fuel's Lancer Evo IX GT-A wagon

[fuel]

Finally got the gearbox apart with help of kitchen tongs to release a stupidly placed circlip and have been cleaning up everything as I go.

As the fluid between the gearbox and transfer case is shared there was a thin layer of sooty grime over everything, presumably which comes from the ACD clutch plates in the transfer case.

Getting the shift fork rails out was a bit of a mission - had to knock out half a dozen dowel pins and carefully remove a bunch of ball bearings, springs and interlock pins, and then was able to lift out the shafts all intermeshed with each other.

Here's the input shaft that has the 3rd/4th & 5th/6th gear hub & sliders, I need to press off the top bearing along with those gears in order to fully inspect and probably replace the 3rd/4th hub & slider as these are known to fail frequently so it's a matter of when rather than if. As it sits it already feels a bit difficult going into 4th so best to replace. Thankfully no damage to any of the gears or bearings from what I can see so far.

[fuel]

While waiting for my overnight transmission repair parts from Japan I figured I would knock out an easy job adding a cabin air filter to the Evo. For some reason the JDM models don't have a filter like the USDM, Aus, Euro etc ones do, but you can conveniently cut out where one should go and add one:

Snip snip

In she goes (and blows). Even found some Mitsu screws in my stash to make it loom OEM.

[fuel]

Speaking of which, the parts arrived today:

Including the most important part that I need right now, the 3rd/4th gear hub & slider as the one on the donor gearbox seems to be no good:

Still deciding if I should upgrade at least the 3rd/4th & 5th/6th synchros to carbon synchros while their gears are all apart

[datlow]

Guessing you’ve seen this?

https://www.instagram.com/p/C9eWlPpiiMH/?igsh=MXE0dWExdThybDAwdA==

[fuel]

3 minutes ago, datlow said:

Guessing you’ve seen this?

https://www.instagram.com/p/C9eWlPpiiMH/?igsh=MXE0dWExdThybDAwdA==

I have yes! that's the second Evo wagon Misha has taken around the ring - the blue one Misha drove last year wasn't as sorted as the one above, and despite the owner's "perfect wheel fitment" it was basically rubbing around almost every corner haha. Watching those videos really makes me want to hurry up and do this manual swap, the auto needs to go haha

[shrike]

If it was me i'd do the syncros now while its all out and apart, I hate pulling East to West AWD gearboxs out tho :p

[mjrstar]

I'm all for carbon synchros, I personally wouldn't run a combination of oem synchros and carbon.

The coefficient of friction means it's highly unlikely you'll find an oil that will work really well with both. There will have to be some compromise.

[fuel]

1 hour ago, mjrstar said:

I'm all for carbon synchros, I personally wouldn't run a combination of oem synchros and carbon.

The coefficient of friction means it's highly unlikely you'll find an oil that will work really well with both. There will have to be some compromise.

Gotcha - so all or nothing haha. I have yet to pull the main shaft apart to inspect the synchros, the guy I got the box off said the synchros were fine it was just starting to have an issue with the 3rd/4th hub & slider. I could do 1st and 2nd but would mean the input shaft has to come apart and I didn't really want to touch more than I needed to.

As for oil I was going to run a cocktail of Redline MT-90 & Redline MTL which seems to work for many 6 speed owners

[mjrstar]

Yeah redline is all-good for stock synchros, I've got that in the 370z box in Mazda.

 

It is however bad news for carbon synchros. Some carbon synchro manufacturers will specify not redline mt90, you need something between water and engine oil consistency. 

 

My old evo was total balls for high rpm shifting, even at 7000 rpm you couldn't guarantee a clean shift, and at 7500 it simply would not select, no bad noises, it was just like the gear wasn't there.

I put it down mostly to the full face evo 9 clutch which must have a bit more mass than the earlier evos. 

None of that silly carry on in the honda though, it'll shift like butter even when it's on the limiter at 8800+rpm.

[fuel]

6 minutes ago, mjrstar said:

Yeah redline is all-good for stock synchros, I've got that in the 370z box in Mazda.

 

It is however bad news for carbon synchros. Some carbon synchro manufacturers will specify not redline mt90, you need something between water and engine oil consistency. 

 

My old evo was total balls for high rpm shifting, even at 7000 rpm you couldn't guarantee a clean shift, and at 7500 it simply would not select, no bad noises, it was just like the gear wasn't there.

I put it down mostly to the full face evo 9 clutch which must have a bit more mass than the earlier evos. 

None of that silly carry on in the honda though, it'll shift like butter even when it's on the limiter at 8800+rpm.

Your old Evo was 5 or 6 speed? I don't think I'm keen on needing to run a super watery gear oil just to keep carbon synchros happy, so might just stick to OEM synchros then.

 

[fuel]

A couple of the parts from Japan were the firewall clips that had one extra spot for the clutch hydraulic hard line. As I had the strut bar off to replace vacuum lines I figured I may as well go ahead and fit the clutch hydraulic hard line while I had better access. It was a bit of a bitch to do in the Diamante wagon because I needed to remove the brake booster to route the line behind it, but thankfully on the Evo with the gearbox on the other side, it just runs along the firewall above the brake lines and then behind the ABS pump terminating just short of the battery tray.

You can hardly tell the hard line was partially bent to fit in my luggage from New Zealand to Canada haha

[fuel]

Bit late but here's the dyno video:

 

[shrike]

5 hours ago, fuel said:

Bit late but here's the dyno video:

 

Thats with the Auto still installed and the original turbo?

[fuel]

1 hour ago, shrike said:

Thats with the Auto still installed and the original turbo?

that's still auto but with a turbo from a manual Evo IX so a slight upgrade over the stock turbo. With a manual it should be around 350hp atw with those mods and boost

[mjrstar]

The manual conversion will certainly liven it up. Although your torque number is pretty good-must be the boost level.

My pretty close to stock evo with the evo 9 based td06-20g made 245 wheel kw at 20 psi. Still on factory cast manifold and down pipe, with the assistance of some kelford 264's. I think it went 257 wheel kw on the Dtech dyno but that number might be a bit "happy"

I did put some slightly agressive lean spool targets into it to help with the bottom end which saw it make 200kw by 4000 rpm.

 

It seems like a lot of people disable the factory lean spool, or raise the limit.. but for a street car tuned by someone that knows what they are doing I reckon there is gains to be made../dyor

[fuel]

Small updoot while I'm still procrastinating getting the box back together, let alone in. Ordered some door sill plastics - or 'scuff plates' as Mitsubishi calls them - for the MR model and they just turned up. 

 

The existing regular non-MR scuff plates:

 

Installed:

 

And the blue protective film removed:

 

I'm working my way through adding 'MR' bits to it when I can - they have the following:

- The above-mentioned scuff plates
- Black shadow chrome headlamp housings - I'll probably just paint my existing headlamps
- Red stitching on the seats - too expensive to find MR interior that looks otherwise the same, might just add red stitching to my good condition original seats
- Gloss piano black dash and door trim inserts - I actually don't like these, I'll stick with my original 'carbon fibre look' items
- Different front lip - I went with the Ralliart style lip anyway
- MR badge on the tailgate and also 'Evolution MR' badge on the centre console below the shifter (only on manual cars) - I purchased these in my parts from Japan haul and will wait til I've done majority of MR parts swap before I even think of fitting these

 

[fuel]

So the input shaft now has the new 3rd/4th gear hub & slider installed but I've been procrastinating putting the box back together. The synchros seemed all good so I left them as they are, hopefully wont regret that later. Installed new synchro keys and springs though as they were cheap enough.

In the meantime I ticked off another MR item by pulling apart my headlamps and painting the housings - I used VHT nite-shades over top of the original chrome in order to mimic the OEM shadow chrome look and it seems to have come out alright.

Bumper off for the 7th time this year, headlights out and apart:

 

 

[fuel]

Popped out the indicator lenses, masked up the park lamp area and sprayed a couple light coats:

 

Reassembled:

 

and refitted to the car:

[fuel]

I still need to give the lenses a little bit of a polish as they are starting to yellow and have a bunch of cracks that show up when light shines through

 

Also decided to put the front plate bracket back on the bumper (needed to pull the bumper off to fit the nuts on the backside) because I dunno how much longer I can chance it with not running a front plate. I'm going to epoxy the nuts on the rear making them captive and that way I can quickly remove the front plate when I cross the border into the US where they don't care about a front plate.

[fuel]

Some daylight pics after polishing the lenses and fitting the bumper back on for good. Have made the plate bracket mounting nuts captive so can easily remove in future.