Building My Evo 9 MR - Episode 2

Welcome back to the ebo construction series. In the last

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we took my 2006 Evo 9 Lana - RS engines to Minnesota, where Ronnie and Paul got to work installing the wide range of parts that ma Performance had helped us provide for the build only after we had removed the head and part of the transmission. Did we realize the full extent of the frame damage that my salvage title Evo has been dealing with for the last five years, so we decided to fix it and the motor came out to facilitate more accurate probing of the frame? possible and unless we want to revise the schedule, construction will have to finish today, which means that the time crunch is very real.

Aras Motors, where the Evo is being worked on, is located in Burnsville, Minnesota, which is inconvenient for my wallet - the shop is only 30 minutes from Ma Performance, the huge aftermarket parts supplier that sponsors this series. Ben and I stopped by his shop early in the morning for a quick tour and while we were there I couldn't resist buying a few extra parts, so day two of the build. I decided since we have the headless engine we might as well do a couple more mods so we have some GS cs2 camshafts these are like stage two they make an S which is smoother these are more popular. right now on the Evo eights because they don't have variable valve timing and we also have some valve springs to go with them so what this will allow is basically right now since I'm on stock turbo and I'm not running that.

With a lot of boost, it won't actually make much more power than if we stayed with the stock cam, so it was a spontaneous decision, but if we can install them now, that means later if I use the big turbo. then more power due to my variable valve timing system on the Evo nine. Ronnie had advised me that switching to more aggressive camshafts wouldn't really have much effect as long as I was still using the stock turbo, but as Paul already has the head it's completely separate and a larger turbo will probably be on the cards in the future.

It seems like a good time to do it. The thicker spring will obviously have more force to compress, so it won't float with the can. At high RPM the spring will not have enough tension and will flow into the valve, that's when things go wrong at that point while Paul works installing the beehive valve springs and nasty camshafts. Ronnie begins to disassemble the engine and remove the transmission from the block, so now we have it. I believe this is a completely original clutch from Advanced that we installed a couple years ago when these guys were coming back from Alaska.

I think it's surprisingly in very good condition after a few days on the track, same brand as the upgrade, but this is a stock replacement, it reads in good shape or when shifting, they call it the stage for over clutch. Stage 4 comes with its own flywheel, two clutch discs, a sandwich plate and then a pressure plate. Awesome for launches on track days. at maybe 550 horsepower 600, its best clutch is for an Evo, if you have one do it right this time, our guest star for the

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appears, Mr. and the East Meadow guard, you may recognize him from the Ben's Civic build series that started a couple weeks before this Evo bill.

Andy drove three hours from Wisconsin to help us complete the Evo in this time crunch and brought my second impulse purchase of the OEM build the way they stack the clutches I think they did it to try to avoid a lot of vibration noise and harshness, It doesn't click or anything, it doesn't lock up much power either, so you won't get much oversteer, what a lot of people do is they just reset with this. You can do a simple reese twist, yes, where you just take out all the clutch plates and stack them in the right order so you can.

It will have a little more friction which will help a little. I don't think it's a very significant difference, but it's kind of Fremont. I guess you don't really have to replace anything, so it's worth doing if you have it separate. Also, what I was going to do was buy a new twelve-disc clutch disc. Yes, yes, they sell only the. I think it was strange. A kit of twelve discs is sold, so you basically take out all the original clutches and replace them with their clutch discs, but. I couldn't get any as we couldn't get plates to put on my differential.

Andy very kindly decided to trade me in for his fully built tre diff, which was a diff that we were our backup type if we used on our a. Time Attack Evo chassis, but it's a pulley, basically everything Tre offers on that full board will fill it. LSD cover. I think you fired all the gears and you might hear some clicks in the corners and stuff, and if that bothers you, you can add a little limited slip. friction modifier to mute that but it is very tractable it will do more than what people think everyone thinks that will just give more grip to the rear it actually does the opposite it gives more grip to the front because We're reducing the amount of slip on the rear wheels, so Pat's power will always go the path of least resistance, so if you can resist the amount of slip back here or some of that power when she goes to the front , this is an action. diff like the one I'm removing but it's been updated by TR e which should make a big change to the evo's handling characteristics while we remove the diff it's a good time to allow the scope to move a bit more. and Andy removes one of the large rear differential mounts, often called a mustache bar, in favor of a much smaller, much lighter, and much stiffer aftermarket mount.

This bracket requires drilling into the rear subframe, but for a car that will face as many difficulties as this it is worth it, turned off the engine here on its own bracket, all disassembled, running an oil pump, translate here, engine compartment empty, there we have Ben, then Ben is still putting this in since the block is out of the car and the new valve springs in the head will allow for a higher redline. Now is a good time to ensure oil is circulating through the engine consistently on all those Red Line boats. We are replacing the oil pump with a new OEM unit from this engine.

It has almost 130,000 miles on it. Critical tasks like these are exactly why I'm so grateful to have Ron, whose million 4g63s I took apart, now working on the car knowing what you're doing is one thing, having done it a hundred times before is another. with the rear differential installed, your suspension time, all this large number of parts come once again from the vast inventory of ma performances, the first parts to be installed are the agency's power lower control arms, if the law of Brilliant and fast parts deliver, these arms should make the car positively fast, they are adjustable and allow for more cam adjustment than the stock arms and they also look very sexy under the car.

Next is a group of white goods. This is the sway bar, the OEM sway bar that came on the Evo. and since a lot of the things you wanted to do with an Evo is try to create more rewrite, we have a much thicker white line sway bar that also has three different places you can bolt it on and that will basically adjust the stiffness of the rear end. The stabilizer bar is so it's going to be a nice little addition with that, oh yeah, yeah, so it's going to be a nice addition to put on with that rear differential.

The 26-millimeter Whiteline sway bar will be joined by Whiteline adjustable end links. Andy then removes the upper control arms to replace one of the inner bushings which, as you can see, was bent during my absence at vir last year. Fortunately, the white line makes an update of this same cap on the front. We installed a white line roll center correction kit that looks very similar to the kit. that Andy installed on the Benton Civic corrects the suspension geometry of the cars that have been downgraded by late afternoon surveys. He went into the head fully assembled with GSC for cams and hive bounce breeze.

Ronnie has finished freshening the block with a new oil pump and head gasket. Most importantly, thanks to my years of mechanical experience, I finished updating the DBA rotors and the bent subframe was reinstalled so we can direct the Evo's chassis. We covered some time in the shop to get your car into the shop, so we're looking at the visor. to the chassis for a while, let's finish what's left of the engine transmission clutch, anything else we can do and then hopefully the frame is back, what do you think? A couple of hours we pushed the frame to the trunk shop, JB Auto Repair located it. literally right next to RS Motors.

I've never met Trung before but Ronnie seems to trust him to do a good job and I have pretty limited options in this short amount of time, just this, the Klamath goes straight to the frame and keeps the chrome of the car on the frame when you remove your car, Trung's measuring stick here will be the straight subframe that Ronnie had on his rack, if that subframe fits that means he has pulled the frame enough to exert the amount of force necessary to mold the frame back into shape Trung will use a frame machine, these huge poles and chains will slowly pull the bent part of the frame millimeter by millimeter until the job is done.

Also a quick side note, don't worry about commenting on the rust in the engine bay. Unfortunately I can see it very well. I would have loved to have had time to sand and clean the engine bay like Ben did on his Civic, but unfortunately the time for this build is barely enough to get the job done. We plan to finish cleaning the rust. We'll have to wait until he can get the car home. Watching the guys at work in the frame shop is absolutely fascinating. Removing a frame is, by definition, a desperate last resort to salvage something that has gone very wrong.

The process requires both simultaneously. finesse and blunt force, sometimes the hooks will slide off the frame and the immense torque has to go somewhere meanwhile the newly resurfaced head was installed on the block with a new head gasket along with the new ARP head bolts, the stronger bolts will resist stretching and prevent the head from lifting off the block once we start running a lot more boost pressure, which won't be a concern at this stage of the build, but as will the cams and springs bow, it's good to make these modifications now while everything is being disassembled later.

It's time to engage the six-speed transmission again. It takes Andy and Ronnie a couple of tries to get everything back in line, but soon the transmission mounts to the engine and we're almost ready to go after a few more cycles of measure pull measure and pull again the straight subframe slides to the right , this means that the attachment points for the front suspension have been moved to their factory location almost an inch wider than before for the first time on my property the frame is now a reasonably straight subframe mount to one side like please centimeter uh what you got right yeah, it's like under phenomenally easy to get in and out Trung had joked that he had the car done in an hour, but from start to finish he actually straightened the frame in just 45 minutes, he and his auto shop JB auto repair did an absolutely phenomenal job with Lana.

I'm not the kind of person who gets excited about car things, so I'm not going to get excited about car things, but to clarify the framework of the car. It's a huge deal for me, sure it may not be as good as new and the car may still be a salvage title car and there is still rust, dents and flaws to deal with but this is a process and this It's the car I have. Working with him today made me very happy, but that raises another problem: today it's basically over, we won't have the car finished today, this project will have to be executed tomorrow, but pushing the now straight, an Evo shell back to Ronnie's workshop , the downside feels like a lot smaller than it could have been before, what started out as a small update that I was worried wouldn't be ambitious enough to justify its own YouTube series, has turned into a race against time to fundamentally alter and improve the best car I've ever owned.