It was a beautifully built car, but just the tip of the ice berg when it came to showing off the capabilities of K&N as a company and the resources its staff had. Led by Nestor Cabrera, Sports Marketing Representative for K&N Engineering, the old car was completely stripped down past the primer and rebuilt as a track worthy time attack car.
This wasn’t some contracted out race shop ordeal either. The project was a labor of love and built during off hours. In addition to their daytime responsibility, the K&N team built the car after hours over the period of a year. With few exceptions, all of the fabrication, assembly, testing and even composite work was performed at their on premises race shop.
The heart of this build started with the stock VQ35DE engine. The block was stripped and sent to Cosworth Racing USA for machining and assembly using new CP pistons and Pauter rods. Displacement was kept at 3.5-liter and compression was dropped to 8.5:1 to handle the additional boost. The short block was dressed back over at K&N’s race shop with a Jim Wolf Technology twin turbocharger kit . The K&N staff decided to go one step further and re-plumb the turbo kit with their own intercooler, boost piping as well as an in-house custom fabricated intake manifold. All this resulted with an impressive 511hp @ 6500RPM and 440ft-lb @ 4400RPM on K&N’s Superflow chassis dynamometer.
Much all the chassis work was also performed in house. After being stripped, the original show cage in the car was cut out and replaced with a race compliant cage with full crash-beam door bars. The factory sheetmetal was also cut to remove weight and then reinforced with addition stitch welds. Outside, K&N approached Seibon Carbon fiber products to build light weight carbon fiber doors, fenders, hood and trunk for the car. Other body components like the Anceltion bumpers and side skirts came directly from Japan thanks to Mackin Industries. K&N also threw in some of its own composite expertise by building a custom splitter and many of the auto-claved dry-carbon interior components.
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