THE BOTTOM LINE

Now armed with nearly 30-percent more power than factory issue (310.4 wheel horsepower versus the original 242.3 wheel horsepower), our Project EVO is beginning to shine. Even the tuner is excited. According to Eric Hsu of XS Engineering, “this car is making excellent power, especially considering that we haven’t added aftermarket camshafts yet. In fact it’s the most powerful stock cam car that we have tuned so far. The current tune-up is set up for everyday street abuse, but we did see up to 330 horsepower during dyno tuning with this EVO. However, I wouldn’t let the car leave here in that state of tune because we believe in a nice margin of safety. I pulled back the timing and added a little more fuel to ensure reliability. I’m looking forward to tuning this car with cams and ignition and seeing how much more that we can get.”

The Next Step

A pair of aftermarket camshafts, an ignition upgrade, a grounding system and an aftermarket O2 housing will comprise the upgrades that are going to round out the rest of the Level One buildup. Our target will be to see if we can crank the power up to the plus-40%-power over stock. That would mean that we’ll need to eclipse the 340 mark on the XS Engineering 4WD dyno. Will the right set of cams, a high-performance ignition and some more tuning of the HKS FCN V Pro make our dream a reality? Stay tuned.