My 2014 Evo X Build Part I
Collin's 2014 Evo X Build Journal:
Picked up a brand new and the last wicked white Evo x gsr in Oregon on November 21st 2014 at Gladstone Mitsubishi. It was my very first brand new car and I previously owned an 06 sti. I decided to switch to the Evo because it seemed a little truer to the motorsports enthusiast who didn't need all the comfort of the new sti but would rather have a reliable track car with great tuning capabilities.
Picture the salesman sent me.
Anyways brought the car home and drove it for about 700 miles before changing the oil to mobil-1 0w-40. I don't get why Mitsubishi doesn't put synthetic oil in them from the factory? Anyways broke the car in for about 1000 miles before ever really driving it what I call hard. All the necessities for a successful oil change. (Also I work for POWER Auto Group hence the new license plate)
After break in I drove it to work and back every now and then but for the most part just kept it clean and inside the garage while the weather turned sour. Finally when spring rolled around I de-badged the trunk and took it up for its free complimentary oil change which I demanded synthetic oil be used in the car so they put in Mobil-1 5w-30 synthetic. Thanks Gladstone!
So I was at about 2000+ miles at this point and decided to sign up for a track day about a month away at Oregon Raceway Park. This was a test and tune day with passing in all corners and was only open to drivers with documented experience so it was very laid back and extremely fun! Anyways to prepare for this event I bought ATE Type 200 brake fluid, AMS stainless steel brake lines, and for brake pads I went with Carbotech XP-12's in the front and XP-10's in the rear. As well picked up a Cobb white shift knob.
Install party at Massee Farms Tuning the Friday night before ORP. It wouldn't be a track day without late night modifications.
The morning of ORP was the Sunday after daylight savings so we had a very nice sunrise to start the day.
Since the ORP day I have done an auto x event with the car and had a ton of fun with it in general. One thing I did notice at the ORP day was I literally could not hear my car when driving next to all of the other loud cars. So I started to search for an exhaust but everything was super expensive so I decided to just lurk around the local Evo facebook groups until I found an ETS V2 catback up in Vancouver for $300. However other people had jumped on it as well so I decided to pm the owner and offered him $400 if I could pick it up the next day. He said yes. So I got this. He had run over a plastic bag and it melted onto the exhaust. So with a half hours worth of work and a lot of elbow grease I cleaned it up and installed it.
Was it even really installed if you don't make an exhaust video?
I drove the car like this for a couple months and then decided that I wanted just a little bit more power as well to have the ability to monitor the cars status. So I went up to Cobb Tuning's first Thursday event and picked up their stage 1 kit at 10% off.
Mounted it up and re-flashed it to stg 1 lwg
This is where the car currently sits just over 5,000 miles and a little over 6 months of ownership. I am very happy with the car and it is a great daily driver. I planned at this point to just enjoy the car and participate in more motorsports events. I will continue on with part II of this build here in a little bit but I think for now this is a good stopping point.