An impressive start to a rookie time attack season, to be sure, but it wasn’t all champagne and caviar for Ryan and his X. “At the 2008 NASA Championships in September at Mid Ohio, there were a few hurdles. First time at the track, first time on R-compounds on the X and in a 3,500-pound car, during the first session out on the track I broke the track record for TT-A and was immediately called to tech! After dissecting my car and checking the rules, they realized I wasn’t cheating and let me continue. Later that night, they looked over the rules again and decided I was in violation of a rule. They read it differently than I did, so they negated all my times and I needed to find a stock intake to get back into my class. With help from AMS, I had one overnighted and was good to go. I pulled off the win, took the TT-A Championship and set the class track record.” OK, so maybe it is all champagne and caviar for Ryan, but at least he had to work for it!
With only the Super Lap Battle finals at Buttonwillow remaining, Ryan decided to step things up by having AMS upgrade the turbo to a Forced Performance Red along with an AMS fuel surge tank, Walbro 255 fuel pump, 780cc RC fuel injectors and a Cusco 1.5-way rear LSD. The turbo upgrade bumped power output by another 100 whp without adding any lag, putting Ryan’s X healthily into the 450-whp range. That’s some serious jam out of an internally stock 4B11, but unfortunately, Ryan’s X suffered some suspension issues and finished second in his class, just 5/100ths of a second behind the class winner. Ryan was a bit disappointed to close the 2008 season with a Second Place finish, but it only motivated him to step up his X’s prep level even more for 2009.
“Over the winter I decided to move the car from Street class to Limited/Modified class, knowing that the competition was going to be that much stiffer. With that in mind, we made a lot of changes to the car, mainly removing a ton of weight and upgrading the suspension to JRZ triple adjustable shocks along with some other AMS bits.” According to Ryan, the car now weighs in at an impressively svelte 2,750 lbs, thanks in part to the Seibon carbon-fiber doors, a dry carbon hood and trunk, and an AMS carbon-Kevlar roof. Ryan also spent a lot of time removing everything he legally could from the interior (for Limited/Mod class) in order to fully max out his X’s Jenny Craig–sized weight-loss regime.
For 2009, horsepower has also been bumped slightly north of 460 whp, thanks to the addition of an AMS test pipe, lightweight driveshaft and more fine-tuning from Chris on the dyno. But the biggest change this season is in the damper department, where Bryan from JRZ is helping Ryan learn to dial in his triple adjustable shocks for whatever circuit he’s racing at. And so far the ’09 season is off to a flying start for Ryan and his X, taking the Modified class victory at Redline’s time attack event at Buttonwillow in March with a very solid 1:55.221 lap time. If not for an ECU malfunction that was preventing all 32 psi of boost from being reached, who knows how fast Ryan’s X could have gone.
In the coming months, Ryan plans to install a roll bar as well as having AMS install one of its turbo kits for a reliable 500-plus whp and a Carbonetic triple carbon clutch to handle the extra power. “I’d really like to stress how well the stock 4B11T has held up so far, thanks to the careful tuning and high-quality bolt-ons AMS has provided. With more than 6,500 track miles, it’s been amazing and still runs like new and revs so smoothly. I’m glad my upgrade from the IX to the X has turned out so well and I’m happy to prove a lot of the EVO X haters wrong. Mitsu did an awesome job with this car, AMS has made it even better and it’s been incredibly reliable.” High praise from this young time attack protégé, but we fully expect Ryan and his finely tuned Mitsubishi to continue to back it up by leading the way in the Evolution X revolution.
By David Pratte
Enjoyed this Post? Subscribe to our RSS Feed, or use your favorite social media to recommend us to friends and colleagues!