Imitation Is The Sincerest Form Of Flattery. Sometimes It's Also The Best Source Of Inspiration
When the crew from GSC Motorsports traveled from their home base in Charleston, South Carolina to Phoenix for the GTLIVE event last spring, they had little idea of the project awaiting their return. GSC's in-house shoe, Leh Keen, went to GTLIVE to take part in GT-class competition piloting a Porsche. Yes, the 23-year-old is that good. But it wasn't a Porsche that sent the GSC guys spinning, it was the Sun Automotive Cyber Evo VII.
From the outside, the Cyber Evo looks like a standard-issue track car, only its massive wing and Voltex canards betraying any hint of its rank as Japan's second-fastest time attack car. Built to challenge the HKS carbon-everything Evo that holds fastest lap at the Tsukuba Circuit shrine of speed (0:54:739), the Cyber Evo-owned by a wrenchhead dentist and driven by Eiji Tarzan Yamada-came within one second of rewriting that record (0:55:801).
And Tsukuba is a difficult track to achieve a good time. Its wide arcs and dirty hairpins beat brakes, tires and suspensions into submission. To shave a second requires a perfect set-up, perfect clarity and no mistakes. Not surprisingly, at GTLIVE's Track Attack event the Cyber Evo wiped the floor with everyone, clocking nearly eight seconds faster than its nearest competitor.
Keen watched the car and saw the data. He wanted one. GSC owner Greg Caloudas didn't need much persuasion. Phone calls were made and a deal was struck for a 2003 Evo VIII in Jacksonville, Florida. It had a sunroof, which GSC scrapped and replaced with an MR aluminum roof skin. Within two days, the interior was out and the car gutted.
Click onto gscmotorsports.com and you'll see a photo of a Porsche on a dyno, then links to the company's five distinct business areas: distribution channels for Supra, STI, Evo, Scion tC, and the company's own line of cams and valvetrain for STI and Evo. Caloudas shrugs off our immediate suggestion of a schizophrenic business model, particularly when we question whether one can cater to both STI and Evo owners and expect either camp to take them seriously.
"We like both platforms a lot," Caloudas explains. "We can go further with the Evo, especially on the motor. The STI is more blessed with driveline, but the 4G63 can make gobs more power easier than the STI motor. I'd say the Evo is probably our main market."
And it was an Evo, not an STI, that lit GSC's fires. GSC was confident it could build a car to match the Cyber Evo. After all, this wasn't a carbon-fiber triumph of nanotech engineering, with the price to match. With a smart set-up and careful planning, a car built to the Cyber Evo's caliber was an attainable objective. So confident that GSC entered the 2006 Evo Tuner Shootout, a time attack event produced by Evo enthusiast site evolutionm.net, held at Carolina Motorsports Park. With just five weeks to prep the car, the thrash began.
"Our main concern was not horsepower, it was suspension," Calouodas says. "We were running on the stock motor with 40,000 miles. We were on stock brakes." However, the stock motor was augmented with an AMS 3076 turbo, a leftover from the previous owner. GSC focused on setting up all four corners, including proprietary anti-roll bars, as well as swapping in a house-designed center differential.
"It's not an open diff as far as transferring power from front to rear," says Caloudas, "but it's somewhat of a helical transmission that will put 60 percent to the rear mechanically. We can't go more than 40 front, 60 rear, but that helps the car rotate on the track. It doesn't push as much as a regular Evo would."
Keen, Caloudas and GSC would learn all this the hard way at the shootout, the first time the car would be on the track. Keen took it for some shakedown laps and immediately found trouble. The engine was cutting in and out and had developed a "clicking sound."
"We couldn't figure it out," says Caloudas. "We thought it was the wastegate. We figured we'd be fine. You can beat the crap out of the 4G63 and it keeps going. So we sent Keen back out. As he came around again, we heard a huge boom. Then we noticed the cast aluminum rear engine mount was broken."
Not only that, but it had taken the shift linkage and vacuum line with it. The engine mount failed when the engine suffered overboost. Running 26 pounds of boost, the engine's violent rocking pulled the line loose and broke the linkage. Back at the shop, the team quickly learned it had also caused a one-inch crack in a piston skirt ("that was our ticking sound"), giving tremendous blow-by to contend with. When Caloudas checked the data from the AEM EMS, he saw that the unit's 3.5-bar sensor had maxed out.
"I never set a boost-cut on the EMS. That was a screw-up on our part."
The guys refused to give in, though. They scavenged nearly every piece they could from a friend's MR. "Motor mounts, shifter bushings... we'd have probably taken the motor out too, if it had come to it. Duct-taping towels around the dipstick tube, pulling the timing belt off the bottom of the motor," Caloudas says, "the car just did not want to make a lap." Still, event organizers and participants wanted to see the car run and did all they could to encourage the GSC team and give them extra time.