In 1989, Kristofer Olson saw an artist's rendition of the yet-unreleased Acura NSX and immediately knew he had to have one. A few months later, he had a chance encounter with a guy who had purchased one of the first cars in the area.
"He offered me a ride, which I thought would be a quick drive around the block," says Olson. "Boy, was I wrong. Within three minutes of sitting in the passenger seat, windows down, we were doing 168 mph!" After that, Olson knew an NSX was in his future, but he had a problem. At the time, Olson was making $6 an hour.
Despite making a bit more money now, it took 13 years for Olson to get his dream ride. Having started a business, married, purchased a house and had kids, Olson finally got this 1991 NSX in 2003. He bought the stone stock car from a gentleman in Oregon with a mere 9,696 original miles on the clock and immediately began to take the car to a whole new level. Comptech USA, having developed the NSX into a field-dominating IMSA Camel GT Light racecar, was the clear choice for building this dream machine.
Aside from the mint factory red paint, the only external hints of this car's performance are the 18x8-inch and 19x10-inch HRE 543s wrapped in 225/35ZR-18 and 285/30ZR-19 Bridgestone Pole Positions. That is, unless it's a track day, which is pretty frequent. At the track, the Acura wears 17x8-inch and 18x10-inch Technomagnesio Formula Sixes with 245/40R-17 and 285/35R-18 Yokohama racing slicks.
It takes a lot of brake to put a tire like that to use. Comptech selected Brembo's Indy Billet caliper over the more standard Lotus-style cast caliper for its significantly higher strength and reduced flex. The Indy also uses a slightly larger pad, in this case sourced from Pagid, to squeeze 13-inch drilled rotors front and rear. The rotors are full floaters, which mount to custom hats, allowing 0.007-0.008 inches of clearance between the two. During the rigors of track driving, this clearance ensures no brake drag or misalignment. Small supplemental calipers are used in the rear to provide a parking brake. Despite the racy nature of the brake setup, the calipers include dust seals and the braided brake lines use factory fittings, keeping the whole package DOT approved and street legal.
Since sticky tires coupled with soft suspensions tend to put cars on their lids, Comptech reached back to its Camel Light days to keep the rubber side down. A coil-over suspension was developed with ex-IMSA driver Parker Johnstone to balance that fine NSX line of performance and civility. Kni 3012 monotube racing dampers are custom valved to control 1,000-lb/in. front springs and 600-lb/in. rears. Independent external adjustment for compression and rebound allow fine-tuning for any track condition.
Despite those aggressive spring rates, ride quality remains livable due to the digressive damping of the Knis and the supple Bridgestone sidewalls. Further aiding roll control are a set of Comptech 22mm adjustable anti-roll bars dialed to their intermediate setting. The front bar, which is solid, increases roll stiffness 167 percent over the stock 18.3mm hollow bar. A 220-percent gain beyond the OEM 19.1mm unit is had with the hollow rear bar.
A significant effort by Honda to keep Noise-Vibration-and-Harshness (NVH) to an absolute minimum resulted in the car's fantastically rigid aluminum chassis. The downside of this, however, was the excessive use of rubber bushings and isolators throughout the suspension. To keep the car from feeling sloppy and vague, Yokohama produced a special tire for the NSX, the A022H, which has a casing that actually preloads the suspension while driving to eliminate bushing slop. These magic tires wore pretty fast, however; fast enough that NSX owners filed and won a class action lawsuit against Honda calling for a free replacement of the tires.
What Honda should have done is simply replace all the bushings like Comptech does. The rear of Olson's car received a noncompliance rear beam kit (subframe bushings), toe-link kit and shock tower brace. According to Shad Huntley of Comptech, these are probably the most important mods an NSX owner can perform on the car. Up front, a Competition noncompliance clamp was installed to limit bushing deflection in the suspension, which would normally cause caster loss and toe change under braking. Chassis bracing from the NSX-R was fitted under the bonnet.
To correct maladies introduced into the front suspension by lowering the car, Comptech fitted it with one of its bump-steer correction kits. This hardware restores the tie-rod end-link's motion profile to minimize toe change through the suspension travel. Lastly, solid aluminum Competition camber bushings allow an increase in the range of camber adjustment, as much as -4 degrees, for settings appropriate for real race tires.
One of the few things Honda has changed over the production run of the NSX has been the drivetrain. A later 3.2-liter short block, with its titanium connecting rods and cast 10.2:1 compression pistons, was used as the basis for Olson's engine buildup. Comptech ported 3.0-liter heads are fitted with 1mm oversized stainless intake valves and Inconel exhaust valves left from the Camel Light days. Iskenderian valve springs, Comptech titanium retainers, reground cams and adjustable cam gears round out the valvetrain. Like most of Comptech's products, the NSX cams are emissions legal, since only the larger VTEC lobe has been reprofiled.
A billet high-volume oil pump was installed, featuring an 0.080-inch wider gearset, in addition to Comptech's track oil system. The kit replaces the factory oil-to-water cooler with an Earl's 13-row oil-to-air heat exchanger mounted in the passenger-side rear quarter panel vent. An Accusump 3-quart reservoir is mounted on the same side in the rear fender, with -10AN lines moving all the oil around outside the engine.
Comptech's carbon-fiber cold-air intake feeds an upgraded 2300AX twin-screw supercharger kit pushing 8 psi of boost. Rather than use the standard 1600cc compressor, a 2300cc unit was installed to reduce screw rpm, thus lowering intake air temperatures. This is a somewhat common practice for the larger displacement engines, especially those with cylinder head and camshaft changes. Spent gases pass through Comptech's stainless headers and race exhaust system sans catalysts.
Engine management is a fairly simple arrangement with the earlier OBD-I 3.0-liter ECU running the show. Reprogramming was done by Comptech to lower the VTEC engagement point from 5800 to 5200 rpm, and raise the rev limit from 8000 to 8200 rpm, while its Electrical Signal Monitor (ESM) clamps excessive voltage due to boost from reaching the MAP sensor. Slightly larger 370cc/min. injectors compensate for the larger displacement, while a Mallory rising rate FMU enriches the mixture under boost. A Bosch in-tank fuel pump replaces the stock unit.
A six-speed transmission sourced from a late-model car was swapped in. Prior to installation, the final drive was reduced from 4.06:1 to 4.23:1, and an early-model limited-slip differential with additional preload replaced the late model part. The tighter gate spacing on the six-speed necessitates the use of a reverse lock-out system, which was developed by Honda. There's no provision for this in the earlier cars, however, so Comptech's six-speed conversion kit includes an electronic actuator that intercepts the wheel speed sensor signal to disallow reverse above 17 mph.
A Power Grip 2 clutch package is fitted to transfer the engine's power and help with throttle response. The Sacs pressure plate is a custom unit with higher-than-stock clamping force and reworked fingers for improved engagement. Marcel in the disc is also reduced slightly for quicker shifting. Comptech's lightweight flywheel rounds out the package, knocking nearly 20 pounds off the stock part.
Sitting back in the factory leather seats isn't such a bad thing for Olson, strapped in tightly by Comptech's Competition Restraint kit and harness bar. Nor is the feel of the NSX-R steering wheel, shift knob, or view of the engine's stats on the dual SPA digital monitors along the A-pillar. In fact, life is pretty good. Much like Honda, Olson has shown that even those from modest means can realize their dreams.