I’m officially DONE with trying to road race my Evo.

Over the past 7 months I have had nothing but trouble with my Evo IX. WORKS, who has been maintaining my car since it was a few months old, took over rebuilding my motor after it failed while running Targa Newfoundland 2008. Unfortunately it appears that giving my car to WORKS was my first mistake. After taking about 3 times as long to complete the project as they had originally planned, and at a considerably higher cost than they estimated, WORKS finished the motor build and gave me the car for my first road race event back in March.

The car has simply never been right since that day. I have had 5 DNFs (”Did Not Finish” for you non-racers) in 5 track events; I have spent thousands of $$$’s on entry fees, hotels, towing, etc., only to get a COMBINED lap count of less than 40 hot laps in the past 7 months. I have intentionally not posted about any of this while trying to give the guys at WORKS the benefit of the doubt and time to make the car right, but in the past 7 months I have had the following litany of problems (small and large) that have kept me off the track:

- leaking coolant hoses (due to poor installation)

- popped turbo hoses (due to poor installation)

- leaking AMS oil pan installation (it has been on and off the car 4 times, all at my cost)

- failed turbo seals on a brand new FP Red (not WORKS fault at it’s core, but it could have been avoided had WORKS not counseled me to use the stock oil feed line over the upgraded oil feed line I planned to use)

- excessive crank case pressure causing massive oil blow by (caused by WORKS incorrectly bypassing the factory ventilation system, which then proceeded to coat my engine bay and front tires in oil while running on track!)

Most of these issues were ultimately resolved by me, first by researching the cause of the problem and telling WORKS what to fix, and then finally by getting fed up and making the repairs to the car myself.

The shop has proven to be incapable of handling any projects more complex than basic bolt-ons and street car tuning. This is HUGELY frustrating to me, as I have almost no free time to take care of this stuff. I specifically hired a shop to manage my racecar so I don’t have to worry about these sorts of things. Unfortunately, though, the problems persisted despite my efforts to fix what WORKS broke.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was yet another DNF this weekend at Infineon Raceway. After resolving all of the oiling problems mentioned above, the car then proceeded to show all of the symptoms of either an improper tune or something more dramatically wrong with the motor — specifically, massive hesitation at high RPM, very high EGT readings, and a skyrocketing water temperature. With WORKS based at Infineon, I brought the car up the hill to the shop to have them look at it and help me resolve the problems so that I could have a functioning car and finish the weekend.

And what did they say when I brought the car to them?

“Hmmm, I don’t know what that could be.”

If I had a dollar for every time I heard this from one of the so called “engineers” at WORKS I could have bought myself a Porsche Cup Car by now. Pete Kang, the owner of WORKS and the guy who tuned my car, refused to even look at my Evo. He was “too busy” with other projects (Including, apparently, trying to build a flying car. Yikes.). Forget the fact that I have spent literally tens of thousands of dollars with the shop and that I have referred a number of customers. Forget the fact that their name is on the side of my car. Forget even the fact that they have been the cause of every DNF I have had in the car. None of that mattered as WORKS had already cashed my checks and refused to take responsibility for their work.

The Evo and Subie world is unfortunately filled with dozens of hacks and shadetree mechanics trying to pass themselves off as engineers and “tuners”. I thought that WORKS was better than that, and I always tried to defend the shop when other people complained to me about WORKS’ bad service, bad tunes, and overpriced products. Unfortunately, the shop has proven me wrong.

With WORKS’ unwillingness to help me, I drove away. That’s the end of my relationship with WORKS, and with trying to road race the Evo.

So what am I going to do now?

With our second child due at the end of August, and with the seeming impossibility of finding a proper race shop who can manage the Evo for me in the Bay Area, I’m gonna do what I should have done when I came back from Targa — the car is going up on jackstands and is going to have all of the non-stock bits parted out. At some point I’ll build the chassis into a gravel rally car, which is what I have wanted to do from the beginning anyway.

So, if you know anyone looking for Evo race parts please e-mail me. All of the racing bits and pieces on the car are for sale; from the engine, to the brakes and suspension, to the body kit, to the safety gear.

From now on I’ll focus on doing time trials in the M3, and when I have free time I will begin to rebuild the Evo into the Open class rally car I’d prefer to be driving.