It’s science, really.
If you put a group of gearheads in one garage with piles of car parts, ~20 cans of paint, more tools than your local Sears, and a bare chassis, it’s expected that a car will materialize. This week (affectionately dubbed “Hell Week”) found all members of Professional Awesome working at full capacity. The cage, interior and engine bay all received their final coats of paint, with the green cage surely being the focal point of the car for many race and showgoers, I mean come on, it’s GREEN (seriously, like GREEN, not just green or even Green, but GREEN). The interior received some pretty neat little updates in the form of relocated trunk/fuel door controls, a grip taped driver’s area, neatly organized and trimmed wiring, and some inventive driver’s seat rails, necessary to fit Dan’s stretched frame.
On the drivetrain side of things, Grant finished up the engine preparation yesterday after Dan’s Hail Mary drive up to Exedy headquarters in Michigan to find one of the last remaining rebuild kits available in stock. On that note, a special thanks to Paul Kapoor for putting Dan up for the night; without him, Dan would’ve had to sleep in the Insight outside of Exedy’s offices and that didn’t really seem like a favorable option.
With the clutch installed, the team then attached the transmission and transfercase (which were prepared by TRE, our favorite transmission shop/builder/font of transmission-related knowledge) and used some unorthodox thinking to install the package. In a feat of strength, Dan and Little Dan (our resident man-model) lifted the Evolution chassis above the engine and transmission to aid Grant and Mike’s install; I sadly missed this whole event due to work and therefore no pictures were taken, but if there’s enough demand, we can stage another chassis lift for our fans. With the Evolution located above the engine, the chassis was then unceremoniously dropped carefully lowered onto the subframe and engine cradle.
Some of you may be asking “Professional Awesome, what did you decide to do to remedy Mitsubishi’s super spongy engine mounts?” and we’re glad you asked! Thanks to our friends at BLOX Racing, we are the proud owners of a very handsome CNC machined engine mount, complete with high-durometer polyurethane bushing! Since only the front engine mount is currently available from BLOX, we had to make due with the tried and true “inject the factory mounts with as much seam sealer as possible” method to stiffen up the two main engine mounts. While comfort may be completely thrown out the window, our engine won’t be going anywhere, so we’ll be able to transfer all of the Evolution’s power to the ground, where it belongs.
While the Evolution still isn’t finished, it’s much, much closer to seeing track duty. All that remains is to get our Hankooks mounted to our freshly powdercoated 5Zigen Proracer FN01R-C Hot Version (mouthful, that one) wheels, install our slick KW Competition suspension setup, and then put the Evo through its standard track-prep paces.
I just love it when a plan comes together.