The Black Beast

Gary Preston from Melbourne Australia wrote to me telling me about his "Two Integras Project" with great enthusiasm. Gary is a racing enthusiast and participate the amateur racing scene in Australia. I find his project very interesting indeed so I responded with an invitation to write an article about it. This article was easily written, the contents are simply edited from his emails !

I am an owner of two Integra's the first being a red DA9 with the B18A1 non vtec, the second black car is a DA6 with B16A DOHC VTEC.

From here it gets a bit involved. I took the B18a engine out of my road (red) car and put it aside for a full race engine rebuild to be installed into the black Integra Race Car. The B16a engine was taken out of my black car and re-installed into my other road registered red Integra. I needed to do a complete engine wiring loom and ecu swap to make this work and it does. I drive this car around as my every day run around.

The B18a1 engine was rebuilt from top to bottom. My engine builder used the B18a block and graffted a B16a head onto it. Not that simple but a few mods to the block to create an oil gallery for the Vtec controller and hey presto !

Other mods included are as follows:

Autronic engine management system
BLOCK
- Hone bores to suit 81.5mm pistons
- Modify block to supply oil to vtec solenoid
- Mill dowels into opposite side of block to locate head
CRANKSHAFT
- Replaced pressed in gallery and replaced with threaded plugs
- fully balance
- heat treated
- grind mains to achieve oil clearances
CONRODS
- Crower rods
- checked all rod tunnel sizes
- checked rod alignment
PISTONS
- Custom forged pistons 81.5mm with wire circlips and race ring set
CYLINDER HEAD AND CAM GEAR
- Cut better valve seat shape and flow head
- std flow 225cfm @ 0.450" lift
- After race port 248cfm @0.450" lift
- machined inserts into head
- race valves springs
- modify spring locators and retainers
- "K" line guides
- Face valves
CAMSHAFTS
- Custom billet ground and treated
INLET
- 4 X 48MM Quad throttle bodies
FUEL SYSTEM
- Toyota fuel injectors ( 60 hp @ 85% )
- Facet low pressure pump (340hp)
- VL Commodore fuel pump
- Alloy swirl pot
- Bosche fuel filter
MISC
- Twin core radiator
- 16 row cooler
- Mazda RX7 4 Spot calipers
- Honda Legend front rotors
- Hawk blue race pads
- Quaiffe LSD
- American Racing Wheels
- Full weld in Crome molly rollcage

The race engine is running a 10.8.1 compression ratio so I can use the new Shell high octane fuel available at the pump. Also the headers are mandrel bent custom made by my engine builder and finished off with a ceramic coating.

Lots of other things as well helps to make this car a very quick one. The car dyno at 125kW at the wheels with bags of torque. (A scan of the actual dyno chart was sent to me but after some consideration, I thought I shouldn't include that in this article since Gary is racing his car and exposing the dyno chart may bring him some disadvantage.) 125kW translates to 170ps !

During the 2nd round of the Victorian State Motor Racing Championships recently, Gary's drove his Black Beast to the winning position in the Under 2 Litre Late Model Improved Production Class. At the time of writing this article, he is 7th in the overall points score (all engine capacities).

Gary ended his first email with a question : Do you know anyone who has done the same mods ?. Well, I have seen a few other project cars with the B18/B16A engine hybrid, though of course not to the exact same specifications. These engines variously dyno'ed between 160 to 170ps on a Dynojet so Gary's race-use project DA6 is very good indeed.

Gary can be contacted via his email address at gbp@unite.com.au. He'll be very happy to talk about his project with anyone who's interested. Gary's engine builder is Simon Gardiner Engineering.