The Standard:
This car was a very high budget and extremely fast DC2,which was incomparable to anything I had ever driven prior. What was overwhelming about it, was that even at 225ps, it felt almost underpowered because of the perfect balance. After that experience, I had decided to set the standard of my DA project based on this car; to try and match its balance.

After 3 years in Japan, and having discussed chassis preparation with some of Japan's most respected tuners (Kuma San-Spirits, Imagawa San-Mugen, Shiozawa San-Nissin now at Mazda Speed, Kohzu San-Feel's, Asai San-HSS Honda…to name a few), my determination to build a high spec DA took on new meaning, and so this project was put into effect in 2001.

After 3 years in California, and having fine tuned and balanced the car, I still cant say that I'm at the same level of that DC2. I'm sure the DA would have some faster lap times on higher speed circuits, although on short tracks, the DA still needs a lot of work. I wish I had bought that red DC2, it was for sale at the time for around 1,000,000 YEN.

Carbon air intake:
I originally had customized an intake velocity stack using whatever I could find in Toronto. I was spending lots of time in industrial engineering and manufacturing companies trying to source out interesting parts. This first design was fine. I simply always had it in my head that I wanted to mould a custom velocity stack using modeling foam and wet carbon.

An interesting thing about the new design is that when I’m engaging VTEC it gives a significant vacuum sound especially noticeable after installed the JUN-3 cams.

NOTE: You can also see the addition of the front two hook in the second picture. This was welded directly on to the front strong bar, which is mentioned below.

Carbon front splitter:
I picked this up in Japan a while back in hopes that I could tune the car with additional down force. I see a lot of backyard special racing prototypes that are effective but I wanted to customize something that suited this car, and not just ANY car.

On a different occasion while driving back from Cali Speedway, I drove over a huge rock which was right in the middle of the highway. I was following Daniel (Digitalhorizon) who was in a pick-up truck, and he didn’t even notice it! Anyway, I had no possible way to avoid running straight into this thing, and as a result, the carbon diffuser was split in two. The funny thing about this story is that it was raining that morning during the first two warm-up sessions, and I didn’t put a scratch on the car. Some cars were not so fortunate, as the wet track caused at least three or four major accidents.
As a result of that rock in the middle of the highway, it was the determining factor for me moving out of Cali and back to Japan....(Needed to pick-up a new carbon under tray!)

Front Strut Tower Stabilizer (Firewall Y brace):
Initially I had bolted two steel bars from both the strut towers to the firewall (no pictures of the early design). This was very effective under braking so the design was revised and added to the new project car. I incorporated a bracket into the design so that I could test the DC5 HPI engine stiffener.

One day at Cali Speedway, I broke the engine damper bracket under hard braking. I revised the bracket using hardened stainless steel and no problems ever since.

Stripped front bumper (weight reduction):
I was bored one day, so I completely stripped the paint from the front bumper. I figured there was 2 or 3 overcoats on there, and paint is heavy. I also cut as much plastic as possible and had it re-painted with one coat of super nuclear strength paint.

Rear Lower Arm Bar (1996):
This was designed to originally balance out the understeer on the B18A DA9, which at the time was mildly set-up with Koni Yellows.

Updated in 2005:
The original bar bent, and obviously needed to be beefed up, and I also wanted to add some brackets to support the rear diffuser, which is on hold until I get back to America (where the car is stored).

Titanium muffler:
Fortunately, Honda's always been very particular about their exhaust notes, but unfortunately the luxury sports Integra required a "muffled" engine tone that hence necessitated a large, heavy and ugly muffler. Well! I decided to not go the conventional route (as usual), and not only improve the size and looks, but also trim down the weight by quite a bit.

The canister is a Pancake Racing one-off 1.6L spec with 60mm diameter piping. I needed to cut the canister open, stuff the canister with flame resistant sound deadening and then TIG weld everything back together. After making some measurements (without even having a DA chassis to work with) I section welded the piping and finisher. Akaichi San (Famous Ducati tuner in Japan) came up with the idea to use an aluminum bracket to mount the muffler to the B pipe.

8-point Chromoly Roll Cage:
Ordered the best possible material for cage fabrication; stock 1.5"x0.090" 4130 chromoly steel. Had it bent to specs according to my design, and TIG welded it to base plates, and then to the chassis. I opted for this design as it is the most efficient, based on weight and stabilizing characteristics. I also wanted to keep the front weight down as much as possible which is why I didn't incorporate the pillar roll bars. I then hand sanded, primed and painted the cage with the cheapest crap I could find!

Not racing in sanctioned events gives you the freedom of tuning the car the way you want to, and this suited my creativity a little better. I realized after 5 years of racing with this cage, that the DA would benefit from additional pillar support. I had compensated that by riveting the pillars, although additional lateral support needs to be added.

NA2 Front brakes:
Many tuners have upgraded to NSX brakes on their Honda's, although I think I'm the only one stupid enough to custom fit NA2 calipers to clear 15" wheels. The only reason this developed was because I scored a set of nearly new NA2 brakes (complete with pedal, booster, cylinder and pads) from a friend at Honda. And to keep the overall cost down, I wanted to tune the car with 15" rubber, since its much cheaper and helps keep the weight off the front (very important for an FF, and especially for the DA).

NA2 Front brakes (continued):
This was a bit of a challenge and required a lot of patients and help from a mechanist friend of mine with a mill and lathe. Here’s the hard facts:
- Machined calliper bracket (holes welded and re-drilled for the DA knuckle)
- Machined inner calliper to clear rotor hat
- Modified rear outlet master cylinder brake line flare (NSX one is larger)
- Drilled Legend rotors (mostly for weight reduction-those fuckers are heavy!)

Relocated battery:
I found a suitable location which worked well with the custom Mugen battery tray, which allowed me to run the power cables within the passenger side under tray compartment. I acquired the "TOSS" battery tray while visiting my friend over at Mugen R&D during my lunch breaks while at Honda. This worked out well since they had many "TOSS" one-off parts that they needed to through away, and I would just happen to stop by at the right moments.

The ideal location would be on the rear right floor closest the exhaust channel, although there was no easy way to secure the tray down without welding a support and I couldn't be bothered. I ran a 3 gauge negative cable through to the custom engine grounding kit located on the firewall, and ran a 4 gauge positive cable from the main fuse terminal. I had to modifies the tray to fit the 5.2 Kg racing battery, but it was very simple as Mugen had used a similar size battery on whichever car this tray was originally made for (I never got those details).

Front Strong Bar:
This was designed using the same chromoly as the roll cage, which is extremely rigid. This allows for removal of the front bumper support and strengthens the front end to enable heavier spring rates. It also complements the firewall tower bar to better support load throughout the engine bay.

Brake cooling duct
Also in the picture below, you can see how the brake duct is run through to the front calipers. Even though this is really not too necessary, unless you’re planning on running some super taiku (endurance) races, I wanted to try it out, and figured it might come in handy when tracking in those Cali desert circuits. I actually needed to tape these up during the winter sessions as the brakes weren't getting up to temp fast enough.

Inner Fender Supports:
I was originally going to strengthen this area by welding steel supports, as advised after discussing it with Kuma San of Techno Pro Spirit, but I lucked out, and scored some J-Speed EK9 bolt on parts which fit with a little modification. This area also supported the increased stopping power by distributing energy through the roll cage and towards the back.

More to come...