The Impossible Evo X: Part 1 – An Introduction

Let’s make it a daily

With the intake and exhaust squared away, it was time to start working towards daily driver perfection. First on the list was to polish the pitted headlights. Mother’s supports the Pro Awe team with cleaning goodies and I swiped a Mother’s NuLens Headlight Renewal Kit from the garage when the teammates weren’t looking. I used the kit to turn the milky lenses into reasonably clear, usable lights. I’m not the most patient polisher, so better can likely be achieved, but it’s good enough for who it’s for, at least for now.

The car also came with a single key and no fob. Ladies and gentlemen, this was a fancy-ass car in its day with both keyless entry and start. Without a fob, these features wouldn’t work. Unacceptable. That being said, if it’s not obvious from the amount of parts I grifted from our partners, getting a new fob from Mitsubishi wasn’t in the financial cards. Enter Amazon. They have OEM looking key fobs that are said to work without issue. I purchased a pair of fobs, took them to Mitsubishi and they promptly bricked them, citing that they were un-programmable. They wouldn’t refund my money, told me they marked the Evo as “modified” in the car’s history and told me to go fly a kite. Screw that dealership in particular.

Back to Amazon, I purchased a scan tool compatible with the Evo X that promised I could program fobs. I got to work and with a little learning, I sure as hell programmed the “un-programmable” keys that Mitsubishi struggled with. The scan tool was sold after use for what I had in it and my cheap-ass fix for the fobs was complete.

Let’s make it reliable

Next, the Evo X is known for a few weak areas, aside from the SST, that should be addressed. The early model Evo X’s have a timing chain that is known to stretch and with nearly 140k miles on the clock, I thought I’d get ahead of the game and install the later model chain. Along with the chain, I purchased metal idler pulleys intended for Hyundais that fix an issue of the OEM plastic pulleys failing and causing the Evo to kick off its serpentine belt. All work was done by Professional Awesome team mechanic, Grant Davis. He is also the owner of PA Motorsports and if you find yourself in Indiana, needing the best work possible accomplished, give him a ring. I know what you’re thinking, although I am cheap, I did pay for all of his time, so suck it.

While Grant was working on everything, we swapped out the Garrett GTX3076R Gen 1 turbocharger that came on the car. Why would I remove this? I had/have intentions of time-attacking this car in Gridlife’s Street class category, which requires a turbo original to Evos. A new to me OEM Evo X turbo was remarkably cheap and selling the GTX3076R would help my bank account in the process.

While doing this work, Grant spotted an oil leak that turned out to be a poor sealing job on the oil pan. Whoever worked on the car had used quality parts, but was blessed with sub-par ability. Grant noted that they just didn’t seem to know what they were doing. A few missing parts here, a few loose bolts there, etc… etc… No matter, Grant squared everything away in the process.