The Art of Building a Pro Drag Racing NSX: A Journey of Innovation and Passion

It's hard to believe that one of the most iconic sports cars ever made, the Acura NSX, can also become a drag racing machine. But for Adam, a passionate driver and car enthusiast, it was only a matter of time before he turned his NSX into a formidable force on the quarter-mile strip. With the help of advanced technology and expert engineering, Adam transformed his NSX into a beast that could reach speeds over 200 miles per hour.

The first step in building this monster was to modify the engine. The stock 3.2-liter NSX engine made a respectable 290 horsepower, but Adam wanted more. He upgraded the engine with advanced components, including a liquid-to-air intercooler and a high-performance turbocharger system. This setup not only increased power output but also improved efficiency and reliability.

To take advantage of this newfound power, Adam installed a sophisticated electronics system, including an ECU (Engine Control Unit) and a CDI (Controlled Digital Ignition). These systems allowed him to fine-tune the engine's performance and adjust parameters in real-time. The result was a car that could launch from 0-60 in just seconds, thanks to the advanced ignition system.

But power alone wasn't enough; Adam also needed a reliable suspension system to handle the stresses of high-speed racing. He opted for a custom setup featuring Kony electronic adjustable shocks and Acura-approved struts. This system allowed him to fine-tune the suspension settings for each gear change, ensuring maximum traction and stability on the track.

Next, Adam turned his attention to the brakes. The stock NSX brakes were adequate but not quite sufficient for the demands of drag racing. He upgraded to a set of high-performance carbon-fiber brake pads and rotors, which provided exceptional stopping power and heat dissipation.

One of the most striking features of Adam's NSX was its exhaust system. Equipped with a custom exhaust setup featuring weld Racing wheels with nitro O's, this car made a deafening roar as it launched down the strip. The engine's exhaust note was augmented by a series of high-performance air intakes and intercoolers, which helped to optimize power output.

As we took a closer look inside the NSX, it became clear that Adam had spared no expense in creating an optimal driving environment. The interior featured Sparco seats, harnesses, and a custom dashboard design, all crafted from the finest materials available. The ECU and ignition systems were neatly integrated into the cockpit, providing Adam with real-time data and control over the engine's performance.

The shift gear lever was another highlight of the NSX's interior, featuring a sequential shifter that allowed Adam to quickly switch between gears without missing a beat. This clever design required only one use of the clutch at launch for the rest of the drive, making it ideal for drag racing applications.

Finally, let's talk about the wheels and tires. While Acura and KY wheels were major sponsors of Adam's NSX, he opted to run weld Racing wheels with nitro O's up front, paired with Goodyear drag slicks on the rear. These specialized components provided exceptional grip and traction on the track, allowing Adam to shave precious seconds off his lap times.

The launch box was another crucial component of the setup, featuring a special coating called VHT (which stands for "Varnish Heat Transfer") that helped the tires generate maximum traction at launch. This clever system allowed Adam's NSX to take off with incredible force and speed, barely leaving any tire spin in its wake.

As we prepared to fire up the engine, it was clear that this NSX was more than just a car – it was a work of art, a testament to human ingenuity and passion. With each passing moment, Adam's NSX seemed to grow more menacing, its exhaust note building in anticipation of the power to come.

"Can I Drive?" we asked, our voices barely above a whisper as we climbed into the cockpit. The engine roared to life beneath us, its vibrations coursing through every fiber of the car. Our hearts racing, we took a deep breath and prepared for the experience of a lifetime – the thrill of driving Adam's Pro Drag Racing NSX.

As we put the pedal to the metal, the speedometer climbed rapidly into the triple digits, our minds racing with excitement. The sound of the engine grew louder still, its roar building in intensity as we hurtled down the track. It was an exhilarating experience, one that left us gasping for air and shaking with adrenaline.

For Adam, this NSX represented more than just a car – it was his passion, his creativity, and his drive. He had poured his heart and soul into every aspect of its design and construction, pushing the limits of what was possible with this iconic sports car. And as we drove off into the sunset, our minds buzzing with the thrill of the experience, we knew that Adam's Pro Drag Racing NSX would forever hold a special place in our hearts.

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhen you think of an Acura NSX you probably think things like reliable Japanese supercar and exotic daily driver you're probably not thinking of an NSX warming up it's slicks in the burnout box at the drag strip but this is an NSX drag car look at those big ol meats why would someone do this take something designed to be one of the best drivers cars of all time and turn it into something built for straight-line speed and more importantly how did they do it let's dig into it it's time to go bumper to bumper on this Acura NSX drag car and let's start it up at the end we want to give Acura a big thank you for sponsoring this episode the accra brand has a legacy of performance that has always embraced independent thinking so we're exciting to be working with them to tell the story of a car that came from one of the most independent thinkers we've ever met that thinker is Adam sorry Watari but before we can appreciate his NSX and find out just how fast it is first we need a little background on the philosophy of the NSX in general after five years of thinking outside the box meticulous development and fine tuning by Ayrton Senna and other racers Honda gave us the world's first Japanese supercar in the US it was the perfect performance jewel to set in the center of the new Acura brand's crown it was called the NSX which stood for new sports car experimental the engine was mounted right behind a driver because that's where you put it if you want to go around corners as quickly as possible well a particular kids uncle happen to get one of the first NSX's in the state and he let his nephew drive it to his high school Winter Formal that's a very cool uncle I drove my Taurus that kid was Adam Tsar Watari the NSX made such a big impression on Adam that he later bought one for himself and when he got into drag racing he didn't care that it wasn't built for straight-line speed or that no one else was racing one Adam is a lot like Acura and then he didn't want to follow the herd and NSX is what he'd always wanted to own and it was what he wanted to drag race and he was going to be the independent thinker that made that happen I heard that we were doing NSX that was also a drag car I was stoked I've been drag racing since I was a kid I did Junior dragsters when I was 10 years old me my dad we had a Pontiac trans-am that ran in sportsman class and then I also crewed on a nostalgia funny car trust me when I say that turning and NSX into a pro-level drag car is a huge accomplishment and also really freaking difficult but with Honda and Acura support Adam and a small team of experts challenged the status quo here's how he did it let's look together just as Acura builds all their cars with their customers in mind this NSX had to be purpose-built for drag racing and that means from the ground up first came a pro stock tube frame chassis made by gary hanson racecars now most tube-frame race cars never end up looking like the cards they're modeled after NHRA Pro Stock drag cars they look really weird and kind of bloated and you'd never guess what they're based on without the badge but Adam took a different approach even though he was building a tube frame race car that was much longer than a stock NSX he wanted it to look as much like the real thing as possible so accurate Oh a.m. body panels over from Japan which Adam then used to have molds made next fiberglass panels were made from those molds then modified to fit the new tube frame chassis finally carbon-fiber was used create the panels that are on the car right now the rear wing here really should be bigger than this for downforce reasons but Adam insisted on sticking as close to the stock profile as possible he felt so strongly about that that even had the door handles made to look just like the originals and damn if this car isn't still instantly recognizable as an NSX not some janky imitation of one while we're back here I'll explain some stuff we've got the rear wing here you want the wing as low to the car as possible so you don't create drag pulling the car backwards when you're going down the track see this little handle over here it says push off if there's an accident and the engines still running a track official can you know jump the wall turn the car off just by pushing that thing we've got the parachute here this is the cable that holds it all packed in place Adam has a handle in the car that he pulls after a pass the cable will release the parachute there's even a hydraulically actuated two spring back here that pushes the parachute out because brakes aren't enough to slow this car down of course down here we have the wheelie bar which is actually set in a high position for just going around the pit it actually goes a lot lower than this which I shall now demonstrate I got Adams permission to do this so don't flame me in the comments you'll notice that the wheels here are white and they do not come like that this is years of shoe polish blotted on here and why they do that is when the car launches they can see for how long the car will wheelie and if it's kind of squirrely at all and that tells the crew a lot about what the car is doing at launch if it didn't have it the car would just probably do a wheel stand and just destroy itself on re-entry I also want to point out that they use the stock break light back here which i think is really cool you know they spent so much time molding these panels out of carbon fiber but then use these stock lights I think that's so awesome you can even see the cable for the parachute is routed to the old keyhole which i think is a great little detail I love this thing it's amazing it wasn't easy to keep the original shape of the car intact all those traditional muscle cars with shaker hoods and big air intakes sticking up out of their engine bays don't do that just for attention those changes make real power but the NSX is a very low hood line one that was never supposed to have an engine under it at all and Adam wasn't willing to compromise it Adam had to go through several custom manifolds to find something that worked well while still keeping that slick low hood line since at the v6 Adam went with a twin turbo setup with one ball bearing spinning boy per cylinder bank two small co2 bottles have two preset pressures and help control the boost via the wastegates it's that's it I just spit that's so awesome co2 regulated boost pressure are you serious there's an onboard ice water tank that feeds a liquid to air intercooler to insure the turbos get nice cool air for every pass down the drag strip the turn signals on the body even pop out to feed more air into the turbos that's what these tubes are for these little trumpets it's not because Adams a huge ska-punk fan it's because he wanted more air going to the turbos down the track a stock 3.2 liter NSX makes 290 horsepower this NSX makes over a thousand three hundred buff horses at the crank - whoa all those horses it's also got bitchin carbon-fiber brakes that is not cheap the struts are made by lam components a top supplier of pro drag car suspension the rear uses kony electronic adjustable shocks that have a unique setting for each gear change let me say that again the suspension changes itself for every gear that's some trick along with Acura and KY wheels and Nitto tires were the two major sponsors of the AL Racing NSX but Adam ran weld Racing wheels with knit O's up front and Goodyear drag slicks on the rear with both of their blessings at the time neither Nitto or n kai had products ready for this level of professional drag competition so they were fine with the NSX running a more tried-and-true setup at drag strips they prepped the launch box with the stuff called VHT it's like a glue that's what helps these cars launch so hard there's barely any tire spin on launch because of the contact patch and that literal glue that the officials spray onto the track you might be wondering what exactly this car can do at the quarter-mile and we'll get there but first let's hop inside this NSX and see how Adam designed the fully custom okay I'm a little shorter than Adam this is probably the nicest bit we ever seen on the show and that includes factory cars this is immaculate everything in here is either aluminum or carbon fiber I'm sitting in a Sparco seat with Sparco harnesses on the passenger side we can see the motek ECU CDI and coney shock control for those electronic rear shocks that we're talking about earlier this red button on the steering wheel is very important it operates the line lock so you might have seen videos of drag racers doing huge smoky burnouts and what that does is heat up the rear tires so they really hook on that sticky DHT that I talked about earlier other red button on the shifter here is for overboost I haven't says you know if you're going down the track and you don't think you're gonna win he would hit that button and that tells these tanks to send more boost into the engine and hopefully get the win so this shifter is a sequential shifter which requires only one use of the clutch at launch for the rest of the past Adam is shifting gears as usual this smaller lever down here is for the reverse the transmission turns a carbon fiber drive shaft that goes into a titanium yoke that goes into a titanium spool inside of a titanium housing if a combination of words like titanium spool make you say huh here's the deal this drag racing NSX has some fancy expensive titanium chucks back there that make the real wheels always go the same speed in a straight line instead so it's like having a welded if only way cooler and a lot more expensive in its heyday this championship-winning Pro drag racing NSX ran the quarter-mile in the high six second range at speeds around 200 miles an hour even as a dramatically different kind of NSX this car challenged convention just like the original NSX and the Acura brand import tuning wouldn't be where it is today without this car and I'm not bullying you now let's stop dilly-dallying fire this thing up water pumps on fans on ignition can I Drive oh my gosh I'm shaking dude Thank You Adam for letting me do that my nose is running a check on Adams YouTube channel Adam sorry Watari extreme follow me on instagram at Nolan Jason thanks fellow donut at donut media accurate forever man this is that was nuts I'm gonna go take a napwhen you think of an Acura NSX you probably think things like reliable Japanese supercar and exotic daily driver you're probably not thinking of an NSX warming up it's slicks in the burnout box at the drag strip but this is an NSX drag car look at those big ol meats why would someone do this take something designed to be one of the best drivers cars of all time and turn it into something built for straight-line speed and more importantly how did they do it let's dig into it it's time to go bumper to bumper on this Acura NSX drag car and let's start it up at the end we want to give Acura a big thank you for sponsoring this episode the accra brand has a legacy of performance that has always embraced independent thinking so we're exciting to be working with them to tell the story of a car that came from one of the most independent thinkers we've ever met that thinker is Adam sorry Watari but before we can appreciate his NSX and find out just how fast it is first we need a little background on the philosophy of the NSX in general after five years of thinking outside the box meticulous development and fine tuning by Ayrton Senna and other racers Honda gave us the world's first Japanese supercar in the US it was the perfect performance jewel to set in the center of the new Acura brand's crown it was called the NSX which stood for new sports car experimental the engine was mounted right behind a driver because that's where you put it if you want to go around corners as quickly as possible well a particular kids uncle happen to get one of the first NSX's in the state and he let his nephew drive it to his high school Winter Formal that's a very cool uncle I drove my Taurus that kid was Adam Tsar Watari the NSX made such a big impression on Adam that he later bought one for himself and when he got into drag racing he didn't care that it wasn't built for straight-line speed or that no one else was racing one Adam is a lot like Acura and then he didn't want to follow the herd and NSX is what he'd always wanted to own and it was what he wanted to drag race and he was going to be the independent thinker that made that happen I heard that we were doing NSX that was also a drag car I was stoked I've been drag racing since I was a kid I did Junior dragsters when I was 10 years old me my dad we had a Pontiac trans-am that ran in sportsman class and then I also crewed on a nostalgia funny car trust me when I say that turning and NSX into a pro-level drag car is a huge accomplishment and also really freaking difficult but with Honda and Acura support Adam and a small team of experts challenged the status quo here's how he did it let's look together just as Acura builds all their cars with their customers in mind this NSX had to be purpose-built for drag racing and that means from the ground up first came a pro stock tube frame chassis made by gary hanson racecars now most tube-frame race cars never end up looking like the cards they're modeled after NHRA Pro Stock drag cars they look really weird and kind of bloated and you'd never guess what they're based on without the badge but Adam took a different approach even though he was building a tube frame race car that was much longer than a stock NSX he wanted it to look as much like the real thing as possible so accurate Oh a.m. body panels over from Japan which Adam then used to have molds made next fiberglass panels were made from those molds then modified to fit the new tube frame chassis finally carbon-fiber was used create the panels that are on the car right now the rear wing here really should be bigger than this for downforce reasons but Adam insisted on sticking as close to the stock profile as possible he felt so strongly about that that even had the door handles made to look just like the originals and damn if this car isn't still instantly recognizable as an NSX not some janky imitation of one while we're back here I'll explain some stuff we've got the rear wing here you want the wing as low to the car as possible so you don't create drag pulling the car backwards when you're going down the track see this little handle over here it says push off if there's an accident and the engines still running a track official can you know jump the wall turn the car off just by pushing that thing we've got the parachute here this is the cable that holds it all packed in place Adam has a handle in the car that he pulls after a pass the cable will release the parachute there's even a hydraulically actuated two spring back here that pushes the parachute out because brakes aren't enough to slow this car down of course down here we have the wheelie bar which is actually set in a high position for just going around the pit it actually goes a lot lower than this which I shall now demonstrate I got Adams permission to do this so don't flame me in the comments you'll notice that the wheels here are white and they do not come like that this is years of shoe polish blotted on here and why they do that is when the car launches they can see for how long the car will wheelie and if it's kind of squirrely at all and that tells the crew a lot about what the car is doing at launch if it didn't have it the car would just probably do a wheel stand and just destroy itself on re-entry I also want to point out that they use the stock break light back here which i think is really cool you know they spent so much time molding these panels out of carbon fiber but then use these stock lights I think that's so awesome you can even see the cable for the parachute is routed to the old keyhole which i think is a great little detail I love this thing it's amazing it wasn't easy to keep the original shape of the car intact all those traditional muscle cars with shaker hoods and big air intakes sticking up out of their engine bays don't do that just for attention those changes make real power but the NSX is a very low hood line one that was never supposed to have an engine under it at all and Adam wasn't willing to compromise it Adam had to go through several custom manifolds to find something that worked well while still keeping that slick low hood line since at the v6 Adam went with a twin turbo setup with one ball bearing spinning boy per cylinder bank two small co2 bottles have two preset pressures and help control the boost via the wastegates it's that's it I just spit that's so awesome co2 regulated boost pressure are you serious there's an onboard ice water tank that feeds a liquid to air intercooler to insure the turbos get nice cool air for every pass down the drag strip the turn signals on the body even pop out to feed more air into the turbos that's what these tubes are for these little trumpets it's not because Adams a huge ska-punk fan it's because he wanted more air going to the turbos down the track a stock 3.2 liter NSX makes 290 horsepower this NSX makes over a thousand three hundred buff horses at the crank - whoa all those horses it's also got bitchin carbon-fiber brakes that is not cheap the struts are made by lam components a top supplier of pro drag car suspension the rear uses kony electronic adjustable shocks that have a unique setting for each gear change let me say that again the suspension changes itself for every gear that's some trick along with Acura and KY wheels and Nitto tires were the two major sponsors of the AL Racing NSX but Adam ran weld Racing wheels with knit O's up front and Goodyear drag slicks on the rear with both of their blessings at the time neither Nitto or n kai had products ready for this level of professional drag competition so they were fine with the NSX running a more tried-and-true setup at drag strips they prepped the launch box with the stuff called VHT it's like a glue that's what helps these cars launch so hard there's barely any tire spin on launch because of the contact patch and that literal glue that the officials spray onto the track you might be wondering what exactly this car can do at the quarter-mile and we'll get there but first let's hop inside this NSX and see how Adam designed the fully custom okay I'm a little shorter than Adam this is probably the nicest bit we ever seen on the show and that includes factory cars this is immaculate everything in here is either aluminum or carbon fiber I'm sitting in a Sparco seat with Sparco harnesses on the passenger side we can see the motek ECU CDI and coney shock control for those electronic rear shocks that we're talking about earlier this red button on the steering wheel is very important it operates the line lock so you might have seen videos of drag racers doing huge smoky burnouts and what that does is heat up the rear tires so they really hook on that sticky DHT that I talked about earlier other red button on the shifter here is for overboost I haven't says you know if you're going down the track and you don't think you're gonna win he would hit that button and that tells these tanks to send more boost into the engine and hopefully get the win so this shifter is a sequential shifter which requires only one use of the clutch at launch for the rest of the past Adam is shifting gears as usual this smaller lever down here is for the reverse the transmission turns a carbon fiber drive shaft that goes into a titanium yoke that goes into a titanium spool inside of a titanium housing if a combination of words like titanium spool make you say huh here's the deal this drag racing NSX has some fancy expensive titanium chucks back there that make the real wheels always go the same speed in a straight line instead so it's like having a welded if only way cooler and a lot more expensive in its heyday this championship-winning Pro drag racing NSX ran the quarter-mile in the high six second range at speeds around 200 miles an hour even as a dramatically different kind of NSX this car challenged convention just like the original NSX and the Acura brand import tuning wouldn't be where it is today without this car and I'm not bullying you now let's stop dilly-dallying fire this thing up water pumps on fans on ignition can I Drive oh my gosh I'm shaking dude Thank You Adam for letting me do that my nose is running a check on Adams YouTube channel Adam sorry Watari extreme follow me on instagram at Nolan Jason thanks fellow donut at donut media accurate forever man this is that was nuts I'm gonna go take a nap