VIII
Well, here it is! I managed to find an Evo that I was happy with...
I am the third owner of this car. It's a 2003 and I picked it up from a town West of Illinois with exactly 69,000 miles on the clock a week ago yesterday. The guy I bought it from has another VIII and built this one for his fiance to drive, but things didn't work out and he needed to sell the car. He owned it for a year and only drove it about 1,000 miles in that time span. Here are the current modifications:
AMS Intake (Vibrant/K&N)
AMS Downpipe, Resonated Test Pipe
Megan Catback Exhaust, O2 Housing
Precision 880cc injectors, Walbro 255 fuel pump
ETS LICP, FMIC
Evo IX BOV
Forge MBC
Exedy Twin HD Clutch (Less than 500 miles)
GSC S1 Cams
Skunk2 Lowering springs
DEPO JDM Tails
XXR 527 Wheels
20% Tint
AEM Analog Wideband
Defi Boost Gauge
Before him it was owned by a doctor who also had a GTR and some sort of BMW. He only used it as a weekend car and it has never seen a winter from what I understand, so I almost feel bad driving it year-round in Michigan. I'm planning to take the necessary precautions to keep it as nice as I can though!
I like the cams and fuel system mods, so those should stay put. I'll be replacing the full exhaust, wheels, tail lights, and gauges for sure though. I'm picking up some stock wheels and snow tires this week and selling the XXR wheels and current tires. I'll be removing the tint soon as well.
Overall the car seems to run really well. I am pretty happy with the condition of everything, but there are a few things I need to address. It seems to have the heater control mechanism issue that many 03s had, so ironically the heat doesn't work very well right now in the car. I ordered the revised gears and control cable last week, so I should hopefully have the time to fix that by the end of the week. The trim around the shifter was painted black and the cig lighter/ash tray are missing, so those items are on order as well.
The gauges will be removed from the column (drives me insane lol) and the great Toby is going to make a center bezel setup for me with my Defi gauges from the 240. It'll probably take a while for him to fab that up though. I'm planning to do coilovers and wheels, but will probably wait until the spring to install those items. No sense in getting them all salty this winter if I don't need to.
Anyway, I really like the car so far! I think everyone expects this build to be insane like my 240 was, but I can't afford to go that wild on such an expensive car. I'll for sure add some goodies to it and clean things up a bit, but it's going to be a slow process.
Here are some quick snaps of the car I took this morning before I left to plate and register it:
Thanks for reading! I'll do a quick blurb about the story of bringing the car home in the next post.