World’s Fastest Acura

Los Angeles based Hondata co-owner Doug Macmillan and his wife Miriam set 5 Bonneville land speed records at Speed Week at the Bonneville salt flats in Utah this past week.

Doug Macmillan started the week by setting a new record in the G/BGCC class of 221.652 mph in his 2L K20A Acura RSX running twin Rotrex Superchargers, installed by Norco, CA based KraftWerksUSA.com. This record gave him his goal of acceptance into the vaunted Bonneville 200 mph club. He went on to also take the G/BGALT record at 208.646 mph.

The crowning glory of the week however was the G/BFCC record, originally set at an impressive 226 mph in 1990. Doug has previously thought this record was out of contention, until he saw the performance of the K20A engine, built by Joe McCarthy of Prototype Racing in combination with the twin Rotrex Superchargers fitted by Supercharger experts Kraftwerks. At the 4000 ft altitude of the salt flats, the supercharged K20A was good for around 600HP . On the qualifying run, Doug scraped in with a 227 mph pass, going into a spin after the fifth and final mile, flat spotting all 4 tires. On inspection, 2 of the tires were throw-aways and two passed marginally. The team only had 2 spares which Doug could use, so the decision was made to swap the 25” tires from the rear to the front and put the spare 26” tires on the back. This decision was fraught with anxiety, as it changed the gearing of the car and would require more horsepower to get the RSX up to a record speed. During the first pass, Doug didn’t make use of the nitrous bottles in the back – at this point used for ballast only. Now the team needed the extra horsepower that the nitrous could give, only Doug had never tuned this engine with both blown and fuel combinations. It was a case of “give it your best guess”, and who better than tuning guru, Doug Macmillan! The RSX pulled an impressive 234 mph with the additional 100 HP nitrous shot and stopped straight this time, with no drama. That this speed was achieved in a production chassis, with off the shelf Honda gearbox parts and camshafts is a testament to the strength, quality and engineering of Honda products.

Hondata’s RSX is now officially the world’s fastest Acura!

Not to be out-done, Miriam, driving a 1990 JDM CRX breathing through a set of Kinsler individual throttle bodies, started her week by breaking Doug’s G/GCC record on the 3 mile short course. The CRX had a power curve almost perfect for the occasion. The Kinsler ITBs moved the power peak (293 sea level, about 255 at altitude) up 1000 RPM to 9700 RPM and increased the power by 30 HP over Doug’s engine from last year. Gearing this year was optimized for the course lengths. With these two major improvements in hand, Miriam bumped the gas competition coupe record from 167.988 mph to 178.584 mph on the three mile short course. This qualified the record and car for the 5 mile long course.

On her long course qualifying run, Miriam recorded a speed of 189 mph. However at the 1-½ mile mark, the belly pan broke off and was found scattered over the course. The team had their work cut out for them to fabricate a new belly pan in order to run the back up the next day. This was accomplished by begging and borrowing bits of scrap tin and securing it with nuts and bolts to what was left of the fiberglass belly pan and the underside of the car. On the morning back up run, Miriam put the car sideways at 170 mph at the 1 ¼ mile mark and it was later found that the height adjustments made the previous day had given the car 1/8th” toe out on the rear wheels, making the car unstable at speed. Back down to the ground for this little car!!

Miriam went out again on the same record the next morning and qualified again at 186 mph. This time the car behaved well and was much more stable. The back up run the following morning netted 188 mph making the record 187.077 mph.

Back on the short course on the second to last day, the CRX qualified for the G/GALT record, which was set by Doug the previous year at 167.346 mph. Miriam bumped this up to 183.352. The CRX was the last car to run on the short course and achieved a back up speed of 184.085 mph with the record standing at 183.718 mph. This record and car are now officially long course qualified. We believe that with aerodynamic and engine work, building on what we have learned this year, 200 MPH will be possible on our naturally aspirated 2 litre K20 powered CRX.

We would like to thank all our sponsors, KraftwerksUSA.com, Prototype Racing, Church Automotive, Eibach, Tein, Kinsler, After Hours Automotive, CPL Racing, IPS, RC Engineering and Hitech Exhaust and especially our team of Craig Corbin, Joe McCarthy, Oscar Jackson, Daniel Butler and Ryan Zamora for their very hard work during the week.

For information on landspeed racing: http://www.scta-bni.org/

For an external video of a 211 mph pass in the RSX :

In car video:


http://www.hondata.com/rsx-landspeed.html