Building My Evo 9 MR - Episode 2

welcome back to the ebo build series last

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we took my 2006 Evo 9 lana - RS motors to Minnesota where Ronnie and Paul went to work installing the vast array of parts ma Performance had helped us supply for the build only after I had removed the head and part of the drivetrain did we realize the full extent of frame damage my salvage title Evo has been dealing with for the last five years so we decided to fix it and the engine came out to facilitate the most accurate sounding of the chart possible, and unless we want to go over schedule, construction will have to finish today, which means the time crunch is very real.

Aras Motors, where work is being done on the Evo, is located in Burnsville, Minnesota, inconvenient for my wallet. The store is only about 30 minutes from Ma Performance, the huge parts salesman who sponsors this series. Ben and I stopped by his store early one morning for a quick tour and while we were there I couldn't resist buying a few more parts. ok so day two of the build i decided since we have the engine out of whack we might as well do a couple more mods so we have some GS cs2 camshafts these are like stage two they make a S one that is softer these are more popular right now on Evo eight because they don't have variable valve timing and we also have some valve springs to go along with it so what this will allow is basically right now since I have stock turbo and I'm not running that much boost it's really not going to make much more power than if we just kept the stock cam so it was a spur of the moment decision but if we can install them now a which means that later if I use a big turbo more power due to my variable valve timing system on the Evo nine Ronnie had advised me that using more aggressive camshafts really wouldn't have much of an effect as long as I continued to use the stock turbo but since paul already has his head all separated and a big r turbo will probably be on the cards in the future that seems like a good time to do it, the thicker spring will obviously have more force to compress so it won't float at high rpm. the spring is going to not have enough tension to flow to the valve, that's when things go wrong at which point while Paul works installing the beehive valve springs and nasty camshafts Ronnie starts disassembling the engine and removing the block transmission so right now we have I think this is a completely stock clutch from advanced that we installed a couple of years ago when these guys were coming back from alaska.

I think surprisingly it's in pretty good shape over a few track days, same make as the update, but this is stock. the replacement one reads a good shape and/or switching to this they call it the stage to exceed clutch stage 4 comes with its own flywheel two clutch discs a sandwich plate and then an awesome pressure plate for the unches for days of track up to maybe 550 horsepower 600 its best clutch there is for an Evo if you have one right now our guest star for the

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appears mr. and the East Meadow guard, you might recognize him from Ben's Civic build series, which started a couple of 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 buy of the build at the OEM the way they stack the clutches I think they did it to try and avoid a lot of vibration noise and harshness, it doesn't click or anything, it doesn't lock up on power a lot either so I won't get a lot of power oversteer which a lot of people do is just reset with this. I'll have a little more friction which will help a bit. I don't think it's a very significant difference, but it's kind of Fremont.

I guess you don't have to replace anything so it's worth doing if you have it apart. also what i was going to do was get a new twelve clutch disc yeah yeah they sell just the one i think that was weird he sells a twelve clutch disc kit so basically you take out all the original clutches and replace them with their discs but I couldn't get any because we couldn't get Plates to put my diff on Andy very kindly decided to trade me in for his fully built three diff which was a diff we were kind of our backup if we used a time attack Evo on our chassis but it's a pulley basically everything that tre offers that entire chainring is going to fill you deck with LSD I think you shot all the cogs you might click corners and stuff and if that bothers you you could add a friction modifier of limited slip to silence it but it's very tractable it's going to do more than people think everyone thinks that's just going to give the rear end more grip it actually does more or less It's the opposite it gives the front end more grip because you're reducing the amount of slip on the rear wheels so Pat the power is always going to go the path of least resistance so if you can resist the amount of slip here or part of that power like it goes to the front this is a stock diff like the one i am pulling out but TR e has upgraded it. should make a big change to the handling characteristics of the evo as we remove the diff its a good time to allow the range to slide a bit more and Andy removes one of the big rear mounts on the diff often referred to as a whisker bar a In favor of a much smaller, much lighter, much stiffer aftermarket mount, this mount requires drilling into the rear subframe, but for a car that will see itself in as much trouble as this, it's worth getting the engine out here in your own stand all taken apart putting an oil pump on translate here empty engine bay there we have ben here so ben is still putting this on as the block is off the car and the new valve springs in the head will allow for a higher redline now is a good time to move on In order to get the oil circulating through the engine consistently for all those Red Line boats, we are replacing Or the oil pump with a new OEM unit as this engine has almost 130,000 miles on it.

Critical tasks like these are exactly why I am so grateful. have Ron whose stripped down a million 4g63s now working on the car knowing what he's doing is one thing having done it a hundred times before is another with the rear diff installed his suspension time this plethora of parts coming once again from Huge inventory of performances ma The first parts to install are the agency power lower control arms if the law of speed of glowing parts is true these arms should make the car positively fast they are adjustable and they allow for more cam adjustment than the stock arms and also looks very sexy under the car next there are a bunch of white goods parts this is the sway bar the oem sway bar that came on the Evo and many of the things you wanted to do with an Evo is to try to create more of a rewrite we have a much thicker white line sway bar that also has three d places ifferent ones that you can bolt it into that will basically adjust how stiff the rear sway bar is so it'll be a nice little addition with that oh yeah yeah so it'll be a nice addition to put in with that rear diff the bar 26mm whiteline stabilizer will attach to the whiteline adjustable end links then Andy removes the upper control arms to change one of the inner bushings which was as you can see it bent during my outing on vir the Last year, luckily, White Line does an update to this same hub in the front end, we installed White Line's Center Roll Correction Kit which, like the kit Andy installed on the Benton Civic, corrects the geometry. car suspension. getting it down for the afternoon polls got in the head fully assembled with GSC to the cams and hive bounce breeze ronnie has finished upgrading the block with a new oil pump and head gasket the most important Thanks to my years of mechanical experience I have finished upgrading the DBA rotors and the bent subframe has been reinstalled so we can direct the covered Evo frame to a trunk shop to get your car to the frame shop so we are looking at the visor for Chassis for a while, we're going to finish what's left of the engine transmission clutch, whatever else we can do and then hopefully the frame is back.

Right next to RS Motors, I've never met Trung before, but Ronnie seems confident that he'll do a good job and I'm pretty limited on options in this tight timeframe. the chrome on the frame when you remove your car trung's yardstick here will be the straight subframe ronnie had on his rack if that subframe can fit that means you've pulled the frame far enough to exert the amount of necessary force. d to mold the frame back into shape Trung is going to be using a framing machine these massive posts and chains will slowly pull the bent part of the frame inch by inch until the job is done also a quick side note don't bother commenting on the rust in the engine compartment, 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 frame for this build is barely long enough to get the job we plan to do to clean up the rust will have to wait until I can. take the car home. Watching the guys from the frame shop at work is absolutely fascinating. Pulling on a frame is, by definition, a desperate last resort to salvage something gone horribly wrong. the process simultaneously. requires finesse and blunt force, sometimes the hooks slip off the frame and the immense torque has to go somewhere meanwhile the newly revamped head has been fitted to the block with a new head gasket along with the ARP head bolts The new, harder bolts will resist stretching and keep 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 like the cam and bow springs, It's good to do these mods now, while everything comes apart next, it's time to get the six speed transmission back on track.

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, remove, measure, remove again the straight subframe slides back the right this means 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 reasonably straight mounted on the subframe towards a side like please inch uh what you got is straight yeah it's like low phenomenally easy in and out T Rung had jokingly said he had the car done in an hour but from start to finish he straightened out the chassis in just 45 minutes.

He and his JB Auto Repair shop did an absolutely phenomenal job with Lana. I'm not the type of person. to get excited about car stuff so i'm not going to get excited about car stuff but straightening the frame of the car is a big problem for me sure it might not be as good as new and the car could still Being a salvage title car and there's still rust and dents and flaws to deal with but this is a process and this is the car I have to work on today made me very happy but that raises another issue today is basically over no we'll have the car finished today this project will have to be done tomorrow but pushing the now straight an Evo shell back into Ronnie's shop the inconvenience feels much smaller than it might have been before what started out as a small update that I was worried it wouldn't be ambitious enough to warrant its own youtube series has become a race against time to fundamentally alter and improve the best car I've ever owned. either.