Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution 8 MR - Project Car Conclusion

RRE calls this the Track Whore turbo for a reason. In our experience, it lags on the street and hits like a freight train, which makes it decent for WOT ass-hauling on big tracks, but a little hard to modulate on tighter courses. But that's what we asked for in order to make big power. With just a splash of 100-octane thrown in to prevent the car from blowing up while being tuned with the AFC, this set-up put down 437 wheel-hp at 7000rpm and 367lb-ft torque at 5500rpm. Keep in mind that fuel cut comes at 7750rpm and the MR has a close ratio six-speed 'box. Unfortunately, we weren't able to log the boost on this run--too busy hanging on to look down at the boost gauge. It swept easily past the last mark at 1.5bar.

Cosworth CNC head and M2 cams
Part Two of stupid power comes in the form of a Cosworth CNC ported cylinder head with 1mm oversized stainless-steel intake and Inconel exhaust valves. The Cosworth head starts as a brand-new Mitsubishi casting (MIVEC or not, depending on which car you have) which is CNC machined to enlarge and smooth out the ports, de-shrouded in the combustion chamber area and treated to a three- and four-angle valve job for the exhaust and intake respectively.To go with the valve job, the larger valves are also back-cut on the intake side for better flow transitions and lapped for proper sealing. The head also comes with stiffer double wound springs rated for up to 10,500rpm, titanium retainers, and hardened steel platforms for these springs to sit on. Cosworth claims a maximum flow increase of 26 percent on the intake side and 18 percent on the exhaust side at half an inch of lift.

The smooth flow runners in the cast manifold are a nice compromise between a fully tubular equal-length manifold and a cast log-and-runner design of the old days. It also includes an addition port to connect to our optional TiAl 44mm external wastegate along with the proper V-band clamps. The turbine discharge pipe is cleverly designed to bolt to the stock exhaust location, while keeping the hardware tightly packages under the new manifold. This also saves space with a clean path between the external wastegate and dump tube.

The smooth flow runners in the cast manifold are a nice compromise between a fully tubular

Making the most of these flow capabilities means we were again going to step up to cams more aggressive than the 10.8mm-lift HKS versions. Cosworth makes two cams, ground from new chill cast billets. The M1 cam, probably intended more for the street, has a maximum lift of 10.2mm with a open-to-close duration of 264 degrees for both the intake and exhaust, while the big brother 272-degree M2 cam, with 11mm of lift, was designed for exactly what we were after: wide open power and a very lumpy idle. Depending on the tuner and tuning tool, Cosworth claims that stock engines with this cam can be tuned to idle like stock. We left the cam gears retarded by two degrees and went back to the dyno to see where this hardware got us. Maxxed out on boost, liquored up on high octane, we pulled a Hail Mary run (something RRE is well known for) of 480 wheel-hp, just to see how much the stock bottom end and Cosworth head could cope with. This was just enough power to make the stock clutch slip even before peak torque. However impressive these numbers are, we weren't inclined to repeat them again with just the AFC in control.

Finally, Proper Tuning
We were down to four days before the car had to be picked up by Mitsubishi in stock form without any holes in the block. Our intent was to settle the issue and get the car properly setup for street gas with an ECU reflash and ROM tune by Vishnu Tuning. Before that though, we needed a clutch with enough clamping force to put up with the subsequent abuse of repeated dyno tuning. The only shop around that could meet our schedule was Tuning Technologies in Colton, California. With a reputation of a one-day turnaround on a painfully tedious Evo clutch install, we immediately sent the car over. Even the ACT Heavy Duty clutch kit with street disc was on the shelves waiting for us.

Just to show what our Eo drove like in its final tune, we logged the boost in third gear while we delieverd it back to Mitsusbishi. We also logged the boost curve on a stock five-speed EvoIX with the MIVEC head. Might not look bad, but it didn't fell all that quick-spooling when you really eed the go on the street.

Just to show what our Eo drove like in its final tune, we logged the boost in third gear w

Alfred, Grand Pooh-Bah at Tuning Technologies (TT) made good on his word, and the next morning we arrived to see Project Evo already strapped down on TT's Dynojet all-wheel-drive dyno. The glazed and anemic stock clutch sat in the doorway as proof. There to greet us was yet another Grand Pooh-Bah, Shiv Pathak of Vishnu, here to personally tune our potential time bomb.

The final hurdle was to street-tune Project Evo for strictly pump gas and make the car as bulletproof as possible on our hardware. Shiv and Alfred started by disconnecting the manual boost controller and putting the stock electronic boost solenoid back in the helm. Set for around 23psi and regulated by the factory ECU and knock sensor, Project Evo set out on a series of 29 tuning pulls on the dyno. The end result was 385 wheel-hp wheel horsepower and a lot more useful low-end torque between 2500 and 4500rpm (which you can't see with our dyno chart scaled this way). Why so much less power? Gas obviously has the most to do with it. Even just a couple octane points will make a night and day difference on fire-breathing turbo cars. The other part is peak boost and the boost curve profile, since the manual boost controller held boost constant all the way to redline. The electronic controller was tuned by Vishnu to taper off much like the stock program, to ease the load on the engine. Even though the bottom end could take more, it's just not smart on a daily driver.

Project Evo's last day was spent at the track. Knowing the limitations of the weaker MR six-speed, we set out to get one last respectable run on all this power. With the boost lag and fragile tranny, we couldn't just dump the clutch at 6000rpm, which is what the car requires for a fast ET. We did manage to finally squeeze out a 12.8-second run trapping at 100mph. Not impressive, but no slouch compared to the 14 seconds on the stock car. This time is roughly what we found in our last Evo Tuner shootout.

Coming to terms
Project Evo VIII MR is done. Unlike our other project cars that live as long as we're willing to come up with bad ideas to throw at them, the Evo has been returned to Mitsubishi after a gracious loan of two years and will probably end up in the hands of some undeserving owner. We still think of Project Evo fondly now it's gone.

This was by far our all-time favorite project car throughout the years. But our fondness is of the Evo in its near stock form, which provided endless hours of giggling--in traffic or on the track. Even in bone stock form, it went out and destroyed everything else in our project car garage in the rain during the last Project Car battle. The car is just that brilliant. And as good as the parts are that we put in, we've made some compromises in ride, noise, and lag.

If we had to do this all over again, I would have just replaced the pads with something less aggressive than we had used, stuck with the stock turbo and a quieter exhaust, and used a suspension with more emphasis on street driving. We go to the track, but that doesn't mean we avoid sitting in traffic along with everyone else.

Our next Mitsubishi project won't be an Evo, we'll hopefully be getting our hands on the Ralliart Lancer, a mean and affordable cousin of the Evo X and the Lancer GTS.