I'm about 3 year late to posting anything here but figured I should make a page to keep some sort of record/place to share.

Past:

​​​​​​I've been pretty deep into dsm's for some 8 years now and had always wanted to pickup and Evo.

That day arrived in May of 2019 when a deal that was to good to pass up can about for an apex silver 2004 Evo 8. I did the reasonable thing and instantly hooked up the trailer and head to pick the car up. Some tactical negotiation and 3500 dollars later I can home with a blown up clean title rust free Evo 8.

First thing we (me and my neighbor) did was pull the engine out and asses the damage and get a solid idea of what all the car was missing (had sat impounded for some 5 years blown up with lots of parts robbed out of the engine bay). Only thing salvageable from the engine was the block, and the car was missing (or unrepairable) basically everything from the block deck up.

​​​​​​Made a good list of parts that would be needed to put it back together hunted them down and sat and wait while everything came in and life gave me the time to assemble it. (Trying to get everything I needed to central Alaska was a pain in the *** but some friends helped with parts piles to dig threw and bit the shipping bullet for the rest of it.)

After ripping it apart and getting parts on the way the block and head I aquired went to the machine shop to be measured/decked/cut etc.

Fast forward some 3 months of slow machine work later I had found a 64 crank, Manley h beams and 9.5:1 weisco 1400hd's to put the block together.

Keeping the build cost effective was a priority for me so basically everything but the pistons that went into the car was used or open box.

After a few days of building and installing the engine the car ran and drove, next up was to figure out tuning. After about 3 read and write flashes with ecuflash I kicked the stock ecu to the curb and installed a modified 2g dsm ecu with ecmlink in the car. Definitely don't regret this decision and the car ran amazing and became my daily driver for the next 6 months.

After about 6 months I got orders from the military to move from Fairbanks Alaska to Phoenix Arizona where I live now, this really shaped the way the car has progressed today.



​​​​​​Pic 1 day the care came home, 2,4 pulled the engine and trans/cleaned the hell out of the bay, 3 engine preped ready to go in the car.

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Fast forward on terrible trip threw Alaska and I'd arrived at my new home in Arizona.

The first 2 mods I did when arriving in Arizona were 2150cc FIC Injectors/flex fuel sensor, and ditching the leaky post mishimoto rad with a 5/6/7 koyo rad to keep up with 110 degree weather.

After that I signed up to do my first track day with the Evo. Joined naza AZ region and hit the track in hpde 2 with quite a bit of prior experience in Alaska with w2w ice racing and some time trial style racing. Only 3 things I did before hitting the track was a set of rs4 tires, srf brake fluid and some mild track pads from a local vendor.

The first track I ran at was underwhelming but I still had a good time shaking the car down and drove it an hour home after beating on it all day.

Now that I'd had a feel for the car on track I decided to do a few changes to help calm down the nasty understeer. These included a white line rear sway bar and a mild chassis mounted splitter I mad from a sheet of plywood (this turned out to be pretty essential to keeping the car cool at 105+ degrees on the highway with the ac on, without it I believe the air was just rolling over and under the car not making enough differential pressure across the rad)

I went to the track another 6 times or so and moved up to HPDE 4 and started doing a small local time attack series that UMS tuning puts on at he NASA events. Was really enjoying tracking the car and it had proven to be quite reliable giving me little to no issues and always getting me home or driving itself back into the trailer for our of town events.

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