Third Annual Modified Tuner Shootout

The one tweak we made to the rules this year involved the scoring system for the dyno competition. Last year we used horsepower/liter as the basis for ranking the teams, but after seeing how that unfairly hampered some of the larger-displacement engines, we decided to rank the teams this year using power-under-the-curve. Out on the racetrack, nobody cares how big your engine is—all that really matters is how effectively your engine can produce power, and nothing captures that on a dyno more accurately than power-under-the-curve. For scoring purposes, we used the best 3000-rpm range for each team’s dyno graph, because these engines will all typically operate in no more than a 3000-rpm range when at full boil out on the racetrack. To calculate this, we simply added up the peak horsepower figure in 100-rpm increments for this 3000-rpm range, giving us a power-under-the-curve or total power figure.

Last year, the dyno dominator was World Racing and its turbocharged Scion tC, which pumped out an insane 713 whp and 702 ft-lbs of torque. But since Rado and crew couldn’t make it out this year, we knew we’d have a new dyno champ, and that turned out to be none other than mad Mikey and his band of merry speed freaks from FXMD. Despite a little early drama involving the air-to-water intercooler taking a dump and a nitrous system that didn’t want to cooperate, the FXMD NSX spun the DynaPack to the tune of 650 whp and 502 ft-lbs with a power-under-the-curve value of 18,495.

Second through fifth places was an AWD battle, with Forged Performance and its R35 GT-R taking second overall thanks to peak values of 556 whp and a monstrous 621 ft-lbs of torque to go along with a power-under-the-curve total of 16,365.

Not far behind was Crawford Performance’s Subaru Impreza STI equipped with one of its famous CP stroker EJ25 engines. The flat-four boxer spat out a deliciously angry 544 whp and 535 ft-lbs of torque from the megaphone exhaust pipe, along with a power-under-the curve total of 15,942. Nipping at CP’s tail was the YimiSport STI, which had higher peak numbers with 551 whp and 541 ft-lbs of torque but slightly less power-under-the-curve with 15,429. GST Motorsports’ GC Impreza was fifth overall despite posting the monstrous peak horsepower figure of 608 from its 2.6-liter Cosworth mill. As it turned out, GST was playing it safe by not revving its engine as high as it normally does and turned down the boost by 4 psi because of a last-minute repair the guys made to a bad valve seat that forced them to reuse the head gasket. This meant the turbo wasn’t fully spooled-up during the best 3000-rpm range, resulting in a lower-than-expected power-under-the-curve of 15,193.

Ksport took sixth overall and was the highest scoring FWD car on the dyno, with its Integra producing a rock-solid 476 whp and 379 ft-lbs of torque to go along with its power total of 13,822. Tage Evanson’s supercharged K24-powered EG Civic put up a very respectable 376 whp and 9,802 total power once it got the nitrous system to at least partially trigger, while the only all-motor competitor Sportcar Motion put up 8,703 total power and a screaming 288 whp at 9200 rpm, AFI Turbo and its turbocharged S2000 came in seventh overall and second in class with a peak of 460 whp and 371 ft-lbs of torque. ScienceofSpeed’s supercharged NSX and Forrest Wang’s Full-Race tweaked SR20-powered S13 rounded out the RWD group in eighth and ninth places overall. As for the Conti demo car, UMS’s EVO 8 produced 541 whp and 461 ft-lbs of torque at its peak and had a very broad powerband, thanks to Tony’s ECU tuning.