Tanaka Racing S13

The S13 we introduced a couple days ago is complete. From last post, we've fabricated mounts for the radiator fans, oil catch can, coolant reservoir, and a whole lot of other little stuff to clean up the engine bay.

Here's a close up of the coolant reservoir

We also made the mounting brackets for the radiator itself.

The car was dyno'd this past week where it made 420hp at 1.2 bar. There's definately more power to be had with a boost controller that's operational, but the goal was a reliable 400hp, so our job is done.

Guess What This Is Going To Be?

The final touches are being done on this part. We'll see how it turns out.

Tanaka Racing S13

A while back I wrote about the SR20 that had the oil pick-up that broke off. Well, that engine was from an S13 belonging to Tanaka Racing. It was originally built as a drift car competing in D1 and Formula D. Now, the owner wants to build it as a track car, but after a couple of track events, the oil pick-up broke off, and that's where the fun ended for Jake Tanaka. . .

Mr. Wakita was the one who tuned the car originally, so Jake and his team decided to bring the car to us. The build order was simple and to the point: build a motor that was bulletproof.

Something that won't end up like this.

The valve train was unscathed, so we were able to reuse the cams, valve springs, cam gears, etc, but the rest of the motor was toast. We started with a motor that was known to be good and bored it 0.5mm over. We installed a set of CP pistons and the aluminum rods that we had custom built. (See previous post on aluminum rods)

These are what they look like compared to the stock rods

And here’s a pic of the shortblock all installed.

As for the head, it originally had an unported head with a complete Tomei valve train. We've ported the head, but keeping the valvetrain the way it was.

Nice and pretty

The only difference between the new and old head is going to be the ports and the valve timing. Here’s the SR20 getting the timing adjusted.

Below is the completed motor

The motor's all put together, and now all that's left is to put the motor in. But not until we clean up all the hoses and wiring.

Here's the water bypass that we made for this SR. On a stock SR20, there are a LOT more hoses that are underneath the intake manifold. This way, there's only lines that bypass the thermostat and go to the IAC valve for more stable idle. All the hoses for heater, throttlebody, etc, etc, have been removed.

And here's the motor installed into the car. I really wish that we had a before and after pic of this car.

Before we installed the motor, we drilled out all of the stock brackets that were not being used, and we repainted the front half of the engine bay. All the brackets that were still needed were remade using aluminum.

As I mentioned, the wiring was redone. In fact, most of the engine harness was completely uncovered; all of the connectors not being used were deleted, and redone.

The car is now completed. With the aluminum rods, forged CP pistons, and the Exedy Twin plate, the car literally revs like a motorcycle. The car is insane. Every car guy should be able to experience this in a lifetime. Very very responsive.

I can't wait to take this car to the dyno.

BTW, the turbo is a HKS GT-RS connected with a custom 3mm thick turbo manifold. This is the type of car that won't get much love by the internet warriors, but it’s the best type of race motor--Responsive, powerful, and bulletproof

Oil Temp and Pressure Sensors

Have you ever bought an aftermarket gauge and struggled trying to figure out where to put the sensor? The problem with these sensors is that all the wires can clutter the engine bay. So here’s what we did…


This is on the silver R32 drag car that we’re working on.

MCR Bumper

You might remember this R34 from a previous post of this pic.

As you can see, the car looked really nice. Nice and stock, but the owner of the car wasn't happy with that. He wanted to take it a step further. This is what the car now looks like now.
It got a MCR front bumper, Z-tune fenders, side skirts, a GIANT SARD GT wing, and some Volks.

Looks so nice.

More on the Honda Radiator

Sorry I haven’t been posting lately, we’ve been really busy. The good news is that I have a whole lot of pics to post up here in the next couple of days.

First in order is the rest of that Honda radiator. With the K20 in the Integra, the radiator designed for the B18 doesn’t quite fit. So we cut the inlet of the radiator and plugged the old inlet.
Here’s the old inlet
And here’s the new one
This is why it wouldn’t have fit.

3 Times a Charm

So I’ve posted a couple pics of the project Miata (or the engine) a while ago. That was the 1st manifold, I believe. Long story short, we’re on the third one.

Here are the three manifolds lined up all pretty like.

One thing I've noticed about people in this industry (myself included) is that many of us don't take our own advice. It might be with the frequency of oil changes, the amount of boost we run, or going cheap on a manifold... whatever. Maybe this is because the labor is free. (not really free, but there's no out of pocket expense) I don't know. But for whatever reason, most mechanics will try a part out on our own car that we'd tell a customer to NEVER under ANY circumstance even think about buying. Well this is what happens when people don’t take their own advice… Twice…

Here's the first manifold. It's a see through...

You can clearly see daylight through the manifold... but wait, there's more!

And another crack. This manifold lasted a little over two months before it gave out.

Here's the "upgraded" version of the last one. There were a couple of extra ribs and gussets that made this manifold a little more promising, but looks can be deceiving. This one lasted a whopping TWO WEEKS!

As you can see in this picture, the revisions designed to stiffen up this manifold didn't quite hold up. I just couldn't keep the day light out and the exhaust in.

After all this, the owner of the car, Take of Tamacy Tuned, deciced to finally take his own advice and go with a cast manifold. He found one on ebay with a T3 flange.

We searched the shop for a turbo that would work, but we came out empty handed. Since 200hp was the goal of the car and we had a SR20 red top turbo laying around the shop, we decided to weld a T25 flange on the manifold and call it a day.

I'll have more pics of the making of the downpipe and what-not as soon as we get to it.