According to Yamz' urban folklore, Gary Narusawa is an old school legend; a street racer from the South Bay area of So Cal who marched to the beat of his own drum by fabricating his own components, all while earning his reputation of being that fast. It's his school of thought that would pave the way for guys like Yamz and other local DIY'ers. He has owned an arsenal of classic compacts, including a turbo'd V6 '81 Celica (the same one Yamz later bought and made worse; see our March '03 issue), a '67 Datsun Roadster with a 13B rotary conversion, and the S14 he's become famous for amongst the road racers with its RB25DET powerplant. But even with such highly-tuned vehicles, Gary needed something for the daily drive and settled on this '91 Nissan 240SX, which he quickly admits, he "got carried away with" during the build up. Fashioned with a common SR20, there's a twist to the way it's been set up.
Look closely--what do you see? Well, unless you had the spec sheet in your hands, your first guess that it's a SR20DET long block would be wrong; it's actually a S13 SR20DET cylinder head that's been mildly ported and polished to work harmoniously with a high compression 10:1 S14 SR20DE bottom end.
Gary, who did the engine work himself, also fitted it with 272-degree Bee*R camshafts and upgraded the valve train with sodium-filled exhaust valves from a SR20DET along with Tomei valve springs and rocker arm stoppers. The real trick lies with the intake system, which is a JDM GTI-R ITB manifold that was custom modified to fit onto the head. But the task of getting those to work was not simple; the ITBs also needed the right fuel mixture to get it running, which required Gary to fabricate his own fuel delivery system with ND 365cc top feed injectors from a supercharged MR2 mounted to a custom fuel rail, an AEM fuel regulator, and enough fuel to be fed through the system with a Walbro 255 fuel pump. On the exhaust side, he also modified a stainless header intended for the KA24DE since none of the JDM headers would clear the left-hand drive steering rack, which then leads out to a custom-fabbed, mandrel-bent 2.5-inch exhaust.