1993 Porsche 911 Carerra 2 - East Coast Assassin

Think "Porsche 911" and images of smooth slippery body lines, boosted boxer six power, agility, grace and a deep road race heritage spring to the forefront. Such tender and heartfelt aspirations mean little to veteran racer Eddie Bello. Eddie replaces the accepted wine and cheese with Beethoven image with beer, cheesebugers and full-tilt rock 'n roll. Screaming down the Autobahn is replaced with blasting down the strip, a finely tuned canyon carving suspension is now a wheel-standing straight-line attack, the beauty is the beast...you get the idea. Q

Like many of today's import racers, Eddie can trace his racing roots back to the streets; Eddie's passion has evolvedfrom the dark-lit side streets in Brooklyn NYC into his profession. But how did this East Coast assassin select the Porsche 911 as his weapon of choice? Eddie has been through a number of typical street-strip cars, including a rotary RX-7 and twin-turbo Z-car, the latter laying the foundation for his future in import drag racing. Although the Z-car was running well at events through 1994, Eddie needed a "new heights" kind of car, something exotic, never seen before in the import racing fold.

In 1995, he purchased a 1993 Porsche 911 Carerra 2. The 911 flexed an all-natural flat-six, rear-drive and aspen white paint. As is typical with many West Coast Honda racers of the day, he immediate swapped to a turbocharged powerplant. But this was no VTEC GSR engine; we're talkin' about Porsche's ultimate weapon, the twin-turbo, air-cooled boxer-six. A shakedown trip to the strip netted an 11.9-let the tweaking begin! The Porsche made a name for itself and its performance evolution can be gleaned from the accompanying chart. It was running brutally quick on street tires which caught the eye of Toyo Tires' in-house racing guru Jim Stobie. Seeing a prime marketing opportunity, Toyo stepped up when Eddie was running 10s at the strip and driving home after the race. The company sponsored him to roll on Toyo rubber exclusively. The car currently runs 16-inch Toyo RA-1s out back and 17-inch T1-Ss up front. At this time Eddie was in the 10s and the success of his assault on the 9s was the result of Toyo rubber. The car became known for its second gear, bumper dragin' wheelies and Eddie was met with a standing audience every time he staged the car.

The technology behind the e.t.s is impressive. The 1994 Porsche Turbo engine displaces 3.6 liters and shares component designs such as the crankshaft, rods and crankcase with its naturally aspirated brethren. Turbo specific pistons, cams and K-Jetronic fuel injection control team with two KKK turbos to produce 355 hp at 10 psi at the flywheel. Eddie's engine retains its 100mm bore but the stroke has gone from 76.4mm to 78mm and the compression has been dropped from 7.5:1 to 6.5:1. The engine's low compression pistons swing on custom Formula Monza titanium rods.

The evolution of the engine build-up program has spawned Bellotech, Eddie's performance shop that uses the lessons learned on the 1320 to tune street and race cars for NYC enthusiasts. Eddie put a good deal of time and effort into the cylinder heads knowing that the better they flowed, the better the engine would boost. The heads were port-matched, polished and opened up around the bowls, then fitted with 52 mm intake valves, 45 mm exhaust valves, titanium retainers and heavy-duty springs. Valvetrain events are under the direction of Elgin cams with .510 inches of duration on the intake side and .470 inches of lift on the exhaust side.