From Repo Lot to Track Monster: Developing an EVO VIII for NASA Time Trial

The charismatic Lancer Evolution VIII still pulls at the heartstrings of those of a certain age who were fortunate enough to live through a time when the rally-bred all-wheel drive vehicles were novel compared with European sports sedans.

The Lancer Evolution had not made it stateside until the eighth iteration was released, but the prior decade had been good for tuning its predecessor. The Galant VR-4, the Mitsubishi Eclipse, and the Eagle Talon all shared a similar powertrain to the Evo VIII, and they had all been around long enough stateside to give the American tuners a leg up on the new wave of Japanese rally sedans.

In the early 2000s, competent tuners who knew these cars were still few and far between. NASA Arizona driver Tony Szirka, who’d come up tuning cars first in Arizona before moving to Phoenix in 2002, was sought after. One of the shops he had been subcontracted to introduced him to this Evo VIII.

The owner had big dreams, but lacked the means to realize them. Eventually, after this 2003 Evo VIII was repossessed, Szirka picked it up by taking over its payments.

For the honeymoon phase, Szirka used it mainly as a road car, though it was certified to run at the drag strip with a roll cage fitted around the retained interior.

There was already an AEM ECU, a bigger turbo, a stroker engine, and 670 horsepower at the wheels, but putting that power to the pavement proved challenging because the car continually broke, and the best ever ET was in the low-11s. For all the power it made, it couldn’t make good use of it. It just kept breaking.

Frightening From the Start

In terms of footwork, the car was quite competent from factory. With the help of Hawk HP Street pads, the factory Brembo four-pots were up to the task of stopping a novice road racer, even if the car had a ton of power. The 18-inch x 9.5-inch Sparco Racing NS 06 wheels, Nitto NT01 tires, and KSport coilovers provided Szirka with a budget setup that allowed him to learn the road course ropes.

He started running HPDE events and quickly became a fixture in the NASA Arizona scene before moving into Time Trial after being accused of terrorizing the new blood. Local director Tage Evanson urged him to find a more suitable setting for his speed and his ambitions. “[Evanson] said, ‘You’ve got to stop terrorizing these guys in HPDE4!’” Szirka recalled.

Szirka took this advice, added a set of 13” Baer big brakes, and bought a transponder. “That’s when I realized how slow I was,” he admitted. Now among seasoned drivers who were not relying on horsepower alone, he recognized that having a drag motor in his car only did so much good.

Driving development came naturally, with rudimentary lap timers, but not from a particularly observant approach. Szirka played to his tuning strengths, and continued studying what made these cars capable on the road course. “The logical path [for me] was to make changes to cars and refer to the stopwatch for confirmation.”

One item to take note of was the Evo’s potential for easy weight reduction. Stepping into Time Trial pushed him to pull as much weight as he could from the car. Out came the drag cage and in went a full road racing cage. Following that, he began cutting up the front to increase the ease of servicing, and with a little fiberglass bodywork, eventually brought the weight down to a respectable 2,870 pounds without driver.

As he was forced to push harder, it became clear how the engine setup at the time didn’t suit the road course – especially a technical track like Phoenix International Raceway, which, with its fiddly infield, should be home ground for a nimble all-wheel drive car.

Look Alive

The first turbocharger was not at all what even a seasoned Evo drag racer would consider usable. The Garrett T67 on an open-volute long-runner T3 manifold, matched to a set of Tomei P280° cams, made gobs of top-end power. However, even with a stroked 2.3-liter engine spooling that turbo, it was a three-Mississippi-count between depressing the throttle and getting any appreciable boost.

The big turbo was the first item Szirka changed to try to gain more usable midrange. With a Garrett 3071R installed, he gained some response, but not as much as he expected – and certainly not enough to make up for a power drop somewhere into the mid-400s. Cranking the boost and receiving a powerful midrange jolt worked for a while until he learned the limit of mean piston speed and noodled a rod.

After that frustrating attempt at making his drag motor manageable, Szirka went back to the drawing board to build a motor that would suit the road course.

The first major rebuild gave Szirka a chance to exercise some of his creativity. He reverted to stock stroke with a longer connecting rod, since a wide power band was what he was after.

He used a block from another member of the 4G family: the slightly larger 4G64 used in an array of sedans and minivans made for the Japanese market. This widely available variant displaces 2.4 liters and accepts all the Lancer Evolution’s ancillary bolt-ons.

The insistence on having a healthy midrange wouldn’t have to limit the top-end, necessarily. A four-valve Evo 9 4G63T MiVec head, as well as the stock Evo VIII crank to de-stroke the motor, allowed for a dependable 8,700 redline.

The real breakthrough on the induction side of things came in the form of a Full Race twin-scroll manifold with smaller runners and a newer GT35R Garrett turbo.

“Twin scroll manifolds like these really suite a four-cylinder’s firing order due to the opposing cylinder pairing limiting the effect of the exhaust pulses interfering with the cylinder evacuation on the exhaust stroke,” Szirka said. “Even though the new turbo was a larger 35-frame, it spooled nearly 1,000 revs earlier than the 3071R did and still made another 200 horsepower!”

Having two volutes working independently helped avoid frustrating light-switch power delivery as was the case with the previous manifold, which needed to saturate its single volute before much action was seen at the turbine wheel. Above its boost threshold, the transient response had increased significantly, allowing for some throttle modulation where there was none available before the change.

Incredibly, the stock cooling system proved adequate on warm spring afternoons, though Szirka admits his relative lack of experience had something to do with the motor’s stamina.

“I wasn’t on the throttle nearly as early as a more advanced driver would be,” he acknowledged.

Econobox Blues

The weight distribution of an economy car designed for stability doesn’t make it the most adjustable machine on the road course. Its traction advantage is really only useful up to a point, and it’s clear that, in stock trim, the Evo is at its best in tight, technical sections. At triple-digit speeds, the 63 percent of its overall weight hanging over its snub nose is hard to ignore.

“The push is limiting in fast corners like Buttonwillow’s Riverside. There, my minimum speed is only 105 mph – pretty slow for something that laps the 13CW config in 1:44.7!”

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The workaround is two-sided. Early on Szirka recognized the need for occasional midcorner lifts and left-foot braking, as well as showing real care when trail-braking. “The hardest part is getting it rotated enough – not too much or too little.”

A splitter rework has helped the aero balance, but the front-heavy nose still limits the car’s adjustability at the limit.

No surprise, considering it’s inclined to power-on understeer. If boost is delivered before the Evo has finished pointing in the intended direction, then the lap isn’t necessarily trashed. There is some flexibility, though. “I can lift before I run out of road, but the window is pretty narrow. It’s easy to fall out of boost in that situation, but not a given.”

So not only must he be careful not to ask too much too soon, nor lift enough post-error to totally castrate the turbo impeller speed, he has to know how to prime the motor for the best possible launch off the corner. Getting the most from four driven wheels takes a surprising amount of foresight and coordination.

Engine response is, even with the modern tech, pretty lazy by modern standards. Even on a divided manifold, the current motor and turbo setup do take a bit of preemptive throttle matting to get the most from them. “I enter the corner hot, scrub some speed on my way to the apex, and at the right moment, well before the apex, I floor it. If I time everything right, then I get the turbo to light at the right time and I won’t have to modulate to manage the exit.”

Not surprisingly, balancing all of this is challenging. To improve his odds of securing a strong corner exit, he’s done what he can to make the chassis a little looser. Anything that helps straighten the car a little sooner.

With the addition of Wisefab’s kinematics kit, he increased the rear motion ratio by moving the damper closer to the wheel and thereby having a more direct effect of the spring and damping. This has made it possible to soften the front even more to increase front grip.

As far as setup variability goes, he focuses on toe settings mainly. Shorter tracks benefit from some toe-out to facilitate rotation at corner entry, but at any circuit with longer straights, Szirka prioritizes acceleration – the car’s greatest strength – and runs zero toe to avoid any scrubbing down the straighter parts of the track. The resulting acceleration, especially out of slower corners, needs to be seen.

Play to Your Strengths

To not take advantage of the tech available with this platform would be a mistake, and Szirka removed the mechanical center differential and replaced it with an ACD Active Center Differential available in later USDM Evo VIIIs and IXs. Crucially, this helps send more torque to the rear axle so that it drives off the corner a little more like a rear-drive vehicle.

The current engine uses the same tall 4G64 architecture as the previous iteration, but sleeved to a stock 85mm bore and a 94mm stroker crank (compared to the factory 88mm unit). To achieve the desirable midrange after, he’s used a MIVEC head and 10.5:1 compression.

The turbocharger picked for this iteration ought to bring output closer to the 800 horsepower-mark: the Garrett G40-1150. “If it’s not good enough in transient response, I’ll use a 75-shot of nitrous to help it spool!”

Any driver, even a jockey-sized one, will improve the car’s weight distribution if they’re sat closer to the center of the car. Tony, a larger gentleman, believes it’s vital. “I’m a fat guy, and I make up nearly 10 percent of the car’s weight now that it’s been stripped.”

For that reason, he’s mounted his seat slightly behind the b-pillar, 14” rearward of stock and extended the steering column the same 14” to meet him. Along with that, he’s relocated the fuel tank ahead of the rear axle and even mounted a radiator in the rear. All this to try and better balance the econocar-come-time attacker.

The latest iteration of the car will feature a paddle-shifted sequential, Continental ABS, an Emtron KV8 ECU, drive-by-wire ITBs using a dual-plenum intake and dual injectors, a rear-mounted radiator and fuel cell, StopTech brakes, and lots of carbon to prove that a drag car, when tuned correctly, is a force to be reckoned with on road courses.