BUILT TO SPEC

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 above 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,

including the NASCAR style rear spoiler we talked about earlier, a large front airdam with lower front rad opening, Stim Tech hood vents, Seibon Carbon fibre hood, eBay fender flares from Russia, a custom aluminum sunroof plug, lexan rear side windows as well as rear window. Being at COTA for the first ever Grid Life Touring Cup event in conjunction with the second Superlap Battle USA was the team’s aim. It all came together with a few late nights from the team at Unit 2 Fabrication and remote tuning from Haltech’s Rick Nelson.

It may have been a risky move taking a brand new car to an event so far away; 1570 plus miles was a long way to travel having only run the car up and down the parking lot in Kitchener. But Houghton had hedged his bets and set up a track test on the way to COTA at the NCM Motorsports Park that was only 647 miles from home. If things went to hell in a handbasket it would not be as depressing a trip

No exotic intake manifold here. The Racepak IQ3 Logger dash has four pages it can display. Below, Another trip to the COTA podium, 3 out of 4 race wins and overall champion.

James gets a smile on his face every time he drives the TSX, “It is such a good car”, he says. Shown below in the COTA pitlane was a dream debut.

home. The added bonus to testing at NCM was that Gridlife was going to be running there later in the year and Houghton had never been there before. Even that far South in Kentucky the weather was only slightly warmer than Canada as the team arrived in early morning. It had rained overnight and puddles still littered the track but James headed out to give the K-Tuned supported TSX its shakedown run. Unit 2 had fabricated an exhaust out of titanium and the car sounded angry out there. So angry in fact, that the track staff recomended an exhaust mod before the team returned later in the year. It was not to much over the decibel limit but enough to cause concern. So with only minor new car blues arising it was on the Austin and the Circuit Of The Americas. Unlike last year where the Houghton Acura Type R was one of the stars of Time Attack the newly built Acura TSX was running in the support series. However that did not limit the interest in the car. If there is one thing that the Internet is good for it is getting news out there and Houghton and his Instagram posts fed the masses with info and tidbits from the PRI show right up until the team left for Texas. As mentioned earlier in the article the descision was taken to run the car on 200TW tires and as the only racer on site to have gone that route there was huge interest in whether the choice would parlay into the advantage that Houghton had envisaged. Practice showed the TSX could run at the

The Mishimoto radiator has AN fittings.

sharp end of the field but it would not be until the races that the head to head competition between tires would show which was going to be superior over the distance. Qualifying placed Houghton second with a 2:29.880 to Todd Kaley in his S2000 with a 2:29.512. And the races were something else! Race 1 James Houghton | TSX Todd Kaley | S2000 DJ Alessandrin / Derek Yarbrough | Miata Race 2 James Houghton | TSX Todd Kaley | S2000 DJ Alessandrini / Derek Yarbrough | Miata

Race 3

Todd Kaley | S2000 DJ Alessandrini / Derek Yarbrough | Miata Dysen Pham | S2000 Race 4 James Houghton | TSX Dysen Pham | S2000 Ryan Upham | M3

No Houghton on the podium in race 3 you noticed? That was because the new car blues finally hit. He limped up the pit straight during the start and it looked as if race three was over bar the shouting but as the pit exit is uphill he managed to coast backwards downhill into the pits where Mitch Hemmen made an tweak to an electrical connector and the TSX was firing on all four again. The points gained for a finish was all that was need for the overall win. “What a debut!” Houghton exclaimed. “That car is unlike anything I have ever driven! Thanks to everyone who has been a part of it! Bring on the rest of 2020”