BUILT TO SPEC Words and Images by Ian Rae

When James Houghton decided to go wheel to wheel racing it was not a decision he made lightly. He had been thinking about it for quite a while and when Northern Speed purchased his Acura Integra Type R Time Attack car and still wanted to him to drive it opened up an avenue he had not previously considered. His original thoughts were to convert the Type R for Gridlife Touring Cup duty but now he could start with a clean sheet. He had been looking for a clean Integra as he loved the look of the car. For sure whatever he got had to remain in the Honda/Acura family. “I’m a died in the wool Honda fan,” he said. “Then I came across a partially finished Acura TSX in Lexington, KY. It had a lot of good parts on it, some I would use, others I could sell off and get good money for them, so it seemed a good deal. I put a deposit on the car but it would be three months before I actually headed out to bring it home.” He went on, “This past year I have been using Mitch Hemmen at Unit 2 Fabrication more and more and in the meantime they moved into one of the units in our building, it just made sense for them

to complete the build of the car. Mitch and Berto had also been crewing for us quite bit so the road trips offered up a bunch of time for discusions regarding the upcoming race car build. The plan was to build the car to suit Gridlife’s Touring Cup rules where their Rules Committee’s goal was to create a quality balance of performance across a broad array of potential cars, without any

tight restrictions on vehicle build and design while offering low cost options to the racers. It meant mixing weight with horsepower, tires and aero. We won’t go in to that here as it is pretty involved and can be found online at www.grid.life/gridlife-touringcup-gltc. You may have noticed from the photo below that there is no wild aero like Jim’s Type R. With no front splitter the rear of the

TSX only sports a NASCAR style spoiler, which gives him an advantage over those running splitters and wings due to the way the rules are written. Jim sourced the wider fenders from some obsure eBay to allow him to run wider wheels and tires on the front end. Having had great success running Konig USA wheels on the Integra the TSX sports Konig Hypergram 18x11 +15ET front wheels and 18x9.5 +35ET rears. He is a firm believer in FWD running a staggered wheel/tire setup with narrower wheels on the rear, allowing the car to rotate. Now the tires he brought to COTA were a bit special, while everyone else had gone the Hoosier R7 route Houghton had chosen to go with 200TW Yokohama a052 295/30/18 fronts and 255/35/18 rears. which would give him in the region of a

4 percent power to weight bonus or approx 10whp over those running slicks. A lot of thought was put into the packaging under the hood, the team had learned a lot in the past years about cooling on the Acura Type R and that knowledge was transposed into the TSX. A MMRADUNI-RRR race radiator from Mishimoto was installed as it was the perfect size for the installation. The 15.28” X 29.92” dual pass 2-row aluminum was originally developed and used on Chris Rado’s famed front-wing Scion tC race car and is covered by the Mishimoto Lifetime Warranty. The TSX is powered by a Jdm K24A motor fitted with Drag Cartel drop in cams, 50 degree VTC gear, in-line pro VTEC locking pins, K20a2 oil pump conversion, Unit 2 Fabrication budget steel oil pan that was developed for the TSX and is now available to the public. A cut and ported RBC intake manifold is fed from a K-Tuned 72mm throttle body and burnt gases are expelled through a PLM header. The fuel system consists of a K-Tuned fuel rail and AN fuel lines and fittings, a K-Tuned fuel pressure regulator, Acura RDX fuel injectors. A K-Tuned valve cover tops off the motor where additional engine modifications were carried out by Unit 2 Fabrication. The custom titanium exhaust was also fabricated by Unit 2. Transmitting the K24 Honda power to the ground is a Exedy Hyper single plate clutch, Momentum Motorsport in Ireland built a custom 3J Driveline NXG Performance plate type LSD that James raves about. A custom built gearbox with a mix of oem gears was built by TRE Transmissions using a Gear-X 5.8 final drive. Hasport engine mounts hold the complete package in plate within

the TSX engine bay. Chassis wise, the installed six point cage was updated to James and Mitch’s specifications. As Mitch is also going to run the car at Gridlife events a lot of thought was put into making the interior suit both drivers. A Sparco Pro ADV seat with OMP harness and an Oreca steering wheel works well in making both racers comfortable. Fire safety has not been overlooked and a plumbed-in mechanical SPA fire suppresion system has been installed. Electrically wise an Antigravity battery supplies the power to a Haltech Elite 1500 ECU. The Haltech talks through Racepak’s proprietary V-Net network to a Racepak IQ3 logger dash and all supplimentary wiring is through Racepak’s Smartwire PDM. “It’s great to use the shared sensors from the Haltech and Racepak to control outputs using logic. Now we can change the control of outputs simply by changing the control logic. The TSX is using K-Tuned K2 pro circuit coilovers from his long-time supporters K-Tuned. They also supplied K-Tuned spherical control arms, camber kits and suspension links for front and rear as well as front roll center adjusters. A ASR hollow 32mm rear sway bar completes the suspension package. Stoptech brake kits continue to be involved in James’s racing program with a STR40 big brake kit on the front end. G-LOC Brakes R16 pads are used up front CFD aero design was completed by the same people designing the radical new Northern Speed Acura Type R, Stim Tech. Aero package was completed by Stim Tech and Unit 2 Fabrication,