About a year ago, I picked up this yellow Starion, with the EVO engine already installed in it. I know it says Beyond The Limit Motorsport on it, but this engine was not done by Chris, he actually did a previous engine it it, but then the EVO conversion was done by a later owner.
This is an interesting EVO conversion too... It's a bit of a hack job, but it works, so that's ok.
It's basically a complete EVO 1 or 2 engine, with an EVO 1 ECU, and it's had the back of the block modified and welded to fit up to the wideblock Starion gearbox points. Again, a bit messy, but works. And I have confirmed its EVO, not VR4 (I have two VR4 engines sitting nearby to compare side by side)
It has also had the water pump modified, and a water outlet out the front of the head, however when this was done, I don't know if the supporting water flow improvements inside the head were done as well. Also, the head water outlet is so close to the water pump pulley that you have to actually take the pulley off to fit the belt, and then put it back on with the belt already in the grooves. Also the exhaust manifold is actually a factory one that has just been cut near the flange and welded back together up the other way to make a top mount turbo instead of low mount. Not bad again, but there's some bolts missing, and I can't see any way to get the bolts in there easily at a glance so far because of the angle the manifold ends up being on.
When I bought this car, it wasn't running, but I have spent a bit of time here and there over the last year trying to find out what was not working.
Eventually found the injectors were just a bit clagged from sitting for about 3 years. A bit of fuel dropped in the inlet manifold, and away we went. There's some videos further down.
Now that it's running I'm happy, but not sure still if I will keep the engine. May be putting Troy's old single cam engine (300HP engine built by Chris Collier) into this car! So if someone's after an already done and running EVO conversion for their Starion, let me know.
Here's the car:
It's very low, so taking it off the truck was a very close call! Fortunately only the tow point scraped :D
Brought it into the shed to work on it
Ran some diagnostics on it with the scope, making sure the injector pulses looked ok, etc. They were fine, and fuel was in the rail, and spark was strong. So this was why I assumed either timing or clagged injectors.
The engine runs now!
Here's the good photos.
And some videos of it actually will be in my next post
