Just another turbo Supra with huge rear tires idles loudly at the red light. "BPU," you figure. He brings it up off idle and it sounds meaner than a cornered wolverine. OK, maybe it has a single turbo. You notice an aftermarket spoiler. The back window vibrates in time to the thumps issued from an open window.
"Nah, ricer" you decide.
He revs again. No brake lights shine. Must be a stick.
He hangs a left into Phoenix International Raceway. You consign the car to a mental corner shared with Laker stats and whether you TiVo'ed the James Bond marathon. Up in the grandstands to watch the Street Legals, you wolf down greasy track dogs as clean Novas wheelstand and fart-can Civics boost their way to 12-second quarter miles.
A silver Supra pulls into the burnout box next to a Mustang, his crew checks the pin on his chute and pulls on the window net. A roar like a pissed wolverine barks from the massive exhaust. The Supra stages, lights go yellow, drag tires bite and he goes 9.70 at 150 mph. Holy crap. Could that be? Yup. Ryan Woon is the owner of Wide Open Throttle Motorsports (www.WOTM.com) in Phoenix, Ariz., a shop that specializes in Supra products. He's proud of his '98 turbo Supra and he should be; it's the quickest quarter-mile six-speed Supra in the world.
When not at the track, it rules the streets of Phoenix. No, it owns the streets of Phoenix. This atmosphere-inhaling GT has been called out to long, desolate stretches of desert pavement by every manner of modified Viper, 'Vette, turbo Porsche and Hayabusa, and it has never been beat. Ever.
That's big talk, but this Supra makes the Texas-sized numbers to back it up. No use beating around the cast-iron block; this beast, according to Woon, has ripped off 991-whp and 805 lb-ft of torque at a connecting rod-trembling 39 psi, or 2.7 Bar, of boost.
Ryan is one of those serial Supra owners. After several, he's finally settling on the Supra he's always wanted, which is, incidentally, one of the most rare, a super-clean 1998 Quicksilver sportsroof, with 30,000 miles on its clock.The car ran fast from the start. Within two weeks of buying the car, Ryan bolted enough goodies onto the stock bottom end to run a 10.2 at 136 mph.
Deciding the standard sized 3-inch aftermarket downpipe and midpipe were restrictions, WOTM made up a 4-inch combo. Immediately, the car ran 9.9 at 144 mph. Although the stock 2JZ-GTE bottom end has been shown to support more than 980 whp, with the frequency Ryan planned on hammering the car, he decided a built engine was cheap insurance against dropping oil in front of the rear tires at high speed.
About the only thing left in Ryan's engine compartment with a Toyota part number on it are the castings and valve cover. The block was bored .020 over for custom JE 8.5:1 compression pistons slung on Carillo H-beam chrome-moly rods with CARR bolts. The head underwent major surgery, starting with nearly all the valvetrain components being tossed and WOTM porting and cleaning the combustion area and passages. Ryan selected 1mm oversize Ferrea Super Comp Inconel (the same crazy, ultra-high-temperature alloy jet engine components are made of) valves suspended by Ferrea dual-valve springs and locked down by titanium retainers. A pair of HKS 264-degree cams dialed-in with AEM cam gears coordinates the four-stroke cycle.
Everything from the factory that handles compressing and expanding gases was tossed. Max Rev in Pheonix, Ariz. fabricated 4-inch aluminum intake piping that connects the massive GReddy four-row front-mount intercooler to the Virtual Works sheet metal intake manifold, which is a work of art. Two HKS SSQV blow-off valves are required to bleed boost in the milliseconds Ryan is off the gas between shifts.
Exhaust pulses from six angry cylinders scream into a WOTM stainless-steel single-turbo manifold to which a WOTM 76S turbo is attached to a .81 A/R exhaust housing sourced from Larry at Sound Performance in Bloomingdale, Ill. Is that big, you ask? Big enough for more than 1,000 hp, small enough that it makes more than just peak power.
Pursuant to his quest to produce innovative Supra products, Ryan fashioned his downpipe, midpipe and exhaust of 5-inch 321 stainless. For reference, 5-inch exhaust pipe is generally installed on long-haul Peterbuilts making a gazillion lb-ft of torque; this design may be overkill, but having massive pipe does impress. Helping reduce drag and slow accessories are a Boost Logic crank pulley and Unorthodox billet underdrive pulleys. Lots of power means lots of heat, which a Fluidyne aluminum radiator helps dissipate.
Tuned in-house, the AEM EMS engine management system times the high-octane flame fronts, which require a lot of juice, both liquid and electrical, at the crazy boost Ryan demands. AEM's four-channel CDI ignition fires stored energy through NGK Iridium plugs. Max Rev fabricated a billet fuel hanger assembly that holds three high-flow Walbro fuel pumps that gush race fuel through SX fuel filters. WOTM's own billet fuel rail with -10 feed and -6 return fittings hold Titanic 1200cc RC Engineering injectors, whose lightest spritz would stall any mere mortal engine. To ensure consistent boost pressures, WOTM uses its own manual boost controller.
The hardest hitting six-speed Supra on record uses a surprisingly simple suspension setup. Ryan finds that Tein HA coil-overs, with standard spring rates and damping, are optimal, and it's hard to argue with the car's 1.44-second, 60-foot times-the kind of launch you generally see from really good AWD cars. Moreover, equipped with standard coil-overs, this Supra pays no penalty on the street like other cars with compromised drag suspensions. As a genuine full-weight street car, the great stock brakes remain. Even without the parachute, the car has plenty of stopping power to slow from 150 mph for the return road.
Ryan worked with Rob from RPS to develop WOTM's Stage II clutch, whose carbon/carbon clutch and flywheel combo have held up to repeated 9-second passes and is still streetable. Although more Harry Winston than Zales on the wallet decimation scale, carbon clutches are a near-perfect solution in extreme-duty applications because they provide both the necessary ultimate torque capacity and enough slip to cushion drivetrain components.
Broken driveshafts don't win races, so a larger-diameter WOTM driveshaft was installed. On the street, Ryan runs leviathan 315/25-19 Contisport 2s on 19x11-inch CCW forged wheels on the rear, and 265/30-19s on 10-inch wide wheels in the front. At the track and at the street races, Ryan runs skinnies in the front and 16-inch CCW drag package wheels and 26x11.5x16-inch ET Street drag radials in the rear.
Ryan's initial goal with this Supra was to make a low, 9-second full-weight street car with the factory six-speed. He's come damn close thus far. To make the car legal for these fast e.t.s and trap speeds, Ryan installed extensive safety equipment.
First was an 8.5-second-legal chrome-moly cage by Dan Westover. The cage features removeable door bars for ease of ingress and will shortly be covered in gray suede to match the interior. Dan also made the removable parachute setup, which mounts behind the license plate and pulls directly at the cage. Curtis P. fabricated a driveshaft loop and scattershield, available from WOTM.