In June of 2001, the Mainstream Film Company released The
Fast and the Furious movie. For those of
us who were already auto enthusiasts at the time, it was one of the better automotive
movies to date and it only helped to increase our enthusiasm for cars. For those who were seeing a different side of the automotive world
for the first time, it was eye opening. What
was really special about the first Fast and Furious movie, was the fact that it
featured mainstream/affordable cars. It
meant that the car that your parents made you drive, what most would consider to
be a lousy Japanese econobox, could actually be cool! Not only that, but it didn’t take a college
degree to figure out how to make it fast. This perception, that when modified, everyday
cars could be just as quick and desirable as expensive cars, opened the door to
a wide range of new automotive enthusiasts.
One of those enthusiasts was Wil. After seeing The Fast and the Furious movie,
he was instantly hooked, and his first car, a 1998 Honda Civic, was quickly
embellished with a Black Widow body kit, and 18” wheels. From there, things snowballed as he continued
to modify anything he could get his hands on.
His new found passion for modifying cars would lead him to work at
several dealerships, and then on to specialty performance shops, all the while
continuing to modify his own cars and motorcycles.
After heavily modifying one of his own motorcycles, he
realized that in order to get the most out of the modifications, he would have
to take it to a track. This led him to
attend several track days and eventually official competition. He began his racing career by joining the
Central Motorcycle Road Racing Association.
Only a year after joining, he took third place in the local endurance
series. As he developed his skills as a rider and became a consistent
podium finisher, even winning several races, he decided to upgrade to a larger
bike. This turned out to be a premature
decision and a mistake, so he traded the new bike for an Aprilia SXV550 Supermoto. Success in Supermoto didn’t come as easy, and
as he continued to struggle, a fellow friend and racer suggested he pursue Hill
climb racing instead, specifically the Pike Peak Hill climb.
Every year, during June, the motor racing elite gather in
the Rocky Mountains outside Colorado Springs, Colorado to participate in one of
the most important races of the year, the Pike Peak International Hill
Climb. This race has been taking place every
year for the last 100 years, albeit a brief hiatus during World War 1 and 2,
and is the second oldest American motorsport event. The course is comprised of 12.42 miles of
paved roads with 156 turns, as it ascends the 14,115ft Pikes Peak. Today, professional teams and racers from
around the world come with custom built machines to tackle the mountain course. It is an exclusive event, only allowing 100
applicants to participate each year.
This did not intimidate Wil in the slightest, and in 2012, he took his friends
advice and participated in his first race at Pike Peak. The event had a profound effect on him. During the event, he realized that racing was
his true passion, and Pikes Peak was his new favorite venue. Immediately after the event, he
quit his job and founded his own race shop, IDB Racing. His goal was to provide repair, maintenance,
restoration, and race build/race prep services for luxury, high-end, exotic,
and high-performance automobiles, but ultimately providing himself with the perfect
environment to further pursue his desire for racing.
Even though motorcycles played a huge role in fast-tracking
his racing career, Wil’s heart remained in a driver’s seat. From the very beginning, he was a big Honda
fan. When he first got involved in the automotive
tuning world, the internet community was not the invaluable tool that it is
today, so he had to rely on the local community for help. However, there was one web forum that he was
able to find early on that was very helpful, called Hondaswap.com. Even though Wil doesn’t consider himself a ‘forum
guy’, since joining, he has received a lot of help, and has even made several close
friendships with the people from the forum.
In fact, that is how his first generation CRX story began.
It was a 1984 Honda CRX that had been owned and raced by
several members of the forum. The car
ended up in the possession of a friend of Wil’s who had purchased it with the
hopes of building the ultimate 1G, but got trapped in the swirling toilet bowl
of domestic life, and had to punt. He
did however, have it long enough to acquire a large cache of rare and expensive
parts for the car. After deciding that
he would never be able to finish the car, he tried selling it with no
success. As desperation took over, he
offered the whole lot to Wil for a price he just couldn’t
refuse.
The offer from his Hondaswap friend came at a unique
time. With the shop just being opened,
and the thrills of his Pikes Peak experience still coursing through his veins,
he was in the hunt for an older project car that would have one purpose and
one purpose only, to conquer Pikes Peak. “I thought it would be cool to build the crap
out of an old car that isn’t typically seen at events like that and see how far
we could take it… and attempt to set the FWD record up the mountain in one of
the (if not the) oldest car at the event.”
Even though working on a car this old would have its challenges, he knew
that this was the opportunity he was looking for.
The original plan for the car was to create a mid-engine,
rear wheel drive monster, but that quickly changed after receiving the news
that his application to participate in the 100th anniversary Pikes
Peak event was accepted. Since the race
was only months away, Wil decided to temporarily abandon the mid-engine idea
and replace it with a swapped turbo concept.
The build started late in 2015, and with the race being in June of the following year, the timeline was going to be tight. Unfortunately, things didn’t start
smoothly. The build was delayed several
months while Wil and his team were waiting for a sequential shift setup that
they had ordered from an Australian company. The company in question ended up giving
them the run-around and never supplied the parts. Since the engine and transmission selection
for the car was dependent on what kind of shift setup they were able to obtain,
the issue with this particular parts supplier kept the entire build from
starting until April of 2016. Yes,
that’s two months before the race. Not
only did they encounter issues with the shifter company, but they had several
other suppliers and vendors back out on them as well. So with time and the odds stacked against them, the build officially began.
The first thing to tackle was the body. Everything that was able to be removed from
the unibody, without compromising its structural integrity, was removed. The factory suspension mounting points
however, were left intact. Custom engine
mounts were fabricated to hold the customized B-series engine setup about 6-7” rearward
of the factory engine location. A Denver-based aerodynamics company, Brooks Motorsport, in conjunction with a 3-D scanning company, digitally scanned a scale model of the car in order to design and
manufacture the front and rear spoilers.
The Housman body kit that came with the car was extensively modified to
allow proper airflow and down-force.
As the body work continued, the next major task was the
drive-train. Wil and his team ended up
building two engines for the car, and not just to have a spare one in case the
first one blew up. The first engine they
built was a B-series stroker motor that threw a rod during testing, two weeks
before the race. Somehow they were able
to build the B-series turbo setup that you see in the images, in less than two
weeks.
They started with a B16A and threw the parts book at it (as
far as their limited budget allowed them to).
It received a Portflow ported GSR head with a BC valve train, CP
pistons, BC rods, and VTECH was deleted with a set of Ferrea roller rockers and
a pair of custom 4Piston Racing camshafts.
Attached to the front of the block is a one-off turbo setup that
consists of a hand-made “265 PPIHC” equal-length twin-scroll v-band manifold by
LoveFab, a Garret GT307r Turbo, and dual Tial MVS wastegates. To cool the air entering the engine, a custom
water-to-air intercooler was installed in the passenger seat area. It is connected to the 70mm throttle body and
Edelbrock Victor X intake manifold by a set of HosePimp silicone hoses and
clamps. For fuel delivery, the intake
manifold is garnished with a set of Donkee Power Injection 1000cc injectors
that are fed by an AEM 380 fuel pump in an Integrated Engineering surge
tank. The AEM 380 is also fed by another
Walboro 267 pump with fuel from an 8 gallon ATL fuel cell. To cool the engine, air is channeled to the
rear-mounted radiator via two large air scoops (originally designed for the
Ford Mustang) that are mounted where the rear side windows would normally be. The coolant is forced through custom aluminum
piping and into the engine by a Meizere electronic water pump.
Engine performance is managed by an AEM Infinity standalone
unit that was tuned by Jason 'Stoopid' Herrera of Stoopidfast. It sends commands through a RyWire Infinity
MilSpec Plug-n-Play harness that is protected by a RyWire race fuse box. For further control and data visibility, Wil
and his team also installed a GaugeART module that plugs into the wiring harness
via an AEMnet connector, and a $40 ebay monitor. He was reluctant to go this route since most
teams use Racepak units, but the setup turned out to perform very well in the
end.
After the engine and drivetrain were sorted out, Wil and his
team moved on to the chassis. A full set
of Tein Medieval Pro coilovers, 31mm torsion bars, Medieval Pro billet
camber/caster plates and Energy suspension bushings, from Heeltoe Automotive,
were installed. Luckily, Wil was also
able to obtain a set of rare Mugen racing sway bars that rounded off the
suspension setup nicely. The factory
rear axle was swapped out for an Integra axle of the same vintage that was
supplied with all new brake hardware.
Unfortunately, when the factory brake calipers were removed and disposed
of, the e-brake cables were tossed as well, causing Wil to run the entire event
without a parking brake. Not an easy
thing to do when much of the area is made up of steep grades. The factory front brakes were replaced with
98 Civic hardware and Hawk pads, and the hubs were swapped for Karcepts hubs in
order to fit the larger-splined axle shafts.
Thankfully this setup allowed the maximum braking performance while also
allowing the Hoosier A7 wrapped, 13x10” Panasport wheels to fit over them.
All of this, including the last task of adding a racing
seat, 6-point harness and window net from Ultra Shield safety equipment, was completed
in a matter of weeks, and with very little time remaining, the race weekend was
upon them.
The race weekend started out much like the build had begun;
with major challenges. Shortly after
arriving, one of the Panasport wheels developed a crack which led to a JB
Weld repair job in a parking lot. Then during
the first practice, the engine blew a head gasket. But Wil and his team just kept rolling with
the punches just like they did during the build process. They didn’t come this far just to be sent
home with their tail between their legs.
Race day had finally arrived and it was time to accomplish
what they had come to do, conquer the mountain. Their scheduled start time was 1:00pm, but by
early afternoon, as per usual Colorado weather, the rain-clouds had rolled
in. The weather delayed the IDB team’s
start until after 3pm. That was no
matter though. As with most storms in Colorado, they leave as quickly as they
come, and with a freshly dried track and the boost turned all the way up, Wil left
the starting gate leaving spectators in a cloud of dust and screaming engine
noise. The first two thirds of the run
went very well. The car was tearing up
the mountain like a bat out of hell, and Wil was leaving it all on the
mountain. However, as the race timer stuck
6:20, so did fate. The engine finally
let go, leaving a trail of coolant to the place where Wil brought the car to a
stop. It was over. The IDB team may not have posted a time that day, but
they did what they came to do. They left
it all on the mountain. Wil’s short but
amazing journey led him to a quiet place above the tree line where the views go
on for miles. His dreams had led him
into the clouds, and I can only hope he keeps aiming for them. Only time will tell what other incredible
things he will be able to accomplish. Awesome
job!
Videos of the run:
Additional sources: www.rightfootdown.com, stephensullivanphoto.com
