The Pulse Racing Evo 8 Evolution

As is normally the case with new found power, you get used to it. I often joke that this is what keeps me in a job, yet as I’m finding out it also keeps me poor too. So it’s more power time, keen to shake the lame duck feeling we go for an EVO 9 Turbo, these are basically a slightly larger & more advanced design turbo than the std EVO 8 model & pretty much a straight bolt on. After tuning so many large cam equipped cars in the US I’m getting the urge for a bit more lope in the idle. My partner in crime in the US, Beau ,is also partners in a Camshaft company called Revolver Cams & he has sent me their latest baby 270 cams to try. Now you have to remember that by US standards baby doesn’t really mean small to everyone else in the world. For the mods we have at the moment this is probably over camed, but what the hell. We throw in a set of Adjustable cam pulleys so we can dial out some of the size of the cam if we have to. While we’re at it we throw on a Turbo XS bar & pla...

Now just to re-iterate the main purpose for this vehicle; 1. Obviously to have a truck load of fun with 2 To serve as a rolling ‘Test Bed’ for all types of parts & services Pulse Racing offer, so as we can confidently show our customers what’s possible to achieve with what mods. The first port of call for almost any EVO is the exhaust. Now if you’ve ever driven a std EVO for any length of time you’ll have a fairly good idea what I’m on about. Basically it’s to drown out the so called ‘sewing machine’ noise that comes out of the things, to move the noise from the Engine bay to the rear of the car (where it should be). Its just a 4G63 thing, they’re noisy, it feels like your giving the engine a hard time every time you give it even the slightest bit. The fact that the std Exhaust is restrictive & replacing it can give you a power boost is just an added bonus, it’s the noise we’re after. Enter TXS Exhaust pic So on went a Turbo dump back ‘Turbo XS’ 3inch stainles...

No sooner was the car home & the laptop was out. Those who know me will know that I cant leave anything std for long. I remember riding home my brand spanking new Honda Fireblade to a whole host of parts waiting to be installed. Yes I’m that bad, Im even straight barred from working on my wifes car (of course it NEEDS a Turbo luv, look at them hills). So onto the Dyno it goes, only to find that my lovely one owner/never thrashed car is a bit of a nugget. You know one of those Friday cars, it run low power in std & no matter how hard I tried I cant push it beyond 185Kw when similar cars still with std exhaust get close to 200 – bugger! Anyway off to the Drags we go for some baseline testing, managed a 12.8 @ 101 mph, not all bad so im slightly happy again.

Which model & why?? As with any car search, budget plays a huge role - I didn't want to blow it all and not have enough left to mod it all now did I. I originally looked at EVO 7's as this was my preferred shape as it looks slightly more modern than the 6's, and if I wanted all it needed was cosmetic changes and it could look like a 9. Black or Blue were to be the colours of choice, so this tended to narrow my options slightly. I looked over a stack of 7's ( almost all with 40K on the clock - go figure eh), yet most seemed poorly modified or heavily thrashed out. Even though i was planning to mod just about every inch of the car i still felt the need to source a good example. Then I found it! A one owner Black Aus spec EVO 8, slightly more costly than a 7, yet completely untouched, 40000Ks, log books and still under factory warranty. I had no chance of bargaining for this one, surely he could see I wanted it BAD! The deal was done!

Number 2 reason: After landing back in OZ I was inundated with people in need of a good Tuner. So as it was, Pulse Racing was born. One Customer in those early days was a rather unassuming Lady by the name of Angela, now Angela isn’t your every day housewife, no her ride of choice is a sweet black EVO 6.5 TME with large Trust Turbo kit & all the fruit. With a bit of Pulse Racing magic we got this thing to 315 Kw at the wheels, it was while road testing this crazy machine the deal was sealed, man is it a fun car. The speed, the sounds, I had to have one!

After tuning the badest Subaru’s for years, why an EVO? Good question, there were really 2 real reasons: After a 6 month stint Tuning in the US at SRM tuning (a predominately EVO shop in North California), I was astonished at the sheer amount of grunt we were able to push from the EVO’s with little or no Engine work. The fact that, at the request of more than one Mad American, we pushed these things to 30 Psi of boost on std donks, says their something of a special engine. I mean I’ve met some crazy Australians, but Americans beat us hands down for the number of guys ready to push their car to breaking point. Not to mention that the EVO gearbox & diff can handle a huge amount of punishment too! (Can you hears the sighs of the WRX owners). Yet the fun got even bigger when we built the engines, strokers, big Garrett turbo kits (fun, fun)..... This was number 1.