theCARhack

The quality of Ohlins dampers is well known-- some of the best (and most expensive) sport bikes in the world have Ohlins suspensions as standard issue. As you can see here the kit is beautifully machined and well constructed:

Here's a shot of the rear units pre-assembled:

Since the EVO has strut assemblies at all four corners, swapping them out with new units is pretty straightforward. The key of course is to pre-assemble the new struts with the utmost of care and attention to detail, making sure all setting and torques are proper. Once the Ohlins kit was pre-assembled, we were able to install them on the car:

Notice that we cleaned the mating surfaces, especially where the new camber plates meet the body. It is very important to make sure not to have any road grit between the surfaces!

Since we specialize in suspension tuning, the install was pretty standard for us. The brake ducts on the other hand took a great deal of time and finessing. There is very little room between the front of the car where the air inlets are installed to the brake rotors, where the air is ultimately delivered. The install of the ducts required the removal of the entire front fascia, belly pan and parts of the wheel wells just to gain access to the routing of the duct work.

Here you see us making some modifications to the fascia in order to mount the air inlets:

On the passenger side we had to cut an oval through the air conditioning duct:

You can see that the space is tight. Our major concern was to route the duct from the inlet to the brake without it being pinched or rubbing up against anything and allowing enough slack so that the wheels can be turned lock to lock.

Our final upgrade for this project was to swap the OEM rotors, pads, brake lines and fluid for some higher performance kit. Thanks to the car being a daily driver and track car, the brakes were caked with a great deal of dust, dirt and clag. As always we first gave everything a thorough cleaning before we installed the new parts-- this adds time, but we will not install new parts on dirty surfaces, especially when you're dealing with safety itmes like the brakes! Some of the brake components, such as the piston dust boots, are in pretty bad shape and will need to be replaced some time soon. And as is typical, the new brake lines didn't fit into the stock holders, so some fab work had to be done as well as cleaning the tar from the too small mounting brackets.

This EVO is now ready for some track action with its new high end suspension and thoroughly upgraded braking system. We can't wait to see what's next on the customer's list of projects...