1997 Toyota Supra Turbo TRD - Supra-Charged

While attending the Vegas99 "Supras Invade Las Vegas III" event on September 20, 1999 Senior Technical Editor, Robert Choo, discovered how far some enthusiasts are willing to go to make the show. Out of the five Supras in our "Supra Stars" section this particular example owned by Bryce Danna is one that almost didn't make it. As Bryce explained, "The car was finished less than a week before the Supra meet and the drive served as a break in period."

Bryce purchased his 1997 Supra in '98 with 127,000 miles on it. Immediately after purchasing the vehicle he discovered the factory transmission and rear-end were not up to par. This gave him the opportunity to replace the battered transmission and differential with low-mileage '98 Supra components he found at a local salvage yard. By the way, all of the labor involved in this project was handled by Bryce with the exception of machining the block and building up the short block.

As Bryce grew tired of rolling with a stock Supra the common style of, "build it while you drive it" was not enough to make him happy. Instead, he unleashed a grip of goodies on the car all in one shot. Byrce removed the engine and rushed it to Xcessive Performance in Houston, Texas. Once at Xcessive the block was punched out one millimeter over stock and loaded with JE 8.7:1 pistons lavished in Hasting rings and hooked to the crank via Crower rods. To reinforce the main journals Bryce relied on a UPRD main bearing girdle.

With the block under construction at Xcessive and the Supra dismantled in Bryce's garage, he decided to send the cylinder head out to West Coast Cylinder Heads in Reseda, California. Extensive chamber reshaping was to be done which began with a port and polished job and finished with a Swain coating. The head was then loaded with West Coast valve springs, HKS camshafts, AEM sprockets and a set of ARP head studs were used to secure the head to the block. West Coast Cylinder Heads was also responsible for honing out the intake manifold to match the intake ports with the cylinder head ports.

The force-induction system is an all-HKS affair. Bryce utilized an off-the-shelf T51-R HKS turbo, GT wastegate, turbo header and a custom 3.5-inch downpipe to boost the Supra to 30-plus psi. Dropping the air charge temperature is achieved by a massive HKS air-to-air intercooler. To minimize exhaust backpressure the Supra relies on a GReddy Power Extreme exhaust system.

Fuel injection these days can be a little mind boggling but this Supra fights the trend running the G-Force programmed ECU. The chip is programmed to RPS spec. The buffed out ECU commands a reworked fuel system. An HKS VPC (Vein Pressure Converter) that converts the engine to speed/density operation is joined by a Fields SFC fuel computer that allows the user to tune fuel flow within designated engine speeds. With the increase in fuel delivery handled on the software side an increase in fuel output from the factory pump was needed on the hardware side. The Toyota now runs two in-tank fuel pumps complete with their own -6 fuel line running to a Powerhouse fuel rail loaded with 82 lbs/hr injectors. Fuel pressure fine-tuning is in the hands of a billet aluminum Paxton fuel pressure regulator.