24 Oct You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby

You’ve come a long way, baby: Project 1993 Integra’s road to bad ass-ness.

By Brian Gillespie

Like every build, Project 1993 Integra started life as a daily driven commuter before spiraling out of control. It was originally a 93 Acura Integra LSSP (Special Edition) with leather seats, sunroof, spoiler, alloy wheels and 4 speed automatic. We documented some of the early modifications of the build in this Nacho Speed Garage video.

After we shot that video things slowed down a bit with Project 1993 Integra. Carter was content with the auto-to-manual conversion and was distracted by life. Eventually he wanted more. We looked around the shop and found an old Jackson Racing supercharger and a B16 and a K24A1 with Jackson Racing supercharger.  A missing alternator tensioner for the B16 supercharger helped us to decide which engine for Project 1993 Integra, the K was the way.

With the promise of a supercharged K, Carter decided to bring the car to FF Battle. Nothing like a race deadline to motivate you to get things done. The plan was laid, the engine swap completed but with no time to test after installing the K-series we decided to bring the car to Progress Suspension to get the car set up for the track.

With the car prepped for competition, we headed to Super Street‘s FF Battle 7 at Autoclub Speedway in Fontana, California. Our goal was to get a good baseline time for comparison with later modifications. Unfortunately, axle problems kept us from getting the necessary laps for Carter to familiarize himself with the track.  We did get a few full throttle laps at the end of the day, so we took that as a success.

The goal from the beginning has always been to build a track car in the same vein as Hasport’s wide fendered CRX. While exploring options for flared fenders Carter let me know he had always admired Hush Performance‘s 3-piece front end for DA Integra.

Up next will be some adjustment on the engine placement and some testing on the track to see if we are where we want to be with the setup. Traditionally our ten inch wide Konigs would not be on the front of a front wheel drive, so we want to make sure we have the grip that we’re looking for to start turning consistent, quick lap times.