EDMUND’S Project EVO X [Part 1]
To find out just how much power Project Evo, our Long-Term 2008 Evo GSR, currently generates, we went to someone who knows these cars.
To find out just how much power Project Evo, our Long-Term 2008 Evo GSR, currently generates, we went to someone who knows these cars.
Road Race Engineering has been working on Evos since before they were sold in the USA. And they’ve been building, racing, tuning, modifying and repairing 4G63s since 1994. You could say they know a thing or two hundred about how to make Mitsubishis go fast.
In Road Race Engineering’s huge 6,000 square foot facility in Santa Fe Springs, CA, they got to work. Project Evo’s wheels came off and the four Dynapack hub dynos were carefully bolted on.
Then we fired the engine, warmed it up to operating temperature by “driving” at light load and did a few pulls.
Now, before we go any further, it’s important to remember that not all dynos are created equal. Comparing results from different dynos is a fruitless and deceptive exercise. Even if you test the same car on two different dynos on the same day, the results can be all over the map.
In fact, we’ve already done that exercise with a GT-R.
Since you just clicked that link and re-read the test, you know only to compare results from Road Race Engineering’s Dynapack dyno to other runs made on that dyno. A dyno is a tuning tool, not a manhood-measuring device. Focus on the gains rather than the absolute numbers.
Whew, okay. Back to Project Evo’s baselining exercise.
We did four or five pulls and the peak numbers were about 320 lb-ft and 325 horsepower. I say “about” because the run-to-run variation floated a few hp or lb-ft higher or lower than these values. I’ll post a representative dyno chart once my latptop starts cooperating.
Mike Welch, owner of Road Race Engineering, says that bone-stock Evo Xs typically generate about 250 horsepower on this dyno.
Factor in your favorite guesstimate for drivetrain loss based on all of this and we can see that we’re roughly 65 horsepower shy of our power goal for Project Evo.
So, now what? With a decent complement of bolt-ons, the next logical step is cams. We talked with our friends at Cosworth in Torrance and they handed us a set of Cosworth MX1 cams, which Road Race Engineering graciously volunteered to install and re-tune for.
More to come.
Jason Kavanagh, Engineering Editor @ 15,851 miles.*
*we drove two miles on the dyno.
