Getting rid of the Bling to Give it Some Sting, Project Mistubishi EVO VIII

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Project Evo EngineProject Evo Intercooler
The engine done by XS Engineering is part of the car welikewe also like the mean looking XS front mount IC

Deconstruction

Perhaps the worst part of working on project EVO so far has been removing the graphics.  Pepsi apparently used some really high quality vinyl which sticks tenaciously to the cars paint.  It only peels off in tiny chucks with great effort.  We try heating the surface up using a blow dryer which overheats after a few hours and shorts out angering the significant other, whoops.  We buy her a new hair dryer and break out the heat gun which we use very carefully, least the paint gets blistered.  This works but the vinyl leaves a gummy residue.  At the advice of one of our graphics professional friends, we take the gooey stuff off with goof off.  This takes forever making our fingers hurt.  Soon whenever our office has vistors, we make each of them remove one sticker from the EVO before they can leave.  Removing every decal and stripe takes over two weeks!

Project Evo Sparco Seats
The interior has some cool Sparco Torino seats with the door panels and rear seats custom upholstered to match

Once the car was down to bare paint, it was time to fix the damage that three years of storage in a shop did to the paint and body.  Jeff Magill from Beach Cities Paintless Dent Repair went over the EVO’s body removing the scores of dings it accumulated while stored and in everyone’s way in a very busy shop. Cypress Auto Spa, removed the scores of embedded metal partials that the cars paint picked up from the shop air with clay bars and buffed the finish back into life which had been pretty badly hazed with the harsh chemical goof off.

Project Evo Paintless Dent RemovalProject Evo Paintless Dent Removal
Jeff Magill works his magic on Project EVO’s dinged exteriorDon’t try this at home kids, but Jeff really knows his stuff

The next step was to remove the stereo system.  Although this may sound like sacrilege to many of you, we personally hate big boom boom stereo systems and this isnt Dub Magazine. The huge speaker boxes, amplifiers and neon lights were removed along with the nitrous bottle.  Many pounds of random wire were removed from the cars interior as well.  The Nitrous solenoids, lines and jets were removed and the holes plugged in the intake manifold.  This removed several hundred lbs from the car.  It immediately felt much faster and nimbler.  We will be putting some sort of stereo back in the car but it will only use the door and deck speakers and probably just use an internal or single amp.

Project Evo StereoProject Evo StereoProject Evo Stereo
Bling Bling look at my bumping whip yo, not…Steven Quinn disassembles the junk in da trunkOut of there, the wire were another huge pile

 

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