EVO VIII From Australia Down Under

[gotblkr]

^^ Thanks man! I was definitely pretty chuffed with the direction that car was going at this stage, and just in time for its first show!

TrackFest 2018:

[BUILT_S2K]

Nice to see people still build these iconic cars. Keep up the awesome work.

[gotblkr]

^^ Thanks man! Always loved evos and always been into Stance so this car was inevitable haha...

Spent some time tidying up the engine bay, it was a bit grubby after our trip back from Sydney & also spent some time polishing pieces here and there:







After my first show I slowly added a few pieces here and there to the car. Made to order Carbing Titanium Front Strut Brace:





The finish on this piece is outstanding, but then again it should be for the price I paid for it haha





I think it finished off the engine bay nicely:



Was lucky though and after being in the right place at the right time I picked up a beautiful HKS Kansai Carbon Airbox for my intake. These are no longer made and highly sought after, who doesn't love a bit of carbon:







Also when I bought it the previous owner had upgraded to a no name 3" catback. Pictures of it can be seen above after I gave it a good clean. I am a sucker for Titanium so that had to go, out with the old, in with the new, Tomei Ti Expreme:







Definitely like dat ass

[gruz]

this is cool! the white wheels on silver are making me consider leaving mine white

[gotblkr]

White on silver is my favorite combination man, it is such a fresh look in my opinion. I have thought about painting my XD9 black but every time white just wins the debate & I keep them as they are...

[cblock406]

Love it! I like the silver and white a lot. I was pretty stoked too after bagging my car and airing it up and down for the first time lol

[gotblkr]

^^ Thanks man! The feeling I had that first night when we aired out the car, I was like a kid on Christmas Eve lol, definitely one of the best nights of my life...

So the next big project I started with this car was on the CCW LM20 3 Piece Wheels I have. Back when I owned a black evo our aussie dollar was really strong against the USD. Usually it is the other way around but for about 3 months we were sitting at $1.10 AUD to the USD. I took advantage of this and ordered a set of my dream wheels, CCW LM20 3 Piece with centres milled from 7075 Billet. Back then CCW was still its own company and had not yet been bought out by WELD. The purchasing experience with CCW was amazing, they took me right through the complete process and designed and produced an offset that allowed me to fit 18x10 onto a stock body evo with 3" lips. Total process took around 2-3 months from memory but they kept me in the loop through each stage and I could not speak more highly for them as a company. Since they have been bought by WELD I am not too sure if you would get the same service, but from my point of view the process was amazing...

I was young and naive back then though and I really treated these wheels badly. They stayed on the car as daily drivers, I never took them off to clean and also never had them ceramic coated, so when my last evo sold, they got put in the shed and left for a couple years...

When i bought this evo i pulled the CCW out of the shed and they were looking pretty worse for wear:





Plenty of rash on the outer lips:





And damage from clipping a veranda post on my way into our carport one day, tears were shed



So let the cleaning process begin:











Next step was to have the tyres removed and then engage the experts. Dropped them past a local business Fitment Factory who put in the hard yards filling the spots where the outer lip clipped my veranda post, sanding down the rash and then polishing to their former glory:







Until they were looking almost like new again:



To save some money I decided to clean the ARP Studs myself. This left me a huge job of cleaning them up as they were in a disgusting state:











Once finished I didn't want to see another dirty ARP Stud in my life







I will never be letting these wheels get dirty ever again... Here is what they looked like the day I picked them up from Fitment Factory:







First stop as soon as I had rubber fitted was to have them ceramic coated. This will help with water marks and keeping them clean in general:



Now the CCW reside in the spare room if they are not on the car, and only get fitted for shoots or shows... It was a long process and took a lot of hard work but the feeling of having these bad boys restored was definitely worth it.

I will never treat them as bad again, so i started the process of restoring them to their former glory.

[gotblkr]

So now that the CCW were back to their former glory, it was only natural that I enter a show with them on the car. Initially I was a little worried that polished wheels on a silver car would not look all that good, but I was pretty happy with how they turned out:

Obligatory gas station shot before the show...



Pulling up to the show:





Had a hep of fun that night:

[gotblkr]

So small update for Evolyn, picked up a Suichuuka shift knob:



But soon after this I ran into a big idle issue with the car... The day I arrived home with her from Sydney, I noticed some coolant on my carport. Sure enough a small hose directly above my IACV had come loose. Easy fix, but I think the leaking coolant damaged my IACV. Anyway car was fine until my wife drove it to the supermarket one day... Started fine, idled fine and then 5 minutes down the road, as my wife went to change gears it just died. Started again fine, but died immediately. Long story short my wife freaked out, and made me get in. Sure enough, if I started it without holding pressure on the gas she would die straight away... Got a local shop to take a look and they gave both the throttle body and the IACV a good clean,which improved things a little. After starting the car I'd have to hold down the gas for about 30-40 seconds before it would idle at about 600-700rpm and would then slowly build revs as the motor heated up and eventually sit at about 900rpm once fully warm.

SO... I ordered a replacement IACV and luckily with a small tweak to the MAP it made all the difference, Evolyn was back to idling perfectly cold or warm...

[gotblkr]

Next up after a fairly long wait a was Voltex Carbon Exhaust Shield that arrived from Japan:







Soon after this I caught up with someone who has turned into a really close friend, local photographer Josh Castle aka @castlecarmedia, went to a beach here in Australia searching for some sunset perfection...



'







And yes, the evo got a good wash that night including a trip to the local car wash for an under body cleanse too

[gotblkr]

This is kind of turning into a personal blog just for me, but that's cool haha...

So after the above shoot day the evo made its first appearance on a pretty major page, may not be the most popular page on this forum no doubt, but I was chuffed none the less:



Even though the pic received a heap of **** (apparently the car is now destined to become a rust bucket in a day) I was still chuffed for the car to make it onto a big page such as Stancenation...

Next up for the car though was to put some finishing touches on the tank/compressor setup in my trunk... I really just made it work in a pretty ugly way the weekend we installed the bags, so it was bugging me and something needed to be done:



After watching a few youtube videos on the process I decided on a nice dark jarrah floating floor and began work. I am not very good with things like this, but pretty happy with the way it turned out, definitely better than it was...

[gotblkr]

Next up went for an Autumn shoot with Josh to try to capture some Autumn Beauty, the shot below was shared by Stanceworks which was a dream come true:



And here are the rest of his edits, I would hav to say this was my favourite shoot to date with the Evo, always love catching up with Josh, he has become one of my closest friends in the car scene here in Australia.

[gotblkr]

Caught up with a mate and headed to an old Mitsubishi Factory that closed down about 10 years ago, thought it was fitting to have a shoot of the evo at a location that used to manufacture mitsubishi's. Shots thanks to @thirsti15









If you walk away and don;t look back, do you really own the right car?

[gotblkr]

It is Cherry Blossom season here in Australia. Hope you are all staying safe homies!