Awesome to see you have the car for so long and go through it's evolution (yes it's pun). Curious to see where you go with it. Also you, me and Marc (V8.MR) need to start an Apex Silver w/18x10.5 NT03 club.

PS you need more downforces.

 

Being that my car was my daily for a while she also saw snow as mentioned above. My winter ritual consisted of removing my Ohlins and throwing back on my Bilsteins along with snow tires. In hindsight it would have been wise to include some roof prevention into the mix as well instead of solely focusing on suspension and tires.






Finally I retired Eva from DD duties when I picked up her brother Ricky almost a year ago now.



Now that I had a trailer I picked up these steam rollers 295/30-19 Hoosier A7s:


Next just had to make these fit. Luckily I already did most of the work so it just involved minor trimming and further pulling. The fenders already looked like crap so how much worse could I really make them?

New stance


My first time out on Hoosiers was pretty amazing. But it was quickly apparent that something was rubbing sadly and it turned out to be the rear trailing arms.

I shaved them some more and tried again but they were still rubbing badly. Either the Hoosiers really move around on the rim or there is so much grip the bushings are flexing more than with street tires or they are just wider or a combination of all of the above. As you can see the rubbing wasnt going to go away like I had hoped but luckily someone posted up a brand new set of R/TErnie trailing arms on here so I scooped them up. Problem solved!



Since the car was no longer my DD it was time to start really cutting out the weight. One of my goals was to get the car sub 3000# but now that Im typing this I want sub 2900 since I think Im already sub 3000 now haha! So out came the AC as well as my sub along with the sound deadening behind the dash.






Then it was time for my 4th autox since jumping to Hoosiers. It just so happened to be the last event of the season and was the last time the car has run. I snapped this picture as the car was on grid prior to starting. Unfortunately my day was cut short after the car developed a rod knock so she got packed up and taken home. Everything they say about sticky tires and lack of oil pressure is true. I learned my lesson.

Cutting open the oil filter

Behind door #1 I spy bearing stuck to the filter media


Well lookie here. This is inside the filter


So out came the motor



Rod bearing #4 looked like this


Also, I was having issues shifting this past season where the car wouldnt let me shift fast at all. It was almost as if the car was locking itself in gear and I wasnt physically able to move the shifter quickly. If you watch my video the last run before I killed the motor you can see how painfully slow I had to shift the 1-2. I think this had something to do with it. This clutch had about 1 year on it as well and was also about to suffer the same fate as my last clutch. Ouch!





Got the block stripped down and shipped it off to ER to build me a 2.2.




In the meantime I've been busy cleaning up the engine bay.

One of the things I mentioned above was how driving the car in the snow would come back to haunt me. Well in case you didnt notice from the pictures my radiator core support wasn't looking too great.


After degreasing and powerwash


Starting to look better

Since then the focus has been on cleaning up the rad core support to prep it for a fresh coat of paint. Im also removing any brackets I see and have blasted them and will have my buddy powdercoat them for me flat black.

Look at all that rust!














Aaand I think after all of this I am finally current! Stay tuned as I'll be sure to keep updating this thread with more pictures as the parts continue to roll in and progress is slowly made.

 

Thanks Joe I appreciate it! I have many many more hours ahead of me until she is road worthy again

Thank you! Yep shes been through a lot as Im know many others have on here. I just wish I created this thread years ago so I could have kept up with it. At least now Im finally current and while Im sure I missed some details its better than nothing! And lol yes I do need many downforces. Dropping weight and a front splitter and possibly a wing were on the roadmap but then motor and trans and xcase and everything else happened. I just want to get it back together for now.

Guess we do have our new evo wolf pack LMAO!

 

And already he's been killing it! I like that you are using high quality, proven parts that will kick some serious A$$ in the competition. I can't wait to see what that ER 2.2 does as this is the first build that I know of using the K1 billet crank. From what I understand that and a Winberg are the best cranks you can get.

 

Thank you Im very excited to get it all together! Sadly I have a lot of misc just boring manual labor prior to even being ready to stab the motor back in. It should be a nice setup all said and done. The K1 should be a nice piece but its not as exotic as something like a Winberg. Honestly, I've heard good things about the Eagle 94mm and it would support way more than Im even looking to make but it was one of those cases where I said screw it live a little!

I don't have many exciting updates from the weekend as I didnt get much accomplished but I did spend some time taking inventory of all the hardware, taking pictures and building a master spreadsheet. I don't want to reinstall all these shiny new parts using rusty crappy looking hardware. Instead of purchasing new bolts everywhere Im going to have my hardware cleaned and replated. The annoying part is doing this required me to take everything that was neatly organized in bags and dump it all into one master bucket to drop off and then when I get it back split it all back up again. But itll be worth it in the end as what Ill get back is clean hardware that should only cost me about $150-$200. I honestly didnt even look into what it would cost to get all new OEM hardware but Id imagine its far more expensive than that.

 

Why not just buy stainless hardware from McMaster? Probably would cost about the same but you'd never have to worry about corrosion again and you'd have a bunch of spare hardware for the future.

 

I'd prefer OEM hardware in most locations for a couple reasons...1 is that depending on the application some are critical fasteners where I dont believe the SS hardware has the same strength. Also, this is just my OCD but I kinda hate using aftermarket nuts and bolts as its nice to have standardized sizing. Evo is mostly 8 10 12 14 17 19 21 24 and 32 whereas when you go to the hardware store and buy something like an m10x1.25 the head is a 13mm. That would **** me off, lol!

 

Great thread! Thanks for getting around to telling your story.
1. Did you happen to notice any improvement from the fender braces? I've had a set in the garage, for years, and just never took the fenders off to install...
2. Did the rod failure happen suddenly, or get noisier over time? Kinda worried about that myself and just keeping my head in the sand...

 

Thanks for stopping in to check it out! To answer your questions, sadly I can't give honest feedback on the fender braces. Unfortunately, I happened to throw them on but also made a few changes to my suspension such as a revalve and more spring along with the jump to a 285/30-18 vs a 255/40-17. The car felt great seemed to have better bite and wagged the tail less on hard braking but I think a lot of that is tires and suspension vs anything else. I do recall the WL rear trailing arm bushing being a great addition to help control the car on hard braking events. But yeah sadly I cant give a good review of the braces bc I changed too much at once which youre never supposed to do! My new strategy has been cutting the fat with my focus on the front end for obvious reasons and now Im questioning 1 what the braces weigh and 2 if they provide enough of a benefit to keep them on there. Chasis braces are one of those things that seems like more show than go but I recall folks like Robert Fuller (Robispec) speaking highly of them in the past.

Regarding the rod bearing failure happily I can give feedback on that. For starters to answer your question it wasnt making any abnormal noises prior to the failure. If you watch and listen to the video I posted of my run where it finally gave out the engine sounded normal at first and then like 3/4 through the run you can sorta hear the tone change. The car felt a little strange and down on power some but honestly I thought at first I had clipped a cone and something was dragging, lol. It wasnt until I clutched in a the finish that I realized it was engine related.

To add some color, I found something interesting for you to think about. I did 4 auto-x events on my Hoosiers so about 40 runs in total. That is all it took to destroy the motor. Prior to Hoosiers, I was on street tires the last ones being fairly large but even still the car lasted for years like that literally been 10 years of racing on it. But I question if my bearings were taking a beating even prior to the Hoosiers? When I cut open the oil filter which is shown in the pictures above bearing material was in all over the place inside it. That filter had 2 events on it both with Hoosiers including the last time the car ever ran. However, I also happened to have my old filter from the last oil change that also had 2 autox events on it sitting in my drain pan so I decided to cut that one open as well and what did I find in there? Bearing material as well of course! So while the engine sounded and ran normal the bearings had been taking a beating and then finally said enough is enough. Its obvious the Hoosiers were the icing on the cake but Im not so sure that the motor wasnt slowly going to self destruct anyway even with less sticky tires.

 

Couple fairly uneventful updates...dropped my dirty rusty hardware off at a plating company about 20 minutes from my house. Good thing they're close because I'm a moron and forgot the second box of hardware so I went back a couple days ago to drop off the rest, lol. The good news is after seeing their facility and some work samples I was very impressed so I brought along with me a few other random items such as my dipstick tube and water pipe to be re plated. My hood latch was also looking a little gross so tossed that in as well and they will be black oxide coating that for me. Everything else will be plated in Yellow Zinc and they are charging me a bulk price of $75 for the entire lot even after bringing over way more stuff and other misc brackets. I cant wait to get that stuff back and see how pretty it looks haha! For reference this is a bag of some of the hardware.


I also received my new intercooler. Technically I had already received it but sent it back because I wanted no stencil and the top bracket welded. They apparently don't loke to weld the top bracket bc some core supports have a slight variance. I said screw it weld it on and lucky me it fits! The quality is amazing and the end tanks are sexy. Did I go overboard with the unit, absolutely! However, it comes in at just under 17# and will hopefully perform well.



This past weekend I made some progress on painting the core support. I pushed the car out into my driveway to clean and prep it for paint then pushed it back into the garage and got it up in the air. This is the furthest its traveled in 6 months...


Since rust was an issue and I dont want to deal with it again I opted to POR15 the core support and part of the frame rails. This came out OK if Im being honest. I assumed I could just use the POR as my primer and paint base coat over it but apparently I was wrong. So instead I spent time scuffing the new paint and ordered POR specific primer and will spray that this weekend and hopefully lay down some Apex Silver and be done with painting. I will also mention that a member from Pittsburgh Shak2300 messaged me and said he would be in MA for the next few months for work and wanted to meet up so he swung by and we hung out on Sunday and did some sanding and scuffing of the core support. Lots of fun but always great to meet other fellow evo enthusiasts.

This is what it looked like after the POR15 however the gloss is now gone since its been scuffed in prep for primer then paint. I will probably pop off the fenders when it comes time to paint so the transition on the core support from old to new will be hidden as I dont have the highest confidence in my paint skills.


Im slowly starting to feel the pressure to get this thing back together. I still dont have my short block back but am hoping in the next few weeks I can get the paint wrapped up bolts back from plating various brackets back from my buddy who is power coating them for me and get the engine bay ready for its new motor.

 

Looking great! What did you use to clean up the metal on the core support, wire wheel on an angle grinder?

 

Does it go fast yet?

 

Thank you! I used a combination of various wire wheels on an angle grinder as well as wire wheels on die grinders to get into the nooks and crannies. Originally I picked up a bunch of wire wheels from Harbor Freight and they worked fine but I learned quickly that they dont hold up very well and I was plucking wires from my legs and arms nonstop, lol. I ended up ordering some more wire wheels for my die grinders on Amazon that were much more expensive but they were way more durable. Goes to show you get what you pay for!
Lol, if I can find a steep enough hill...

 

In other exciting news Im done painting the engine bay and core support. It came out decent, certainly by no means a show car but way better than before and it should hopefully curtail the spread of rust up front. This is what it looked like after primer:



And here we are after shooting basecoat. I decided not to clear it becuase there was no gloss in the engine bay from the factory. Plus I didnt spray the firewall so that would have looked tacky.


I also got back my bolts from the yellow zinc plating. They came out looking great so that was money well spent and I didnt even have to deal with cleaning them myself #winning



Parts are really starting to pile up here in my garage. I got my trans back from TRE a few weeks back.Night and day difference from what they looked like when I sent them out. My car is scattered in pieces all over the place and its getting out of hand. This weekend Im going to start getting things tidy in the engine bay and going back through that bad of nuts and bolts and redistributing them into zip lock bags accordingly.

 

SOO clean! I want to do that zinc yellow plating one day. For some reason I always thought that those gold colored bolts were grade 8, but I guess the color has nothing to do with the grade. I'm diggin the thumbs up on the transfer case haha!