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BigSmoke
Posts: 844
Location: Indonesia Occupation: Following Those Damn Trains Age: V$: Broke |
#150976 2018-11-03 11:31 |
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Leg Day and Memories of a Tuner
Finally, here comes two of the major upgrades for the Evo: Coilovers and anti-roll bars!
And oh, I also did some little adjustments on the 4G63T engine........ Also, this was supposed to be a short update, but mid-writing I had some kind of idea boost heheh, tell me if you enjoy such boost  Anyway I can't wait to tell you guys about it so let's jump into the RP!  (additionally, I also added song links to the previous posts, namely the very first post and the clutch update) [02 Nov 2018] I woke up quite early at 5 am by the call from the delivery service, they said the anti-roll bars should come at roughly 9 am. To spend the remaining time, I decided to have an early breakfast and then spend my time browsing for new wheels, tires, brakes and seats. Since I started the search at 6 am, I thought it would be appropriate if I blast Wiley's '6 in the Morning' while I'm browsing for the parts.
No one answered my wheels size inquiry in the clutch update, but that's okay, since finally I've got an idea. Since I want the Evo to be a daily and a racer as the same time, the best thing I could do is to have a reference from it's WRC racer version. If you're interested, here's the specification document. Turns out they're quite identical with the road version, save for the performace brakes and more powerful engine. For the asphalt setup, they used 16" rims, so I went for that size.
As of the model, it is a good thing I saved some pics of the Evos, so I could do a simple, ultra-cheap experiment by photoshopping wheel pics into the Evo pic. I said that I was inclined to get one of either Work Emotion CR series, Volk TE37, Volk CE28 or Enkei RPF1. And guess what, I ended up ordering..........none of those! Intead I picked WedsSport TC105N. Not only it looks proper and gorgeous, it's also lightweight and race-proven just like aformentioned wheels. And turns out it's also preferred by classic and modern Evo users, mostly in 18" guise. In the end, I ordered a full set of the 16x8 TC105Ns in black finish for V$1475 plus V$25 for quick shipping option (price based from this site. NOTE: Yes I know, it's actually 16x7 and comes in silver on the site, but eh, screw it). That way I only need to wait for 2 days instead of a week. All stops had to be pulled for that perfect look,y'know
As of the tyres, I ordered a set of 205/45 R16 Bridgestone Potenza Adrenalin RE002s (it'll be 215/40 in game IIRC, using BB's 3D tyres) for a total of V$780 plus V$20 for quick shipping, for the same benefit as the TC105N wheels (obviously, so I can use them immediately). And since the winter is coming, I also ordered a set of 195/65 R15 Dunlop SP Sport 5000 (it'll be 215/35 Direzzas in game , using BB's 3D tyres) all-season tyres for the steelies for a total of V$288, so I could use them for the winter holiday trip and could also act as spare tyres outside winter and rainstorms. Ah yes, for the Dunlops I could wait for 6 days. (NOTE: Price reference for each tyres are taken from here and here respectively)
Now, the brakes. I've said that if I ordered 15" or 16" wheels then I'll get Endless 4 pot brake kit with OEM rotors. And as you've just read I ordered 16" WedsSport TC105N wheels, so I did order the Endless brakes. Thankfully this means they are cheaper than having BBK set, and as a set of them usually means only 2 of them in the box (either front/back), I had to order 2 sets. So in total I have to pay V$410, plus V$10 for quick shipping, also for 2 days. (NOTE: Price reference taken from here)
And finally, as Erwin suggested some time ago, the seats. Erwin said Bride seats offers comfort and lightness at the same time, so despite the Evo III stock seats are Recaros, I did look for Brides instead. Not sure if I could fit Evo IX seats anyway, and Recaro Pole Position seat is a full bucket as far as I know. In the end, I ordered two Bride Zeta IIIs. Bride Gias seats looks a bit heavy to me despite looking the most comfortable, and I'm afraid if my front seat passenger complained about back pain if I install Bride Lowmaxes. The Lowmax is expensive as well, so there you got it, I picked the third way by ordering Zeta IIIs. The grand total of them would be V$1480 plus V$20 for another 2 day quick delivery. (NOTE: Price reference taken from here)
Safe to say, I'm on another unbelievable, disastrous shopping spree. And time seems passing quickly too, as I finished browsing at exactly 9 am. At 9.05, the delivery service arrived with the anti-roll bars. After thanking the driver and took car of the papers, I took shower, get a tee and trousers on and called the contact I mentioned in the thot baiter update.
"Good morning, I'd like to inform you that this is the day. Are you there?" I asked politely on the phone. "Yes sir, I'm here with my crew. Are you coming here?" he replied in a crisp voice. "Yes, I'll bring my parts and come over." "Okay good, I'll prepare my tools and workbay. Anyway, don't be too shy, you sounded a bit awkward. Loosen up, it's okay" "Uh, okay, hahah" I answered, a bit nervously. "I'll come in 30 minutes, see you there." "See you and be safe, young man." Ah, so that's what he meant by 'loosen up'. With my gear synchro and HKS coilovers in the boot/trunk and Ultra Racing anti-roll bars stacking up in the backseat, I headed for the garage. It is located around the eastern part of the city center.
Later on, I arrived at the garage. The nameplate above it was a bit faded and only the 'SU' part can be seen clearly, so I wasn't sure what was the garage's name at that time. But one thing's sure, they're a long-time Mitsubishi specialist, even though their popularity isn't so huge outside Tsukuba and neighbouring cities these days because they focused on 90's to early 00's Mitsubishi tuning and not the new ones (except Evo IX and X on limited engine circumstances), due to budget limitations to buy newer aftermarket parts. To increase income, they also opened the garage to other brands owners and serve regular repairs and services besides continuing said Mitsubishi tuning for the last two years. The garage owner, who I called beforehand, is Mr. Ohira (46). Back in the late 80's to the end of the 90's he was an avid racer, both on the legal and illegal side. I'll explain about that later, because it's quite a long and deep story. He greeted me with a warm smile. "Mr. Yuan Edo, yes?" "Yes sir. Nice to meet you" "Nice to meet you too, and that's a nice Evo III you have there" "Thank you sir, I'm quite lucky to source and buy one myself." "Ahh, just like my own past.....Oh anyway, I told you to loosen yourself heheh. Just call me Ohira-san" "Uh, no sir, I'd like to learn the basics of Mitsubishi tuning, so I'll address you as Ohira-sensei" "Ah, I see, that's OK too. What do you do for living?" "Literature, academic and scientific translator, sensei. I also taught English to high-schoolers" "Eh? So you're also a sensei yourself! It's a sensei-meeting!" We laughed together. (NOTE: 'Teacher' as in the occupation is translated as 'Kyoushi') "Yeah, kind of. You know a human can't live alone" "Of course, that's why I have my crew and my customers. Come in, get your Evo to the bay." "Okay sensei, I'm looking forward to work with y'all"  The Evo then raised smoothly to the working bay. Ohira-sensei has 6 crews: Nato (42), Mishima (34), Kei (32), Goro (38), Yuuta (19) and Gary (21). Nato and Goro was Ohira-sensei's first employee, followed by Mishima and Kei. While Yuuta is a new crew who has graduated from enginering school last year, and Gary is a engineering student at Tsukuba University coming from Phillipines, taking his part-time working here with recommendation from his lecturer and forming an agreement with Ohira-sensei. Gary said he has never seen me at the university though, mainly because the lecturers who asked for my help are from other faculties.
We then started to work on the car, but not before I took several more shots of the Evo sitting in the engine bay. For me, it looks quite majestic to see an Evo sitting that high. Yuuta took a liking too, saying he would also like to own one someday. As we were working, Ohira-sensei told me his life story, his connection to Mitsubishis and the reason why he opened this garage.  Circa 1994, Ohira-sensei bought a used Mitsubishi Galant VR-4 as a birthday gift for himself, using money he earned hard from working in a tuner shop back in the day in Fukuoka for 6 years after graduating from an engineering school. He bought it for V$8000, quite a reasonable price due to increasing popularity of Lancer Evos, and the fact that the Galant VR-4 was still able to score rally victories at the 1991 and 1992 Ivory Coast Rally, as well as 1991 Swedish Rally. And for that reason he used the car for trackdays and clubman-level races at Tsukuba Circuit, as well as touge duels and legal hillclimb races at Tsukuba Fruits Line touge course at Ishioka. If you're a fan of Initial D, you'll know that said touge course is the home course of the Purple Shadow duo, consisting of God Arm with his S2000 and God Foot with his R34. He was well-known for his radical car choice, as well as several victories in both tracks.
Late 1995, his engineering school friend, Mr. Eikiji, purchased a used first-gen Mitsubishi GTO SR, which is known as the base model Mitsubishi 3000GT in Europe and US, as well as Dodge Stealth R/T or Stealth ES in US and Canada. It has the infamous V6 engine but not with the twin-turbos. Mr. Eikiji felt that it has a big potential, as big as the Evo, particularly on the circuit but not on the touges since it's even heavier than Ohira-sensei's Galant. He was aiming for an even bigger playground: The highway, particularly the Hanshin Expressway and the C1 Route. He practiced at weekdays and weekends at Higashi-Kanto expressway (due to it's similar characteristics to aformentioned routes), and also brought the GTO SR to Tsukuba Circuit on bi-weekly basis. Since the V6 was relatively not a popular tuner's choice and the car has a notoriously complex electronic systems (though the car came with neither 2WS nor 4WS) at that time, Ohira-sensei and Mr. Eikiji took it as a challenge and tuned their cars together for years, sharing tuning knowledge and techniques in the process. They also started turnng heads of other drivers and communities around the Ibaraki prefecture due to their tuned car's capability, though the GTO can't hold Mr. Eikiji's aggresive driving at some times and Ohira-sensei's Galant slowly beaten by faster cars. They planned to open a car shop as early as Summer 2000 as a respond to their uprising in the Ibaraki prefecture's car scene. But then a major disaster happened. Early Autumn 1999, Mr. Eikiji died after involved in a heavy crash at Higashi-Kanto Expressway, on his way in a long, lone tour to C1 to see what his car could be capable of there. The crash was happened in such a high speed that the concrete wall at the crash location was heavily damaged and the GTO was close to be split in two. Worse still, since the GTO ended in such condition and Ohira-sensei didn't have the money or resources to tow it back at that time, the GTO was immediately scrapped a week after the accident at a junkyard near the crash location, erasing a huge monument of their hard work as well as their long-lasting friendship. Ohira-sensei understandably fell into a deep depression for a long time. He decided to take a hiatus from the motoring world to mourn over Mr. Eikiji as well as making peace with himself. Early 2001, Minami, a childhod friend of Mr. Eikiji visited Ohira-sensei to retrieve some of Mr. Eikiji's belonging at Ohira-sensei's home. Sharing a huge loss over Mr. Eikiji and hearing about Mr. Eikiji's plan to open a garage from Ohira-sensei, she and Ohira-sensei got married 3 months later and finally opened this garage at the end of Summer 2002. From this explanation finally I know that this garage is called 'Summer Dreams' (the nameplate reads 'Summer Yume', with the latter written in kanji), in memory of Mr. Eikiji as well to honor his dreams and friendship with Ohira-sensei. Minami-san still has a photo of Mr. Eikiji back on his junior high days, while Ohira-sensei has some documentations of the GTO. Both are kept safe in their home, so I didn't have a look at it (also to respect them)  I almost forgot to add, Minami-san was a bit ill today, and at most times she works at home. She sorts the garage's finances everyday as well as being a kindergarten teacher in the morning at weekdays. Yup, another kyoushi-I mean, sensei in our story!
As of Ohira-sensei's Galant, he still has it under some light touge-tuning for daily use, but sadly I forgot to snap a photograph of it. Don't worry, I might return here soon, so stay tuned cos I might ask him about it!With the long story over, the Evo has finished it's leg enhancement operation gracefully. Before completing the installation, I and Goro decided to tweak the spring height a bit, with Goro teaching Yuuta in the process (Yuuta has never done this before). Now the car sits with 6.88" ride height on the front and 6.90" in the back. This is approximately 0.1" lower than before, so it might not seems to be a major change, but hey, I don't want to slam the car and it's a HKS coilover so....... 
 And oh, Mishima and Kei also did a great job installing the anti-roll bars. Gary and Nato meanwhile installed the gear synchros and checked before the car went off the bay if all parts has been fitted properly. 
 With all the work done, it was time to take some rest, with us having a cup of coffee and it was my turn to tell my life story. But at the end of my story, I half-jokingly diverted the topic.
"You guys got a dyno and laptop?" I said. "For what? You want to do some engine tuning as well?" replied Goro. "Um, yes. I'd like to extract some more potential from the engine." I replied Goro's question, followed by Yuuta and Gary jumping in excitement. "Yes! Now this is business!" claimed Yuuta. Ohira-sensei, Mishima and I chuckled to such view. "Man, should've done this before getting the car off the bay, but that's okay. We can do this while settilng down." Nato said. "Gary, tell me if you can do ECU programming. I still have my programming skills but I might need your help." I turned my attention to Gary. "Yes sir, don't worry." replied Gary. That's right, I used to do some programming but my skills has waned a lot since. Yuuta, Gary, Nato, Goro, Ohira-sensei and I walked back to the car with tools and Gary's laptop. Ohira-sensei teaches Yuuta how to do manual turbo tuning, Goro did the camshaft tuning with Nato while I and Gary did the ECU tuning in Gary's laptop with his help. I told Ohira-sensei beforehand I only need a bit of power boost for daily needs since the internal is still stock. Here's the dyno result done by Goro and Gary before we started tuning. The fact that the engine produced a nice 269 BHP after these years amazed me, it barely lost a horse in it's stable. (NOTE: As a reminder, I used stock SLRR engine (mostly Shimubitsu parts) with Diego's Headcovers. I did my best to replicate Evo III's standart 4G63T specs, especially on the power side)  Here's what we've done to the engine. Ohira-sensei added a bit of turbo boost, from 0.75 bar (11 psi) to 0.8 bar (11.75 psi). Goro and Nato adjusted the intake camshaft a bit IIRC, and I together with Gary adjusted the fuel consumption so it would sip a bit more fuel and match the intake camshaft tuning.
 With tuning done, the car rolled back to the dyno. Here's the tuning results: The power bumped up to 278 BHP. Quite a feat for a small and cautious tuning for me
To be honest, I want to use more boost, but I'm afraid the engine will turn into a huge box of molotov if I did so. So the best thing I could do is wait for a better turbo.  Finally, all the work has been done and dusted. It was 6pm when we finished work. After I, Goro, Mishima, Nato and Ohira-sensei discussed about touge techniques while watching 90's WRC videos as a comparison, I bid farewell to them and said I might come back someday. The crew also went back to their cribs as well, save for Nato and Ohira-sensei who stayed to reflecting won what happened along the day.
I can't really help but give my salute and admiration to Ohira-sensei for all his work and dedication after Mr. Eikiji's death. I think this music composition would be appropriate to describe him when reminiscing his days with Mr. Eikiji [03 Nov 2018] With the runing gear mods almost fullfilled (might be scratching subframes from the list), it is almost time to fully move to the engine section. My short-term plan is to purchase better turbos, intake manifold kit including throttle body, followed by head modifications. Ultimately, this will be topped by a full transmission modding, and if possible, engine bore-up. The target is so I can match and/or going over a bit from Evo III WRC performance (300 BHP), making the Evo the perfect daily racer in the progress.
But there's a huge obslatcle at the moment, which is, uhh.......my wallet!  So I decided to hunt for turbo and intake manifold first. I've found a decent GReddy turbo for less than V$1000, but here comes another problem: Which intake manifold should I use? I can only find 2 recommended competition-grade intake manifold kits (Magnus and Hypertune, 70mm and 77mm respectively). There's also this cheap 80mm intake manifold kit as well, but it's rarely heard of so I'm not sure about it's quality. Can you guys help me picking the best one? Any help would be appreciated! Damn, 5 hours of writing really took it's toll on me! Let's have a TL;DR summary first: And now, the financial aftermath post the shopping spree:
Don't worry, I might have some parts for sale soon, so stay tuned  With the financial disaster aftermath assessment over, this is the end of my update.
Thank you for stopping by and see you soon! This post was edited by BigSmoke (2018-11-03 12:39, ago) |
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