What is the long shot pipe dream of most street car owners? One of the top three has to be showing up to the big throw-down with a racecar engine under the hood. Not a built engine but a drag strip proven, single-digit powerplant. Jason Jarmon of Garland, Texas called up Kenny Tran at Jotech Motorsports and this dream car was on its way to reality.
The basis of this silver and black attack is a 1995 Integra that Jason scored for $1500. The Acura was an auto-shifting, non-VTEC LS that burned more oil than fuel. More than rough around the edges. It was a pile-the perfect candidate for an all-out buildup. Aesthetically, the Integra was greatly enhanced with a JDM Type-R front end conversion and two-tone paint scheme executed by Bruce Liu of New Concept in Plano, Texas.
Pop the hood and you can immediately see that the hurting LS is history. In its place is a spare Jotech race engine from the 2003 engine program. The B18C, built by none other than Kenny Tran, is a stock block proposition fitted with AEBS ductile iron sleeves, which via a slightly bigger bore, bumps displacement to 1.9 liters. The engine's balanced and blueprinted reciprocating components consist of 9.5:1 Arias slugs and Pauter connecting rods swinging on a polished and knife-edged crankshaft.
The VTEC motto, "life begins at 5700rpm" is half the story here as Honda race engines turn big rpms to generate their impressive peak power output. That means a stout cylinder head and valvetrain are must-have mods. Kenny enlisted Bill Craddock of Bill Craddock Enterprises (BCE) to realize this portion of the dream. Craddock port-matched the head and performed an extensive polishing of the runners and the bowls. With an eye on 9000-rpm engine speeds, the head was assembled with REV hard parts. Stainless REV valves, stout double spring REV valvesprings, titanium REV retainers and custom Jotech cams ground to the same specs as Kenny's race cams.
The B18C in Jason's Integra...
The B18C in Jason's Integra comes straight from Kenny Tran's 2003 race engine program. The block was fitted with AEBS ductile iron sleeves and filled 9.5:1 Arias forged pistons and Pauter connecting rods.
When it comes to boost things get secret. The B18C is pressurized by a Garrett GT-series turbo that sports secret specs because it came right out of Kenny's race engine. Also scavenged from the Jotech race inventory was the Integra's custom Full Race Motorsports-fabbed header. The rest of the turbo system includes a Precision FMIC, a TiAL blow-off valve with boost control falling to the tag team duo of a TiAL 46mm wastegate and a GReddy PRofec B boost controller. The downpipe and exhaust are one-off Jotech pieces with the exhaust system featuring three-inch stainless-steel pipe and a custom muffler. A high-volume Edelbrock intake manifold ensures the boost flows smoothly into the head.
With a well-sized turbo and free-flowing head there are three remaining factors that directly impact the output and reliability of a turbocharged Honda engine-fuel enrichment, spark intensity and tuning strategy. Again, using his racecar as a template, Kenny dished the love out to MSD enlisting MSD's Digital-7 capacitive discharge box, HVC coil pack and plug wires. On the fuel side an Aeromotive pump with 1,100-hp capacity feeds 1,000cc injectors through -10 line. Under the tuning banner Kenny wired up a MoTeC M4 stand-alone engine management system, a unit very similar to the M48 unit in Kenny's racecar. The main differences between the two units being the M48 can drive a total of eight injectors compared to the four for the M4 and the M48 has more control over ignition events. It is also a little easier on the wallet.
An Edelbrock large-plenum...
An Edelbrock large-plenum intake manifold was port-matched by the crew at Jotech. The added capacity of the Edelbrock piece is a key factory in the B-Series' impressive power generation.