Project Evo IX - Tech

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Project Evo IX - Tech

We're only into the second installment of Project Evo IX and we're already changing autocross classes. Why? One simple word: boost.
The plan is to build a simple, daily driven rocket we can have fun in while autocrossing and at the track. Because you only need four wheels and the ability to not explode when at an open track event, we've decided to focus on a particular autocross class and drive it with that set-up. Originally, we were aiming for the Street Touring U (STU) class, which is perfect for those minor modders wanting a little more than stock. Common STU mods include 245-width street tires (real 140 treadwear street tires, not 'streetable' R-compounds), full coilovers, piggyback ECUs and catback exhausts-but no increase in boost. That was the problem right there. At first we thought we'd be OK with a near stock-engine Evolution IX, but after a few rides and drives in Evo VIIIs and IXs with greater modifications, we knew we were smoking crack. Pure, unadulterated crack. Truly the good stuff.
Having an Evolution, or any other turbo car for that matter, and not turning up the boost is a crime on a par with triple homicide. Some mods allowed under STU, such as an exhaust, will raise the boost level a tick, due to the freer flow. But there's no replacement for an actual boost controller and the proper ECU tuning that goes with such an increase. So we're making the move up to Street Prepared, or more specifically, B Street Prepared (BSP). Luckily, all modifications from STU are allowed in BSP, so no changes had to be made since the first installment of Project Evo IX.
It always pays to pore over the SCCA Solo rulebook (found at www.scca.org) when aiming for any particular class; it's no fun being bumped up classes in a 120hp Civic and having to take on tube-framed, huge-winged, Modified-class cars. Street Prepared sounds like the perfect stomping ground for those owners who are a little more serious about modifying. A BSP Lancer Evolution IX should be fully capable of punching through the 350 wheel-hp mark, while pulling well over 1g in the corners and retaining sufficient civility to be used as a daily driver. Pick a non-obnoxious muffler and you'll be flying stealth.
In accordance with BSP rules, Project Evo IX will retain the stock turbo and brakes, but will receive a custom coilover suspension, an increase in boost, a turboback exhaust, urethane suspension bushings, wider wheels and, unfortunately, race tires and gas. We say 'unfortunately' because of the price. Unleaded gasoline of any octane is allowed in BSP, as well as any DOT-approved race tire of any size. If you really want to win and take it to the limit of the rulebook, you'll be running fresh Hoosiers or Kumho V710s (285-width for an Evo), and a minimum of 100-octane. With the size of our wallets, that's not going to be happening any time soon.
Anyway, we hadn't planned on taking on the SCCA Solo 2 National Championships just yet, so it doesn't bother us that we aren't packing the maximum heat for our class. At the regional autocross level, we should be fine.
To the grip- and power-hungry staff at SCC, the first logical mods should be more rubber, a stiffer suspension and loads of boost. Going, turning and stopping are the most important things to improve on any car, right? Yes, but we thought it important to first touch upon safety equipment-a subject with more rumors and lies surrounding it than the Hollywood gossip page.
According to the 2008 SCCA Solo rulebook, section 15.2, part F, BSP allows the change of both front seats to fully upholstered buckets, as long as each bucket-and-seatrail combo weighs at least 20 pounds and uses the stock mounting holes. This is great news for cars with heavy, bulky seats stuffed full of useless features only grandmas will appreciate. Sorry Grandma, but the triple-axis adjustment motors and seat warmers have to go. Wherever possible, lighter is better.
Tired of using our knees to hold us up in turns, we made the switch on the driver's side to a fully bucketed Sparco Evo (get it?) seat. We purposely left the passenger seat stock because the Evo IX's Recaro seats are pretty good for street use, aren't weighed down by useless functions and we don't really give a hoot if the passenger has to hold on to the 'oh shit' bar on the autocross course. The Evo seat is a perfect fit for those with a waist size between 31 to 34 inches; any larger and the Evo 2 (+1.25-inch width compared to Evo) or Evo 3 (+2.5-inch compared to Evo) seat would be a better fit.
Fitting a racing seat is usually a long and annoying task that can soak up a full afternoon, just for a single seat. Seat bracket jigs are just about the most warped and bent pieces of junk on the planet. Every time we've ever attempted to install a seat bracket, it usually involves bending, aligning, grinding and cursing. Then there's the abnormally high ride height that comes from installing a seat bracket, seat rails, side mounts and then- finally-the bucket itself. So it came as quite a pleasant surprise when we tried out the Buddy Club seat rail and everything slipped into place correctly. The Buddy Club rail also integrates the sliding mechanism and side mount right on top of the welded brackets, so the seat is mounted at a reasonably low height and it won't feel like driving an SUV with a bucket. It may seem like we're dwelling too much on what is, in essence, a seat bracket, but this is honestly like discovering a hidden goldmine in our backyard. In our opinion, this is one of the best products made by Buddy Club.
The SCCA Solo rulebook section 13.2, part I dictates that: "driver restraints are allowed. A horizontal 'harness bar' may be used as part of the installation hardware for allowed driver restraints". In accordance to that rule, we added an M1 Fabrication & Development harness bar and Takata sixpoint driver's safety harness. The M1 bar is hand fabricated and TIG-welded, with highquality rod ends in all the support rods. The Takata was chosen not because of its green JDM-pimp factor, but because of its National Auto Sport Association (NASA) HPDE and racing-required FIA rating that has a legal life cycle more than twice as long as SFI-rated belts. The fact that it's been proven in the ALMS with Highcroft Racing's Acura LMP2 prototype is just a bonus.
But wait a minute, the SCCA Solo rulebook section 13.2, part H also states: "roll bars and roll cages may be added." And you've probably read on the Internet, that storehouse of all things true and undeniable, all sorts of conflicting information about the proper use and installation of roll cages, roll bars, harness bars and harnesses.
The first things to understand about using a bucket seat and safety harness in a production car are their purpose. The obvious advantage of a bucket seat is the increased holding of the occupant against lateral g-forces. And the safety harness provides constant tension to keep the occupant squarely within the seat. For reference, sixpoint harnesses are recommended by the NASA rulebook for cars "where the driver is seated in an upright (to 30 degrees) or semi-reclining position." You can't run in NASA with only a four-point harness. It must be a five-, six- or seven-point harness. For this reason, the car won't be taking any passengers onto the racetrack.
For a safety harness to function correctly, attention must be paid to the mounting angles of the belts and to the position of the length adjusters when belted in fully. This is also the reason why NASA requires that shoulder harnesses be supported by "specific harness guide bars, or parts of the chassis or the cage."
Despite whatever mounting method your cousin's mailman may have spied at the local import nights show, no real sanctioning body will allow you to drive without properly supported shoulder belts. To ensure the shoulder belts maintain a consistent proper angle with the driver's shoulders, a harness bar, roll bar or roll cage must be used.
And roll cages only belong in one place: racecars. The human body is a soft, fleshy sack of cells, able to stretch a surprisingly large amount from the phenomenal force of a car accident. It doesn't matter how far away you may think you're sitting from the halo bar; if you're not going to be wearing a helmet all the time, don't drive a car that has metal bars in the cabin.
Unless you like smashing your face into a metal rod and splattering it like a watermelon hitting the pavement, don't use a roll cage in your daily driver.
So then, the choice for an autocrossing street car comes down to a roll bar or a harness bar. Cheaper than a roll bar, harness bars are also much easier to install. Both bars necessitate the sacrifice of the back seat (as a roll cage would), but roll bars offer rollover protection versus a simple harness bar. For those in advanced open track sessions or time trial competition, a roll bar is the better option. Just be sure to do a proper job of installing some manner of force-dissipating backing plates or supports to the underside of the roll bar, lest it punch right through the thin floor panel during an actual rollover.
There are some e-thugs floating around the Internet who are only too ready to provide claims that a bucket will not drop backward in an accident like a stock seat (which would allow you to dodge a collapsing roof), and that a harness will keep you stuck upright in a rollover and, thusly, dead. To those geniuses-please stop stealing all our air.
The purpose of a modern OEM-designed occupant safety system is to prevent cabin intrusion (no collapsing roofs), hold the occupants within the cabin (no ejecting from the car), and upright within the primary (seatbelt) and secondary (airbag) safety systems. OEM engineers don't like unknown variables and factory seats are designed specifically not to have the seatback fail and fall back. This would send an occupant's body away from both the seatbelt and airbag, and allow them to bounce around inside the cabin, with untested effects.
Even worse is the myth that harnesses don't allow you to move around and duck in the event of a rollover, as a factory three-point belt would. Much like the previous scenario, cars are designed to keep the occupant upright and in the proper seating position, in front of the airbag and held by the seatbelt. Plus, in a car crash, it's highly unlikely that you'll even be able to think fast enough to duck if your car is rolling over. Speaking with a few Mitsubishi OEM safety engineers and an employee of Sparco USA has only reinforced our beliefs.
For autocross use, we found the combination of a six-point driver's and four-point passenger's (stock Evo seats don't have a pass-through to mount crotch belts correctly) safety harness and harness bar to be the best compromise of safety, cost, and ease of installation. We went with Takata and M1 because of the quality of craftsmanship in both brands. The only real snag with installing safety harnesses into a Lancer is the center console and the lap belt mounting. We used a set of three-bar brackets from old scrap harnesses to convert the Takata's shoulder harnesses from snap-in to wrap-around, and used Takata's included eyebolts (with appropriate Takata backing plates where required) to mount the crotch belt and lap belt. All these mounting points must be attached to the chassis-not to the seat. Harness anchoring points cannot be bolted onto the seat bracket, holes must be drilled into the car itself. This is a big pain, one we weren't especially looking forward to, because we had to break out the tape measure and right-angle drill to tackle Project Evo IX's center tunnel lap belt eyebolt, whose normal position is hidden by the center console's trim.
After installing our new Sparco seat and Takata harnesses, we had Project Evo IX tinted. But not with that hip, darkened, drug cartel leader look. We went with 3M's new Crystalline window tinting film (used with great success on Project WRX V.08). Prescription Windshield's Jeffrey Kalmar made the trip from Arizona to California and applied the now-released 3M tint. The Crystalline tint is perfectly clear, yet blocks over 99 percent of UV rays. This is important because UV rays from sunlight will deteriorate harness belt webbing and fade racing seat upholstery over time. It's a bonus that the 3M Crystalline tint is invisible and imperceptible when applied-useful for avoiding unnecessary police attention and for a clear view of whatever cars we happen to be leaving in our rear-view mirror. Even the front windshield of Project Evo IX is tinted with the 3M stuff, if you can believe it.
Autocross courses will not typically exceed freeway speeds and will often run much slower than that. The real fun of SCCA Solo events is adjusting to a new course layout quickly and feeling the constant, at-the-limit loading of the car's suspension and handling. There is also minimal risk of a rollover, due to the flat, open areas favored by SCCA regions.
Entering open track events, time trials or time attacks with a street car is a whole different proposition. Factory cars are designed and tested in rollover situations with street speeds and conditions in mind. But hit a racetrack with a fast car, where speeds can easily top 100mph, and you're looking at something OEM engineers didn't plan for. If you're barreling down the front straight at 120mph and suddenly get a little bit more than 'too sideways', there's really no way to tell how the roof structure will hold up if the car rolls. In these cases, we can't honestly recommend a harness bar over a roll bar or roll cage. If you're going autocrossing or just want to install a harness, at least get a harness bar and a five-point. Don't just grab an eBay special and run it to the back seat. If you go on the racetrack quite a bit, get a roll bar. If you're truly scared for your life and can make the full commitment, cage your car and buy a tow vehicle. If everything in this article sounds like too much for you, buy a $42 CG-Lock seatbelt locker (www.cg-lock.com), keep the stock seat and seatbelt, and blow the rest on tacos.
Cost breakdown MSRP *Takata MPH341 four-point racing harness $400.00 *Takata CS361 six-point crotch belt $95.00 *Takata shoulder pads (pair) $95.00 *Sparco Evo seat $699.00 *Buddy Club Racing Spec seat rail $159.00 *M1 Fabrication & Development harness bar $380.00 *3M Crystalline window tint installation (including windshield) $659.99

Photo Gallery: Project Evo IX - Tech - Sport Compact Car Magazine

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