2008 Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution GSR: Favorable Light

did it beat the gt-r yet?

Exactly, you`re complaining about daily duties with a track car....

I often have a similar thought - if I had the money, would I take a car this far in terms of prepping it for the track? I'd rather pay for track time on my motorcycle rather than keep tricking out a car. I'm sure time practicing on the track would reduce my lap times more than the performance upgrades. That being said, IL has track time as a line item in their business budget so the $ can go elsewhere. Not quite the same as a personal owner.

Woohoo, spoiler is back :)

yellowmiata, I think if you look at the sheer number of people doing track days in their cars, and the proportion of those cars modified beyond an exhaust or springs (about 80-90% in my experience), you'll find that there are lots of people willing to spend the dough, be they $5k Civic owners or $50k BMW owners, or 6-figure exotic car owners.

And in the grand scheme of things, what IL has done to the Evo is pretty light. A direct bolt on turbo, intake and exhaust, clutch/flywheel and some coilovers is pretty standard stuff. I may disagree with some of their specific choices, but the basic combo can be done cheaply and pretty easily. I think we had this discussion on another post, but if you mod the same components, but select more for bang/$$ quotient, you can get all the performance they got for about $5-6k plus install on whatever you can't put in yourself (turbo is probably beyond most guys, but the rest isn't too tough). That's roughly 15-20% of the car's price, which is pretty minor in the modding world, especially for this level of performance (which is in genuine supercar territory up to about 120 mph).

I've oftened wondered where the law of diminishing returns kicks in on the EVO X. I suppose it's after tune, exhaust, and maybe intercooler piping. That stuff is dirt cheap and seems to give you 80% of the improvement off the bat. Suspension mods seem to be expensive relative to what they yield

Erin, in my experience, I'd guess that most of the reduction in ride quality is from the suspension. On my 2005 Evo, the stock Yokohamas had extremely stiff sidewalls which transfered a lot of impact harshness into the chassis. I put on some Bridgestone RE-01Rs and the car rode much better.

As for the brakes squealing, that's just a simple pad change to fix. The car really needs a dedicated set of track pads anyways; so a non-squealing but still relatively high performance street pad is easy to find.

t10, the point of diminishing returns for me is a loud car. I had a car previously that was very loud with a turbo and 3" exhaust... back in my college days. I can't stand loud cars anymore. I do like some noise, but only at WOT. I like it quiet while cruising around.

Finally the wing is back on were it belongs.

Without driving it myself I can't really say if the harsh ride isn't the Edmunds people. You have to admit that you guys do drive a lot of nicer or at least easy riding cars so anything out side of that range will seem brutally harsh in terms of ride quality.

You can decide for yourself T10. I've done the bare minimum to get more power out of my EvoX right now.

Stock - 260 hp (at the hubs)
Tune (I did it, but you'll pay $300-$500 whether my shop does it or another pro, like RRE) - 307 hp
Ultimate Racing Full Turboback Exhaust ($900) - 344 hp
FPRed Turbo ($1000) - 400 hp
Cosworth Drop-in Filter ($40) - 12 hp (yes, made a big difference at this power level)

The only thing I have left that I plan on doing is an intercooler to keep charge temps down. I don't expect to see more than 10-15 hp on the dyno, but better consistency once the summer months come. I spent $500 on that and have it sitting on my shelf.

Note, no intake, no cams, no charge pipes, etc. So basically, max b4b is turboback, filter and tune. Less than $1500 for nearly 100 hp. The next $1000 (+ install is probably closer to $1500 cause the turbo isn't that easy) will get you about 50 hp on pump gas. Another $1500-$2000 (intercooler, charge pipes, cams) will probably get you 25-30 hp at peak. Interesting, isn't it? For each additional $1000 you spend, the gains drop by about half. IF you don't do it all at once, you've also got to pay for retunes too.

Church, your post lines up nicely with my thinking in terms of where diminishing returns kick in and direction I was taking with my post. Biggest bang is tune and few bolt ons, after that you start entering into the zone where the remaining 20% of performance improvement costs 80% (or however the usual saying goes which is true in software the field in which I operate).

As an aside, I am the owner of a 100% stock 2008 EVO X GSR (only stock owner?). I've been in no hurry to mod it, but will probably start next summer as I think I'll be satisfied there are no major inherent design issues for which on want the factory to be on the hook (i.e. maintain warranty). Regrettably, I doubt I'd be able to use your services as I gather you are on the west coast and I'm in midwest.

I think this project by IL has been great in that we have got to see the car in various stages of build. Also, I have noted other mainstream mags/sites have just recently taken on their own project cars in similar vein (EVO Mag project Verog for example). I think there is a lot of interest in this kind of long term testing for the enthusiast crowd.