanted to show you that you are incorrect, I even highlighted some that didn't even talk about modifications, just about OZ lancers. I have done my do diligence and "searched bar" through the threads/topics and still haven't found answers to my specific questions. I don't see why i'm being told that asking a specific question in a "Lancer questions" area is wrong when I have done my research

Well, I would like my lancer to grumble a little bit. Like I said, a little bit more power (looks like turbo is the only way to really achieve that), better sound, and good performance is all I am really looking for. But then again, I suppose that is what most car enthusiasts want

 

Honestly yes, it is weird to post here. You'll find the lancer forum us pretty much divided into 3 crowds the general part, the show and shine part, and the tech part. People rarely venture out of their niche and especially to this sub forum. These questions usually pop up in general.

On to the questions, when I was saying engine mods I mean naturally aspirated. Turbo is the cheapest bang for buck in gaining power. When I said kit it's not an actual kit to buy per say. You're going to want to piece together parts. It's not hard actually. Do not buy one of the so called premade kits. Garbage! Their is only 1 fitting, non knock off, kit out their that is made for our cars. That's from RRM, but it's severely overpriced (4k) and if I recall they do give you a knock off turbo, their customer service has taken a big hit, and performance and engine safety are limited by that wack split sec piggy back they use.

Coilovers, you can't go wrong with tein, brakes $400 generous estimate for both. Depending on how resourceful you are that number can come down.

Steering rack because the evo one is shorter giving you quicker steering response. It reduces the amount of turns between full left and right lock.

The grill is either going to be a ralliart grill, fiberglass evo 7, or carbon fiber evo. All 3 look better than what's stock.

Yes the dash trim pieces pop out. You'd wrap those.

 

Oh and don't listen to the guys saying our engine is weak. These things are resilient! I'm not saying you can go 20 psi all day easy but 7 psi is a thrown out number by rrm because their janky kit was only safe enough for 7 psi due to poor engine management. There are guys here who run 15psi daily. Around 250 hp & tq. It's all in your tune (which you'd be doing yourself if you're not near a tuner). Stock internals btw! 7 now is the baby safe, I'm green to this, and scared. 10 psi is the normal something can go wrong but I'm experienced enough to not grenade my engine, 15psi is the I have a effing great tune and let's line em up!

My Lancer is turboed btw and we're here. We just stay in the tech forum watching you guys and answering trouble shooting questions. At least from my experience the general section is full of just redundant questions and show & shine has a handful of just silly looking things. More people aren't turboed because they don't want to learn and when they ask how do we turbo they get shot down because there are 50+ build threads detailing every little thing

 

Ah okay. Yeah I was looking at RRM's kit but it's super expensive. So when you said 1.8k I was amazed. I have been looking at all of the FAQ turbo mod stuff and reading around. The question is, if I pieced together a turbo "Turbo, Turbo manifold, Fuel system upgrade (injectors, pump, FMU, etc.), Wastegate, BOV, Intercooler, Intake piping what brands should I be looking for for those specific parts?

I have heard of tien but I mostly hear about K-sport but i'm not a huge fan of them. I will definitely check them out though, thank you!

Oh I was thinking the exterior trim for some reason... I may or may not do that. I do like the one I have in now though to be honestly

Really? 15 PSI? The most I have seen "to run safely" would be around 7-10 and the higher numbers are pushing it? That's insane, but you really think it's safe?

Yeah you are right, my apologies for before. I did more looking instead of just glancing through the searched threads and I did find a lot of great threads talking about at least turboing my lancer. Like https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/la...super-faq.html

Hopefully my questions don't get too annoying but I know I will have a lot of them. I will continue to use my resources on the forums as well as common sense before I ask a silly question. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me about a lot of this though. I'm starting to get an idea of what I want to do.

 

So I have been looking around and I haven't found a straight answer to this question.

If I want to upgrade my exhaust into a straight pipe system in preperation for my turbo, do I need to do the four parts of my exhaust at once? (Headers, downpipe, midpipe, axleback). If I do do this, will I see a major decrease in power because a loss of back pressure? Can I install my turbo system and then down the road upgrade my exhaust system after?

 

Nevermind, finally found an answer to my question. I think.

Seeing as the headers need to run through the turbo, I would need to have the actual turbo for the exhaust to run through. So it seems my answer would be "you have to do it all at once"

 

You can install a catback prior to turbo but I wouldn't recommend a test pipe or cat delete because of the back pressure issues you already mentioned.

And yes the header would have to be replaced with a turbo manifold if you went that route.

 

Like Green and Eus already stated, there are plenty of areas on here to cover almost any topic your interested in. I have to agree that IF you plan on turboing your lancer, then you might want to hold off on any 'bolt on' mods as they usually end up being replaced with turbo parts. You do not HAVE to turbo you Lancer but as Green said before, it is the best increase per dollar spent for the Lancer.

Green could not have said it better with the areas members tend to stick too. Me personally, i am more in the 'show and shine' area of the forums, but i do find my self more and more in the 'forced induction' areas now that my Lancer is turboed. This does not mean you have to be one or the other, just be ready because not all members, most of them, but not all, are as helpful as Eus and Green have been.

Best of luck with your Lancer, looking forward to it.

 

put a radio in your car if you dont have cd or mp plug in and read the forums before spending a dime.....imo