I acquired a local customers Beautiful low mileage evo 8 about 2 week ago and within about 3 days I had everything out and ready to start getting things sent off and ordering parts.

This customers car is going to have a rebuilt transmission by Shep and the entire engine short block is being built by me.

I will share pictures as I post them on my album on Facebook here. Normally I don't post this stuff here, but i figured i might as well to share the forum users what I do also. I don't just tune cars.

Every evo and car for that matter in general I've ever built since day one has always been reliable and performed amazing. I never had a shop do anything mechanical engine related on my cars for the past 14 years. I am a DIY person, and very meticulous when it comes to working on something. No little detail is left untouched. I taught myself all of this with no schooling. I have 2 mechanics in my family that make a good living doing what they do and are self employed and a lot of people within my relatives are good with automobiles also, so I'm sure that has something to do with it as well.
I am a bit intimidated by transmission work and so forth, so i have not attempted any of that yet.

Now onto the vehicle below:

The car is going to get a shortblock similar to what is in my personal car, except it will be using a 4g63 block. I am calling this a 2.3SLW (super light weight - stroker).

Internals will be the following:

Manley Turbo Tuff Billet Super lightweight 100mm Crank (29lb)
Manley Turbo Tuff I-beam lightweight straight beam rods
Wiseco HD 1400 9.0:1 pistons /w .225 pins
ACL Race main/rod/thrust bearings throughout
ARP Main studs / bolts throughout
Balance shafts eliminated / bearings rotated

We didn't go with a higher compression due to the car will be burning 93 every now and then, and i didn't want to limit him to much. With high compression pistons on 93, you really cant run a lot of boost.

The head will be left untouched for now internal wise unless I see something i don't like. We were going to swap the valves, seals, retainers, and springs, but it already is a fully built head with no leakage. We will be swapping out the current unknown cams to a set of GSC S3 though.

Here are some pictures of the car and some progress so far before It goes to the machine shop for a bore/hone and hot tanking. Everything else is done by me since I have the tools to measure down to anywhere from .0001" to .00001" which cost me a pretty penny.

For now I am working out of my garage until I can find a decent shop to invest in.

















This bearing had a really close call. It had extensive wear on the outside of it.



Some humor here. The stock rod & piston beside a JE piston & Manley rod out of my old BR 2.3L engine with about 20K+ miles of wear on them i had laying around. The difference in size is pretty funny in itself. And to think I had a customer trapping 146 making somewhere around 740WHP~ dynojet on a set of these. I probably make on average a few 600whp evos a month on stock rods. Its pretty amazing how strong they are vs how they look. The Metallurgy cant be that bad if they can stay together with those kind of performance results.



Measuring align bore after installation of ARP main studs for straightness, plus checking/setting main bearing clearances after proper bearing crush is provided via ARP fasteners. My Dial bore gauge has smooth edges on each end so you dont mark the babbitt exterior coating when measuring.

After mic'ing the crank and measuring everything to make sure it matched the manley blueprint papers, I then took the rods out and measured as well with proper bearing crush and torque stretch on the ARP fasteners.

Clearances look good and now all that is needed is a bore/hone of the cyl walls to match the new pistons and to achieve a proper PTW for the usage of the vehicle.

I only use expensive and proven Mitutoyo measuring tools on critical clearances. I have a lot of money invested in measuring tools, but they will easily pay for themselves and have already started doing so. Plastigage will never be used again. it is worthless when you're trying to measure down to .0001". Even temperature affects my readings in my garage. I keep the temp around 70-75F at all times usually when assembling.

Of course there's more to it then im saying here, but you get the idea. A lot of measurements are taken and verified before moving forward. Whats interesting is, when you have good measuring tools measuring down to .0001" is like measuring in inches because your tools are so precise that it allows you to see things so clearly.

Here is some pics of current progress, and I will update the thread as I do more:

 

Looking good so far Tom, your customer definitely has a clean car.

 

nice good stuff man

 

this is looking like a great build so far, good job!

 

sub'd for sick build and sexy pics

 

Is that possibly Curt Browns old blue evo?

 

No I don't believe it is I bought it some a guy in Virginia.

 

Very clean car.. i love tom's attention to detail.

 

I thought Curt's was an Evo 9? I wonder who ended up buying that...Did he put it back to "stock" or sell it as a rolling chassis? Probably a bunch of sneaky weight reduction stuff done to is old car....

 

looks good I guess that answers my question about you installing a cam before lol.

 

Really nice work!! Wish I lived in the USA so it was easier for me to send my block to you.

 

Yup, you're right, he did have a 9. I just saw the blue, rpf1's and how clean it was haha.

Good luck with the build man, car is super clean!

 

Thanks B.J. Ya he sure does! His last one before this only had 30k on it!

Thanks Jon.

Thanks Zach



This one came from VA.

This is the owner of the car

Thank you!

I think his was a IX yes.



Ha that's ok. I can help your mechanic with your block when you build it, so you have proper clearances throughout.

 

Thanks Anthony.

 

I love these build threads, awesome work Tom!