I'll admit, I pretty much just lurk here on mitsustyle. I post more often on EvoMN.
I actually live at Ft. Campbell, KY right now since that's where the Army stuck me, but, I grew up in Cambridge. I end up driving back to MN every time I get leave.
Anyway, onwards to the amusement. This is a near copy of the thread from EvoMN.
History:
Right after bringing it home in Mar 2009 with 58K miles
Mods when I bought it:
HKS RS Intake
HKS UICP w/ HKS SSQV (VTA and annoyingly loud, I hate this thing)
Megan TBE
Megan Exhaust Manifold
Megan O2 housing
Greddy EBC
Cosworth M2 cams(I just found this out when I had Shane open it up, more on that later)
Tein S-Tech springs
-Minor gremlins
Tuned for 24PSI on 93 numbers unknown, done by TopSpeed in ATL.
It was all good and fine for awhile, but then I had an accident in Oct 09. Similar to what Scheides did, only it didn't go over and the ditch had trees in it. I drove 25 miles or so home from the crash. Insurance paid $12k for the damage.
For bonus points, I killed the factory wing
I managed to come out a bit ahead on insurance(or so I thought) and bought an AMS TBE to replace the damaged Megan one as well as an AMS intercooler+LICP.
I picked the car up from the body shop in Nashville, TN and drove back to post, about 50 miles... with no muffler as I didn't get to putting in the AMS stuff yet. There was a "test and compare" with an STI wagon on the way back. Winn.. err successful test made me really happy after not having my car for a month. They took so long to finish that I had to burn up a couple of days of my(already planned) leave to get it ready to go.
Adding the AMS stuff in my buddy's garage(I live in the barracks) turned out to be a fiasco. Although, dropping the section with the muffler on his forehead while we were both under the car made it entertaining.
Frustration: I managed to break one of the bolts that holds the DP to the O2 housing. So I bandaided that and went on my 3500 mile road trip being nice to it. I was already into using my days of vacation before deployment so I didn't want to try and get a new O2 housing or the bolt removed.
This was about a week after picking it up from the body shop, I had driven to Key West, FL from KY:
A few days later I was at my Dad's in Fridley, the day before the Christmas snow storm last year. It was 80 degrees at midnight when I left FL... then like 15 when I got to Fridley.
The car got put in storage in MN, as I deployed to Afghanistan and planned on having MAP do some work to it.
Spring of '10(end of May) comes and it's time for the car to go to MAP, to try and address a couple of the gremlins and get the drivetrain redone.
The clutch would slip a bit if you tried to launch it and the synchro for 3rd was pretty beat up.
MAP tookout the clutch, trans and Tcase. I figured while the trans was comming out anyway and I had the money, I may as well get everything done once and (hopefully) for all.
The trans is now a Shep rebuild with all the options and an Evo VIII 3 and 4th gears.
The Tcase is now a Shep stage 3.
It got a QM twin disc clutch installed as well, I had plans for 2.3 and big turbo at the time and that was what MAP recommended. I didn't mind the difference in engagement or noise it makes but it's pretty rediculous for how the car is now going to end up.
Frustration: When MAP put this in and got it on the dyno apparently it made a horrible noise. It came out and went back to Shep. They found the Ring/Pinion were worn down weird. They had been replaced during the rebuild, so Shep did it again and sent it back to MAP. Afterword everything was fine and dandy again.
I also had them replace the now cracking Megan exhaust manifold with the 4WSTuning JesseB/"Mona Lisa" manifold. It ended up being cheaper to have them replace the Megan O2 housing with the broken bolt than to fix it, so they put on one of their MAP O2 housings as well.
They put on the SpoolinUP COP I had bought before it went on the dyno too. I figured the COP was cheap insurance against failed ignition since it had the from the factory coils/wires(I think) and it was now pushing 72K miles.
Anyway, I wanted to see what it would make so MAP put it on their dyno and apparently the tune looked bad so Kyle played with it. He also made it idle much better.
Mods at this point:
HKS RS Intake
HKS UICP w/ HKS SSQV
AMS TBE w/ Test Pipe
4WS/JesseB header
MAP O2 housing
SpoolinUP COP
Greddy EBC
Cosworth M2 cams
Shep Ultimate ration trans
Shep Stage 3 Tcase
QM Twin with hydro TOB and MAP flywheel.
Stock fuel pump
Stock injectors
24PSI peak on 93
-Minor gremlin
For all the stuff on it, I really did expect a bit more.
I was told it was running out of fuel and that was all they could get before it went lean.
On the way to drop the car off at MAP my Uncle who was following my Dad there noticed the right rear wheel looked to wobble. Which based on my crash made sense, I never noticed a vibration or noise during my 3500 mile road trip.
MAP noticed on the dyno it looked to have a bent wheel, and further checking revealed a bent control arm. If I wasn't thousands of miles away, I would have went and had a "talk" with the repair shop that did the work after my accident.
I was sort of annoyed at how long MAP had the car, so I didn't have them look into it any farther. My dad picked up the car and a couple weeks later it went to brookdale Mitsu, it's now late August.
I had gotten a new(used) wheel off of EvoM for $100. Mitsu ended up replacing: both front and the right rear wheel bearings, right rear control arm, right rear hub and axle(trigger ring broke during my oopsie and ABS didn't work)
That was a $2500 suprise bill(500 more than I pocketed from insurance from the crash, so much for being ahead), they did an alignment too. This also forced me to axe switching to E85 which I had originally planned on doing while I was on R&R.
It was ready for pickup the day I got home for my 2 week R&R.
I randomly met Dzuest there but I was so zombied from my 40+hours of being awake for travel from Afghanistan to MN I couldn't even drive my car home, or remember to introduce myself.
I had signed up for the BIR HPDE on Sept 20th, so I had some stuff to do before that too. That turned out to be a blast, and I met some the guys from EvoMN.
Installed:
The mini battery I bought from Trevor
Dunlop Direzza Z1 Star specs
RotorPros Slotted rotors(yeah I know, regular blanks would have been fine.)
Ferodo DS 2500 pads all around
Stereo from Scheides out of his VIII so I could finally rock out with my uhh.. Ipod out. The harness already being setup to just plug&play was awesome btw. I think that took less time than the mini battery.
The front tires had bad wear from the alignment and camber being off, and the right rear had a couple grooves from the rear quater hitting it on my drive back to post after the accident.
I wish all the cars I've owned were as easy to change brake pads in. Even the calipers/rotors came off easily.
I admit, I pretty much bought the pads/rotors on a whim. The pads were fine, the rotors could have maybe used a turning.
I drove to BIR, played around and drove back to Fridley. That day completely changed the direction I want to go with the car. I don't think my original idea of something crazy for straight lines could ever be as much fun as something simple for corners.
Leave ended and I went back to Douchebagistan.
Once I'm back in A-Stan I looked up Shane@DB to see about my plans for the car.
I wanted a built 2.3L short block, but, while I was on R&R the girlfriend decided we should go on a 2 week cruise when we get back from Afghanistan, and I couldn't afford to do both so other plans were made.
The car went to DB in November for:
Convert to Speed Density
60K service, a bit pass due but all along I had planned for a built short block this winter that just ended up not happening.
Pull the valve cover to see which cams
Install AEM Wideband and column pod(also from Trevor)
Install BlaqOps double pumper(From Trevor too, lol)
Get/Install FIC 1450 injectors(the fuel system is a bit much, but I didn't want to have to change things again in the future)
Tune for E85 and 93. TN/KY are not like MN and there's just a handful of stations that carry E85.
Minorly frustrating: I knew the wideband would fit in the gauge pod, and I never bothered to check what size boost gauge was in the car. Wide band fit, boost gauge didn't. I had to have DB order a boost gauge that would fit. I like how the Autometer Phantom series gauges look better than the Carbon ones anyway. As a perk, the new one goes from -30in/hg to 45psi instead of just -30in/hg to 30psi.
More frustrating: When they took the valve cover off, they found that it had Cosworth M2 cams, but also that the valve cover is cracked, and was the source of an oil leak I had.
I found a replacement valve cover on EvoM that took almost a week to get to DB. When it got put pack on and they did it the right way by putting RTV on the end cam cap they found out all the bolts for the cam caps had been over torque'd when the cams were installed, and one broke. All had been stretched so they all got replaced.
Once they got everything back together and Shane went to start tuning it... a couple more problems arose.
First, the Greddy EBC that was on it has two dials for low/high boost and the scaling is different between them, which made it not really useful. They added in a MBC set for 20psi so I could still use the EBC to switch boost levels. If it doesn't work out well I'll just rip out the EBC and use the DB MBC.
Doing a boost leak test it was found that the TB shaft seals had given up the ghost, so they got replaced with Mil.Spec ones.
Also while tuning, the MIVEC would sometimes not work. He managed to get enough clean runs to finish the 93 tune but it got worse and didn't do the E85 tune.
For amusement, this is an overlay of an aborted run where the MIVEC said no on a clean run.
http://tinyurl.com/28n2j32
Uncorrected 93 run:
Shootout mode:
What DB did will probably be the last stuff done for awhile, aside from finishing the E85 tune. Saying that I'm still probably going to get rid of the HKS SSQV and UICP shortly after I get back from Astan.
I would like to swap out the stock shocks with the Tein S-Techs for Bilsteins and swift springs.
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